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Agriculture has many meanings
(by Dave Lange - June 15, 2011)
COUNTY LINE, BY DAVE LANGE
Agriculture has many meanings
Last month, after Burton Village Council took up a recommendation from the planning commission to lift a prohibition against having chickens on residential lots, I wrote what I thought was a witty headline for the story. It read: "Burton may cluck, but it won't gobble."
As we know, you shouldn't count out your turkeys before they hatch.
Sure enough, as word traveled up and down Cheshire Street and out Goodwin Avenue, residents were doing more clucking than yukking, and some were gobbling as well. As Mayor Thomas Blair Sr. put it, "They were asking, 'Why are you limiting it to chickens?'" In calling upon village officials to beef up the fowl accommodations, he said, "I know people who have had turkeys, and they're like pets."
Although Ohio law allows incorporated cities and villages to restrict such agricultural uses in residential areas, or not, unincorporated townships often find their hands tied when they try to interfere with citizens' liberally interpreted farming rights.
Auburn Township, where officials have no problem with chickens and turkeys -- or spending tax dollars to spread bull manure, for that matter -- is having a tough time with that lesson.
The 11th District Court of Appeals recently ruled against the township's attempt to restrict the operation of Auburn Twin Oaks Winery by Jay and Elizabeth Schabel on Shadow Wood Circle, a cul-de-sac off Lucky Bell Lane. The Schabels are welcome to raise turkeys or grow grapes on their 64 acres, but neighbors objected to selling wine there. The township board of zoning appeals then denied the would-be vintners a permit for a grape-pressing pad and a pavilion to host wine-tasting events.
Auburn Township Trustees decided last week to spend more of Geauga County taxpayers' money to have the prosecutor's office appeal the ruling to the Ohio Supreme Court.
The township also is stonewalling Auburn residents Thomas and Diane Jones' efforts to erect a wind turbine that would generate power on their 20-acre Wind in the Woods horse farm in the area of Lindsay and Jennifer lanes off Munn Road. Due to state law, local officials are powerless to prohibit or even regulate gas and oil drilling in residential areas, but some neighbors don't like the idea of a 120-foot-high wind turbine on the Joneses' farm.
Auburn officials rejected the wind turbine based on the notion that any excess electricity generated by it would be sold into the power grid and thus go beyond strictly agricultural use.
The Geauga County Prosecutor's Office apparently has money to burn on such cases these days. But it hasn't always been that way.
In 2002, for instance, a three-car garage went up alongside Auburn Road in Newbury, just 3 feet from the property line -- clearly in violation of the local zoning code. But the owner, who happened to be a member of the township board of zoning appeals, pleaded agricultural use for the purpose of hatching some chicks and ducks and storing some wine. Except for the neighbors, nobody gave a cluck -- or heard any either.
In Bainbridge, agricultural use on residentially zoned land has included selling patio furniture, outdoor rugs, metal yard art and much more from a 65,000-square-foot greenhouse for the past decade.
I don't know whether anybody's gobbling wine or whining for gobblers in the greenhouse. As Bob Dylan said, "The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind."
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