Posted on 09/16/2002 11:52:33 AM PDT by Cagey
ELLENTON -- George King churns out faxes on his Brother 1250. He sends 33 at a time, all the fax machine's electronic memory can hold.
He fires off the batches of often illegible ramblings to city and county officials, over and over until he gets a response. He sent so many to one county machine that it quit working.
Most of the faxes are about his neighbors along 80th Avenue East in Ellenton, who hate King almost as much as he hates them.
King estimates that over two years he's sent thousands of his single-page, hand-written faxes to the dozen city and county government numbers he found in the phone book.
Department heads have the boxes to prove it. Public record laws require them to keep all of King's faxes.
"It was a tremendous burden," said Karen Windon, who oversees the county's code enforcement office. "We lost a fax machine because of the volume of faxes. We ran out of paper on a daily basis."
King's faxing has caught the attention of county attorneys and, more recently, the Bradenton police chief.
Nothing, however, has stopped the barrage, not even the threat of being arrested for harassment.
"You can send your fax to the county attorney or the city attorney or anyone else you would like," King wrote police Chief Al Hogle in a recent fax. "As a citizen of Manatee County, I have a write to ask the mayor … a question."
King vowed to keep faxing, he wrote, until he gets an answer. In this case, he asked why a Bradenton police officer was allowed to take home a police cruiser, even when the officer lives near Parrish. He sent it 46 times over a one-week period.
Two hours earlier, Hogle had faxed King a note, asking that all of King's future faxes be sent to Hogle, himself.
King, who refused in a fax to be photographed for this story, started his relentless campaign of faxes after his neighbors complained about his "unscreened outdoor storage," as the county officially describes it.
Neighbors reported King to county officials over the empty beer kegs, furniture and lawn equipment piled up outside the house where King lives with his 80-year-old mother.
King has been cited for the mess, but he has never been properly served with the summons. The case is still active.
Before that, neighbors reported King for having too many garbage cans, which led to King's appearance before code enforcement. King moved the cans and was never fined.
That's when King began complaining in faxes about his neighbors -- more than 800 times.
Each time, just like they're supposed to, officials examined King's complaints.
Next-door neighbors Eugene and Nicole Matthews, sparked by a local newspaper article dubbing their neighbor the "King of Codes," placed a sign in their yard, announcing King's exploitation of county codes.
People were driving by, trying to find the house, Nicole Matthews said. She plans to move out.
"I can't take it anymore," she said. "He doesn't comply by the law, but he expects everybody else to."
Like most of her neighbors, Matthews keeps a folder of letters, code enforcement violations and news clippings on King.
Nine months after King put up a sign of his own, thanking his neighbors for turning him on to code issues, the county made him take down the sign and denied King's application to leave it up.
"It's constant harassment, and just look at his place," said Tom Gilchrist, whose home is across the street from King's.
"If this was the 1800s, he'd already be tarred, feathered and on a rail," Gilchrist said. "That man is weird. He's mental!"
"It's neighbor against neighbor," county administrator Ernie Padgett said. "And what spun off of that is that Mr. King is going around the county, helping us with our code enforcement."
The faxing started as a way to save postage, King said.
"A ream of paper costs $1.99. Otherwise it costs me and the county 34 cents every time," King said.
Every time he noticed an illegal sign, he sent a fax to code enforcement officials.
A few days later, they'd fax him back, with answers appearing, as requested, in the margins of King's original note.
But then, in a fax sent last year, King said a code enforcement officer would not "move his fat ass out of his car" to research one of King's complaints.
Trailers outside homes, banners outside car lots, cars parked on grass -- faxed 33 times a day. On each, King would keep a log of when they were sent.
If he didn't get a response, he'd fax again. Then again. And again once more, with exclamation points added.
They appeared in the Manatee County Civic Center, the home of County Commissioner Amy Stein, the county tax collector's office, and just about any county office with a fax machine.
"It was an interruption to our total operation," Windon said.
When Windon's aides shut off the fax machines at night, King sent his messages all over the county, asking them to be passed along to Rita Mooney, who runs the code enforcement office.
When the faxing brought fax machines to a standstill, emptying toner cartridges, wearing out rollers and burning out at least one motor, Padgett, the county administrator, wrote King a letter.
"Your fax messages have gone too far," Padgett wrote. "The faxes typically include pages and pages of the exact same faxes which have been received many times over by many different fax machines within the county."
A few paragraphs later, Padgett asked King to stop with what he described as "blanket faxing."
"You do what you have to do," King faxed back. "All that I'm asking is for the faxes to be answered or 'no comment' written on them."
King now sends faxes to the county one at a time. But instead of faxing back, county officials leave a message on King's answering machine, informing King as to the status of his latest complaints.
We have a lot of people here on FR just as nutty as he is.
He is using the tools and rules of the city government against them. All in all its a good thing. When the folks who wrote and passed such ignorant codes did so, they thought they alone could tell everyone how to live. A Reposte is always fun to watch.
The added bonus is that he was costing the city/county a ton of money on fax, repair, maintenance, paper, and archive storage. Why is that good? Well, maybe next time the city will recomend the 'better than you' neighbors talk to him and ask if they can help him in some way rather than sicking the code inspectors on him.
Oh, they have to hold on to all documents for no less than seven years. In one place I worked (City) they had to hold on to them for ten.
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