If Tona Gillispie or Bruce Birkemeyer suspect that a house is over-occupied — eight cars in a driveway is one tipoff — they don’t just call the police.

The co-presidents of the Highland Park Neighborhood Association get out their clipboards and take down license plate numbers in an effort to prove that more than five people are living there.

Gillispie does it in secret, driving past then recording the data when she gets inside her house.

Birkemeyer doesn’t care who knows; he’ll just walk into a driveway and start writing.

“If you just call and whine and complain, you’re not helping the issue,” Gillispie said.

The neighborhood, in the shadow of Minnesota State University, coalesced around the issue of rental and occupancy violations in 2005. By February of the next year, they had their first meeting.

“We kind of muddled our way through it,” Gillispie said.

Two other associations, in Washington and Lincoln parks, are also in their initial stages. The city has a handbook to point them in the right direction, but all three are generally making up the rules as they go along.

In late January, the Highland and Lincoln associations became the first to be recognized by the city.

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