Mar 20, 2015 3 min read

MT. MORRIS – Perry Township supervisors, at a special meeting Thursday, voted to halt any plans to adopt a zoning ordinance for the township.

The supervisors took the action after a hearing on a proposed zoning ordinance held by the township planning commission March 11 drew more than 150 people to the Mt. Morris fire hall opposed to zoning.

“The people spoke loud and clear and we heard them,” Supervisor Ron Howard said Friday. The supervisors had planned to wait to consider the matter at their next regular meeting but instead decided to address it at a special meeting Thursday.

Howard said the supervisors wanted residents to know zoning was a dead issue. “We thought this would put everybody at ease,” he said.

The supervisors had received a letter from the township planning commission after the March 11 hearing indicating the commission, too, had tabled any further action on the zoning ordinance.

The township planning commission has been discussing zoning for a number of years and has been working to develop an ordinance during about the last three years, Warren Headley, commission chairman, said.

The planning commission had held two public hearings on a proposed zoning ordinance, but very few people had attended them, he said.

Before the third and final hearing on March 11, however, an anonymous, anti-zoning letter was distributed to residents that included false information about the proposed ordinance, Headley said.

The hearing, scheduled to be held in the township office, was moved to the fire hall to accommodate the crowd.

“It was just a fiasco from the start,” Headley said. People were simply against zoning. “Just the word zoning people are afraid of,” he said. “Nobody wants to be told what to do with their property.”

Headley said he, too, is against zoning, but believed it could help regulate development particularly around the Mt. Morris, Interstate 79 interchange as well as provide some protections for property owners.

“I knew if we wanted to prosper, we would need some regulation of what went where,” he said.

People don’t want to build a church or a nice restaurant and have an adult book store, a junk yard or a pig lot move next door, he said. “Without zoning, that can happen.”

The commission also was concerned about protecting the township from any future state regulations that might take away any local control, he said.

The proposed ordinance prepared by the commission was not very strict and was based on ordinances in other municipalities, including neighboring Whiteley Township, he said.

Many people misunderstood the plan, however.

People at the meeting expressed concerned about restrictions on the placement of mobile homes, for instance, he said.

Regulations regarding mobile homes include in the ordinance, however, were taken from the Unified Construction Code, which is already being enforced in the township.

Residents also mistakenly believed the supervisors were prepared to act on the ordinance, which was not the case, Howard said.

The ordinance was only at the level of the township planning commission. “There were still a lot of steps before it got to us,” he said.

It was clear, however, residents do not want zoning, Howard said.

“They just don’t want to be told what to do with their property.” By their action Thursday, Howard said, the supervisors made it clear to the planning commission, “We don’t want to hear anything more about zoning here.”