This post discusses how we will enforce land covenants and zoning in CDS this term. They're important, as they guide the themes and natural scenic features that drew most of us here, and continue to make CDS sims a popular attraction.
The CDS Guild's recharter [1] provides for a Building Advisory Committee that assists the government's executive branch in land use reviews. Our laws require my office to enforce our land covenants, which as a practical matter means three things: Periodic reviews to see if they are being violated; response to any citizen complaints of a violation; and action to correct any violations.
The covenants for each sim [2] address a few intangible items (like object texture size, use of scripts, and proper purpose) as well as the more obvious visible issues of style, size and permitted elements.
Because we are a democratic government, this ought to be done in a predictable, fair and transparent way. So we will act with public notice and subject to appeal.
I plan to review one sim routinely per month, working with the BAC. We also will respond to citizen complaints of covenant violations. In our fourth sim, there also is a one-time right to demand 15-day approval of a structure when it's originally built.
Notices of executive branch activity *generally* on land zoning requests or appeals will appear in the "Sim & City Planning" forum board. We'll communicate initially with the BAC and the affected landowner and affected or complaining party, privately first, and then post a public notice on the "Executive Branch Announcements" board of the results or resolutions. Those public determinations will be in force once posted, and subject to appeal. Obviously, if I am notified of a covenant appeal properly sent to the SC [3], we generally will not take any irreversible enforcement actions while that appeal is timely being processed by the SC.
Regards JP
[1]
http://forums.slcds.info/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=1875
{2]
It's my hope that the planning and CDS portal teams shortly will get us new locations on the official web portal for all current land covenants. In the meantime, the covenants are, or should be, posted IN the land metadata for each parcel in the respective sim. Hre are the original sources of which I'm aware:
Neufreistadt - http://aliasi.us/nburgwiki/tiki-index.p ... d+Covenant
Colonia Nova - http://colonianova.files.wordpress.com/ ... mation.pdf
Alpine Meadows - http://forums.slcds.info/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1461
Locus Amoenus - http://locus-amoenus.slcds.info/the-loc ... covenants/
[3]
SC Procedures here:
http://forums.slcds.info/viewforum.php?f=3
and http://portal.slcds.info/index.php?id=135