A Karen Reported me to the City for FREE Community Service!

Hey, everyone, Mike Andes here and I'm going to be giving you an update on the cease and desist letter that the city gave me for doing volunteer work on what they call city property. And yes, they're saying that a Karen called me out and reported me to the city. Let's jump into it, though, because I think there's some details that they're trying to hide and I'm going to try to expose those today. Before we get into today's show, though, I want to kind of explain. Explain what's happened and bring you up to speed if you haven't heard. So there was a piece of our city property that is kind of the gateway to our community when you come to the Canadian border. It was overgrown and I took it upon myself today. Let's clean it up. Let's put some down some mulch, make sure it looks good, trim the bushes, take away the debris, etc. In hindsight, I should have applied for a permit and asked for city permission. I should have. I just. It never popped into my mind. I figured, look, I can get in there in a couple days and knock this out and it's just good for people. I honestly never crossed my mind to get a permit. We have done work for the city in the past and we have got permits and we worked very well with the city, but it just never crossed my mind. I'm like, look, it needs to be done. It hasn't been done for a long, long time. It's overgrown. And I want to go point you to a bylaw that's in our city document that was actually sent to me by one of the listeners. And it's actually for the community gardens that Blaine, the city of Blaine, offers to our community members. And one of the things it says is for. And the rules and responsibilities is keep your garden weed free so it will look neat and attractive and prevent weeds from spreading to other sites. So the fact that it's in the bylaws, I'm just sorry, but that area did not look weed free. It didn't look neat or attractive. It didn't prevent. And the weeds that were growing could easily have spread weeds to other lawns and other parts of city and private property. Okay. Further in the bylaws, it then went on to say, gardeners are encouraged to practice watering conservation techniques, including watering in the morning and evening and using garden mulch, which I installed for free without any sort of invoice or payment whatsoever. Furthermore, it says any plot not maintained for 30 days will be reassigned to the BCG, no refunds will be provided. So basically, the Blaine community garden is going to come in, they're going to pull the weeds, they're going to put down the mulch, they're going to reclaim the land if you don't pull your weeds for 30 days. The weeds that I pulled in that video were months and months, if not a year or more old. That property in that area that I was servicing had been not serviced for not just 30 days, but 90 at least, if not much, much, much more. So I want to point that out first. So this is what happened. You is this past Friday, I uploaded a video and it was later that evening, that afternoon, later in the day that I uploaded a video that stated my stance on what was said to me. And here's what was said to me. For those of you that have seen this before, let me just quickly run through this. Dear Mr. Andes, our firm represents the city of Blaine, Washington. It has come to our attention that you have entered onto city of Blaine public property, performed unauthorized work and done so to advertise on YouTube for. For personal gain. All done without consent or permission. Additionally.

You apparently applied pesticides or herbicides, a regulated activity, and the city cannot verify whether they are allowed under applicable regulations. Neither you nor any of your employees applied for a permit or were granted permission to perform landscaping or apply chemicals of any kind to the public property shown in the YouTube posted on June 23rd. The City of Blaine hereby demands that you and your business cease and desist from landscaping, clearing, spraying or performing any work on city property. The city also demands that you immediately remove any and all videos and or photos demonstrating or promoting this unauthorized and illegal activity. In the event that you fail to cease and desist as demanded, the city will be compelled to pursue legal action. So that was the letter that I received. And that was on July 8, July 9. I made the video with my response basically saying that we will not comply and the reasons as to why we're not going to. A lot of it revolved around the fact that it was just a lot of red tape, bureaucracy, and there was no reason why we should not be able to give back to our community, be involved and give back with all of this craziness. So what happened though? Now that we in that video I stated we are going to do work again on city property on August 2nd. And I want to send you show you what we actually sent to them on July 11, a Sunday. It says happy Sunday. This is from Liz, our operations manager, to guest along here in the past we've had a wonderful working relationship. She names all the people we worked for that are with the city that is very connected in the local community.

Serve thousands of hundred and thousands of our customers in Blaine. Projects we have collaborated with the city in the past include Cane Creek Project, Herons Pond, Lincoln park, the community community garden, which by the way is the bylaws I just read out of and other places. Two bids have been accepted that were requested from our company last month by a community member. We are scheduled for the following items on August 2nd. Do we need a permit? We filled out a small public works roster application and paid $50 before one of those projects we did before. Is that needed? Again? If you let me know if there is anything needed in terms of permits or forms I need to submit before our team does this work so I can get that completed before August 2nd. That would be much appreciated. I I looked over the website and couldn't find anything. We also then went ahead and sent them all of the work going to be done on August 2nd in detail. Exactly what's going to happen. Their response the next day. The next day. So Monday, July 12th was following. They sent again from an attorney. Again, this is what boggles my mind. The fact that they sent me a decease and desist letter on Thursday. I made a response video on Friday and now I guarantee they spent most of the weekend figuring out what's going to happen and what they're going to say with an attorney. They can't just email me back. They've got to go through an attorney to send me another letter. And they sent me this the first thing on Monday morning. This was at 10:26am on Monday, July 12. So guarantee they were going back and forth over the weekend. They get the attorney involved again to send me this letter. The City of Blaine has noted that you have ceased the unauthorized work on city property, specifically the application of pesticides or herbicides. On behalf of the city, thank you for for your voluntary compliance. I know they know this, but I said in my video I will not comply. Somehow that doesn't seem like voluntary compliance to me. The city did not receive a the city did receive a complaint alleging you were spraying pesticides or herbicides prior to our July 8th letter being sent. The complaint of activities, if true, would constitute a technical violation of the city code and would subject the violators to civil monetary penalties. What they're implying here, which is what I'm going to show you is false, is that they got a complaint from a citizen and then just Sent me a decease and desist letter. That's absolutely false. I'm going to show you why in just a second.

So the city takes a less aggressive enforcement in cases where there may be a technical violation of the city code, but the party involved clearly had good intentions. We see that is the case. We see that in this case. Thank you for your cooperation in this regard. The city considerate, considers this matter closed, has not issued a case number or opened a civil infraction file and will not be taking further action regarding the complaint received. Okay, let me just take it stop for just a second here. So first of all, I know that they would not just receive a complaint, contact an attorney and then submit this cease and desist letter to me. The reason I know that is because they mentioned in my first video that they watched the video. They, they specifically noted the date of the video and that I was doing it for personal gain. That is making $80 on YouTube in AdSense revenue, encouraging other landscapers to give back to their community. And in the second video, encouraging them, showing people how to install mulch. So I'm doing illegal activity because I did those things. And they're saying that they just got this complaint from a citizen and now he gave you a cease and desist. And so. Oh, now that we further looked into it, there's no, no, this is obviously you were trying to do a good thing. No, no. You watched the video. You specifically saw the intent behind why I made the video and why I did the work. You knew before sending me that first letter that I was doing this for my community. I was not making any money. You also knew that the pesticides and herbicides I was putting down were all natural vinegar and water based container chemical. That's it. There was no chemicals to speak of. All right, so furthermore, in the first letter that you sent me, you made it very clear it was not so much about the pesticides because you said in I'm going to quote here, that I did it for personal gain. Why does that matter? If you got a complaint about me applying pesticides, if someone drove by me, which you're saying that's what happened, and complained because I was putting. Putting chemicals down, unauthorized chemicals down. Why would you then go watch this video? Why would you then go after the fact that I'm making it for personal gain? And then why would you request and no, sorry, why would you demand that I remove those videos and pictures if all you were responding to is a complaint from a citizen that drove by? If you're gonna Blame us. Pull the Karen card. Oh, like, oh, someone just complained and we sent a cease and desist. We got an attorney involved, probably paid them well excess of 1000 DOL. Now that we have a second letter, probably paying even additional to the $275 per hour rate that they charge us because we had them draft this over the weekend. We are now spending thousands of taxpayer dollars in order to go against and take legal action against the community member that's trying to do things for free for a community against which our own bylaws say that that action 30 days of weeds not being pulled and uncared for property is actually in violation. And that's supposed to make sense. So we're trying to get a permit from you. And the email that we've got now back from Liz is, well, thank you for your response.

Until we have an appropriate response that we're going to bring back to you, please don't do work on city property. So here's the deal that's kind of the update. The fact of the matter is that August 2nd now is still two and a half over two weeks away from now. Two and a half weeks from now. And in the past when we applied for a city permit to work on their property at all those different parks and city places like was mentioned in the email, it has taken one to two business days. So I expect that we have a response in one to two business days. And if the city of Blaine does not allow someone to come work on the property with no cost or expense to the city and do the work that is in violation to their own code, I'll be embarrassed.

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