Not So Fast, Says the City

Our joyous celebration lasted a mere days.  We just got word today that our solar permit has been put on hold after being approved by City Planning.  They gave us two reasons:

1. The solar array can't be closer to the street than our house.  It actually isn't, but I didn't indicate the distance from the house to the street on the site design that we submitted.  That's an easy fix.  The other one, not so much.
2. Since we were planning on putting the panels in the vacant lot that we own behind us, it violates "primary use" for zoning on that lot.  I was afraid that was going to come up, but our electrician told us that he was able to get initial permit approval by convincing them that it was enough that the two properties were owned the same person.  But some other minion in City Planning decided that wasn't OK and suspended the permit until we combine the lots. And they have no idea how that's done!

Bah....  Since I have started this new job, I have zero time to make phone calls so poor J. has been calling everyone in city and county government to figure out how to combine the parcels. The City office that City Planning sent us to says the county Records office does it, and the county Recorder of Deeds says the city has to do it.

There are really two options here and I'll make this quick, since I don't want to bore you to tears with the minutiae of government idiocy.  We can do a seg\merge with the city to combine the properties.  It requires an official survey report (about $500) and several weeks to go through the process. 

The other option is a deed combination.  That's a problem, because we still have a small mortgage balance on our house that wasn't going to be paid off until later this year.  You can't combine properties with a mortgage on it, because the bank is in primary position until the loan is paid off.  So we would have to pay off the mortgage and wait several weeks for the lien release.  Then go combine the two properties by re-deeding it back to ourselves with both properties on the same deed.

All I can say say is.......Bok foi?