a homeowner's dilema

My wife and I live in a very nice suburban Chicago town, free of hardcore crime (I do occasionally run a random stop sign and speed through yellow traffic lights) and most of the stress that comes from living in a large downtown city.  Our town falls within the realm of the Chicago-land metropolitan area, but it's far enough away from downtown to be considered its own town, has its own mayor and police force and is generally a pretty conservative area in stark contrast to the land de la Rahm.

Our neighborhood is a part of a homeowners association.  For those of you who've never had the pleasure of belonging to a homeowners association, let me enlighten you!  In restricted neighborhoods, there is a voluntary group of home nazis who are charged with enforcing covenants and restrictions put in place at the time the neighborhood was created.  They also deal with some of the most petty, ridiculous things one could imagine.  I know this because I currently hold the neighborhood's head nazi position; I am the HOA (homeowners association) president.  We have neighbors who so utterly detest the person they live next to, they will stop at nothing to irritate them.  One guy in particular piles broken tree limbs and leaves up on the property line dividing his yard and his neighbor's yard.  This so incenses his next door neighbor that he feels the need to contact me to mediate the issue.

A group of neighbors didn't like the fact that one family wanted to put an above ground pool in their back yard.  So infuriated they became, a petition drive was formed to stop the pool from being erected, a large group of homeowners met with the board to discuss how the pool would deflate home values and would be a general neighborhood nuisance; all around disdain was forced upon the poor homeowners who simply wanted a pool for their kids. 

Recently, a couple put their home up for sale.  A real estate sign was placed in the front yard and one was placed in the back yard, which butts up against a fairly well traveled road in town.  A neighbor didn't like the sign in the back yard and e-mailed the homeowner to remove it, as the sign, he purported, violated both the covenants and restrictions AND local city code.  Laughingly, the seller responded to the complainer that the sign most certainly did not violate the covenants and restrictions, and upon further discussion with the city, confirmed there was no violation of local code.

As you can imagine, the complaining homeowner didn't take this lying down and notified the city of his intent to appeal what he felt like was a blatant violation of city code (two signs at one residence, he stated, violated a city code) and the code enforcement office lack of jurisprudence in rendering their decision to allow the homeowner to have his two signs.  Oh, the injustice of it all!

So now I have to go to a code enforcement meeting because, as you may have guessed, I am the homeowner with two signs in his yard.  Had my idiotic neighbor been a little nicer about his discontent for the second sign I might have removed it, but as it is, I will refuse until told differently by the city.  I look forward to my day in code enforcement court, which is tonight by the way.  And if I ever see this complaining neighbor, who obviously needs a hobby or a girlfriend, I'll be certain to wave to him, one lone finger flown as a greeting!