PACIFIC PALISADES, CA — Bucking years of tradition, a family new to the California area has failed to build a single gingerbread house this Christmas season due to a backlog at the permit office.
"We're still waiting for the appropriate permits to build our gingerbread house," said Mona Riggs. "Baking gingerbread houses is a fun tradition we do every year, but at this point we'll be lucky to have one put together by the end of the decade."
According to sources, the January Pacific Palisades fire and its resulting destruction caused a significant logjam of processing permit applications. The city office has had to forward all applications to the county, where there was already a three-year backlog. The fire, however, was not the only cause for delay, but also the seemingly endless red tape.
"There are permits you need to get in order to get permits," Michael Riggs explained. "And in order to get the permits that allow you to get the permits, you have to provide detailed blueprints of your gingerbread house months beforehand. California regulations are crazy."
Under California law, a prospective ginger building must be accompanied by seven separate forms: Building Permit Request Form B, Building Permit Checklist, Preliminary Plan Check Application, Certificate of Occupancy, Peanut Allergy Impact Study Request, Land Acknowledgment Certificate for Gingerbread Persons of Color, and Express Baking Eligibility. And that's just for one house.
There's also currently a ban on gumdrops due to their impact on climate change, the Riggs family said.
At publishing time, the Riggs family was fined $10,000 for allegedly applying frosting to several gingerbread cookie pieces without state certification.
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