Appendix

The signs we've posted

Enabling curbside charging hasn't only been a research project — it's been a running standoff with a neighbor. Over the summer, more than a dozen Alex311 reports were filed about one covered charging cable outside 1 W Oak Street. These are the signs we've posted in response, in order. The blow-by-blow record of the reports themselves is in the Scofflaw Dossier.

Sign One · June

The open letter 1 page

A direct, good-faith note to whoever kept filing: please stop, here's why we can't simply quit (no driveway), what we already do to keep the sidewalk clear, and the permit fix we're working on. It turned out to have no teeth — the City had no enforcement mechanism at the time — and it didn't stop the reports. One report even submitted a photo of this very sign as evidence.

Download PDF

Sign Two · after the reports continued

The fine warning & vote board 3 pages

Sheet one explains what's pending: Council is weighing amendments to the right-of-way code (§§ 5-2-16 & 5-2-29) that would add an escalating civil penalty — warning, $200, $200, $500, then $1,000, with each day potentially a separate violation. The vote was deferred — not dropped; these are the fines that are coming when Council acts. The sheet also notes the current-law backdrop: under the code's catch-all penalty (§ 1-1-7), an unresolved violation could already be taken to court like a misdemeanor today — up to $2,500 and/or 12 months per proven offense (the analysis). Sheets two and three turn it into a neighborhood vote: every realistic alternative to charging at home, and what each one actually costs, against the ~$1,128/yr home-charging baseline.

Download PDF (3 sheets)

Sign Three · an invitation

The comment card 1 page

A card for whoever keeps reporting, assuming the best: that it's really about a specific, fixable concern. Check the box, tell us exactly what — ramp height, cable slack, charging hours — and we'll fix it. Two smaller boxes cover the honest alternatives. Whichever it is, we'd rather talk than trade 311 reports.

Download PDF

Sign Four · the exhibit

The trench drain 1 page

The fix we'd actually like to build. A trench drain is ordinary sidewalk hardware — a narrow channel set into the concrete with a flush steel grate on top. Run the cable through the channel and there's nothing on the surface at all: no ramp, no trip hazard, ADA-clean, invisible when idle, a few hundred dollars installed. The catch, and the reason this sign exists: cutting that channel is an encroachment on the right-of-way — under current code the engineered fix is exactly as illegal as the cord it would replace, and there's no permit to apply for.

Download PDF

Sign Five · September · the results

The vote results 1 page

We stopped the vote board at 100 votes. 67 neighbors said be cool about it, 18 said pave a driveway, 15 said drive to an L3 charger, and one suggested we buy a new car (later scratched out). Someone wrote "Sorry someone is making this hard for you," and the kindness column picked up three hearts. Kindness won — but not as decisively as we'd hoped, and roughly a third of the neighborhood was willing to spend thousands of dollars of our family's money to resolve their irritation. That's the whole argument for a permit in one number: the affordability of an EV without a driveway currently depends on every single neighbor choosing to be cool with it.

Download PDF Read the full results →

Signs prepared July–September 2026 for posting at a private residence. One report's photo is deliberately withheld from the public record pending redaction of an image of a minor.