Appeals Court Finds Ugly Implications in City's Anti-Truck Law

Class, Not Aesthetics, May Be Real Issue, Judges Suggest in Overturning Code

CORAL GABLES, Fla. -- Founded in the 1920s as a fantasyland of Mediterranean architecture, this affluent Miami suburb, one of the nation's first planned communities, has a long-standing reputation for zealous aesthetic policing, ruling over everything from hedge heights to what colors residents may paint their homes.

Now a guy in a pickup truck is threatening the social order.

Lowell Kuvin, 44, wound up on the wrong side of the local code one night four years ago when he parked his forest-green 1993 Ford F-150 outside the house he was renting.

The city defines pickup trucks, even those for personal use, as "out of character," and forbids parking them overnight within city limits. He got a $50 ticket.

"I thought, 'Now how silly is this?' " he recalled.

Now the fight over that citation, which Kuvin stubbornly pursued to a state appellate court, is raising ticklish questions about whether some of the city's longtime interest in municipal decor stems more from snobbery than aesthetics.

The central question in the ticket case has become: Are the city ordinances targeting pickup trucks, or are they, more sinisterly, trying to exclude the people who drive them?

City officials say it's merely a matter of community appearance, and the City Commission voted unanimously last week to pursue enforcing Kuvin's ticket.

"We are trying to regulate the look of the neighborhoods," Mayor Don Slesnick said.

But Kuvin, now backed by an appellate court, disagrees.

"This has to do with a certain class of people they don't want in the city -- people they see as being inferior -- the blue-collar guy, the laborer -- those people," Kuvin said.

For years, the city's focus on appearances has put it at the forefront nationally of suburbs that have taken extraordinary measures to control local aesthetics. Its founder, George Merrick, was inspired by the City Beautiful movement around the beginning of the 20th century.