Jun 15, 2009 10:44 pm US/Central
Cicero Residents Angry Over Tickets For Tall Grass
CICERO, Ill. (CBS) ―
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Cicero residents are being fined for having grass that is over 10 inches high.
CBS
A lawn controversy is growing like a weed in Cicero tonight. People living there say they're getting tickets they don't deserve for overgrown grass. CBS 2's Dana Kozlov has the story.
A considerate homeowner or a fugitive staying one step ahead of the law?
That's what cutting the lawn has come down to for some people living in Cicero who have been getting tickets recently for letting their grass get too long.
"I didn't think that this would ever happen to me or my neighbors," said George Kallal.
Kallal is one of at least five people on his block who got slapped with the $100 to $150 ticket last week, which followed a week of rain, for his grass being over 10 inches high.
Kallal says his grass never got that long.
"No, neither here nor in the back," Kallal said. "And it says on the ticket here, weeds. Everybody's got weeds, but I didn't think mine were 10 inches either."
One abandoned house even got two tickets within a 24-hour period. Others on this block say they saw one inspector issuing violations without using any sort of tape measure or ruler to judge height.
"No rulers, nothing," said Adrian Corral. "Just a guy from inside his car, he would just, I guess, measure with his eye."
Town workers are walking around handing out $100 tickets for grass that's supposedly higher than 10 inches. But neighbors say no one on this block has had a lawn that high all season.
"Ridiculous, I've never seen anybody's grass being that long," said Martha Galvez.
A town official who works with inspectors says the 10-inch ordinance does exist but adds some inspectors may need more training when deciding who should get tickets.
And nowhere that we saw were warnings posted, like ones for snow removal and for no airing of dogs, whatever that means.
"Somebody's behind this, we have to find out who it is," one Cicero resident said.
CBS 2 tried to find out more, but Cicero's spokesperson Elio Montenegro says he knows very little about the apparent rash of grass violations being issued or how they're being issued. By the way, some of the longest grass we saw in Cicero today was outside Town Hall.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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