Donegal board votes to do away with zoning
Donegal Township’s supervisors voted Tuesday night to do away with a zoning law a previous board approved.
By 4-1, the board voted to repeal Donegal’s zoning ordinance, with Supervisor Doug Teagarden being the sole dissenter. Teagarden is the only holdover from the previous board. With the vote, Donegal Township will remain one of a very few communities in Washington County that does not have any kind of zoning ordinance.
Ed Shingle, chairman of the board, said the vote essentially does away with the ordinance, since a reworked zoning law had been due to be contested in Washington County Common Pleas Court in December, but a scheduled hearing did not take place. Instead, an agreement was hatched that the ordinance would go back to Donegal’s planning commission. In March, supervisors abolished the planning commission, saying it would take over the body’s functions. By doing away with the planning commission, the review of the ordinance was put on ice.
“We’re just not going to take it up,” said Shingle, referring to the zoning ordinance. “There’s nothing to repeal. It’s never been enacted.”
Teagarden believes, however, that the zoning law cannot be done away by a board vote, but instead must be abolished through its own ordinance, and go through the public hearing process.
“They absolutely cannot do that,” Teagarden said. “The ordinance cannot go away by a motion. It has to go away by ordinance.”
Proponents of Donegal’s zoning ordinance contended that the township needed it to control development, especially in the wake of Marcellus Shale gas drilling. Opponents, who came together under the banner of the Donegal Freedom Group, countered that zoning would limit the autonomy of property owners to use their land as they wanted in the largely rural community. Shingle and three other members of the current board hail from the Donegal Freedom Group.
Doing away with zoning “will be helpful to the residents because they’ll have more freedom,” Shingle explained.