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Municipal zoning ordinances such as Logan Township's are not rooted in devious, poorly thought-out goals and objectives, or built on revenge against some person or entity.
Their foundation is not constructed on the premise of eroding residents' rights, grounded in that goal alone, although some people over the decades have disagreed vehemently.
There is ample justification for having good zoning laws in effect. One of the basic ones is that people should not have their properties devalued, or made less visibly desirable, because something inconsistent with the rest of a neighborhood moves in next door or close by.
For example, should a slaughterhouse be allowed to move into a neighborhood populated otherwise by homes, whether of modest or expensive value, or businesses totally inconsistent with it? The answer is obvious.
For most families, a home is their biggest investment. People who respect and maintain theirs, and who are respectful toward those around them, should not have their investments "assaulted" by something that undermines their neighborhood's assets or character.
Again, the slaughterhouse analogy is one that has been used often, especially during the 1960s and 1970s, when many area municipalities were focusing their attention not only on zoning, but on land-use regulations and comprehensive planning.
On the zoning front, such ordinances and maps did not bring about instant compliance with all that the zoning regulations stipulated. Some non-compliant uses present at the time ordinances were passed did not go away. Those existing uses were "grandfathered" amid what the ordinances established.
For those unfamiliar with the term "grandfathered" of "grandfather clause," it is a provision creating an exemption based on circumstances previously existing.
Using slaughterhouse as an example, even a business of that type, located in an area that a zoning law established as single-family residential, would not have to close upon the ordinance's passage.
However, if that business eventually ceased operations, no similar business would be permitted to open in its place.
All of that background acknowledged, the Logan board of supervisors, which currently is considering an amendment to its zoning law that would make explicit for residential zones a prohibition against chickens and other animals kept typically on farms, faces the reality of making a ruling probably not destined to be embraced by everyone.
A recent supervisors meeting was attended by a resident who opposes the measure because it might prohibit him and some neighbors from keeping the chickens they currently have on their residential-zone properties.
The resident said he searched the township website and found no specific prohibition against the chickens.
Would those chickens be "grandfathered" since only now the supervisors are considering the proposed amendment. Would the chickens' owners win in a court case that some lighthearted individuals might dub "Eggs v. Not"?
What can be said confidently is that the supervisors are correct in considering such a measure, because there have been complaints about a pig, horses, donkey, llamas and sheep brought into residential areas.
At the meeting in question, the supervisors postponed action on the amendment because one of their members was absent.
It is safe to surmise that the coming decision might be more difficult than what had been anticipated.