Resident questions zoning enforcement

By DAVID HULSE

SHOHOLA, PA — Penny James says she is the victim of selective enforcement of township zoning. She thinks it might have something to do with her earlier history with the township.

That history goes back to 1996 when then township supervisor Don Knealing was cited by the Pennsylvania Game Commission after a hunting season incident involving the shooting and wounding of a deer on James’ property.

James, an artist who lives and works on her Twin Lakes Road property, feeds wild deer and had accumulated a herd that frequented her property. The herd drew hunters, and in the fall after the Knealing incident, more hunters drove by at night with their spotlights and she was frightened.

James says that after Lackawaxen murder suspect Chad Wesley Spaide fled through her yard on Labor Day weekend in 1998, she decided to protect herself and her deer. She put up an eight-foot wooden barricade fence around her entire property.

Neighbor Richard Stockton objected, complained to James in a letter and then tried to get the fence removed by complaining she built on wetlands and calling the Department of Environmental Protection.

James had the wetlands in her yard surveyed and got a variance for the fence. The fence stayed and neighbors sold and moved.

The incident left James angry that she had not been told of the wetlands issue when she repeatedly queried township zoning officer Bill Gabriel about any permits needed to erect the fence. She said she was told the township had no permit requirements for the fence, but nothing about the wetlands.

Gabriel says he had several phone calls from James but was never asked to look at the property before the fence was built. Aside from that, the wetlands are a state issue, he said.

Then in February, James bought a pre-constructed wooden shed after seeing one that neighbors purchased. Told by the neighbors that no permits were involved, she had the shed installed against the front fence, near the highway.

Gabriel soon informed her that the shed did need a permit and was too close to the highway, violating the front yard zoning setback minimum.

James had a contractor prepare a second site for the shed, farther away from the road. She says Gabriel then told her that site was less than 50 feet from a stream and on April 1, gave her 60 days to place the shed elsewhere.

Gabriel says he asked her to do the permit application and the move and let him review the site beforehand, but she instead went ahead on her own, and picked the wrong spot.

So last weekend, with the permit approved, the shed was finally moved to another site, this time several hundred feet back from the road, near James’ workshop.

She says that all of the excavation has left her property damaged and cost some $500 in extra labor charges. She says Shohola should pay those extra charges.

Beyond that, she says the zoning has been selectively enforced against her. She points to the garage that Stockton built approximately 30 feet away from her sideyard fence, charging that it too is less than 50 feet from her wetlands. “If my shed has to be moved, that garage should be moved, too,” she said.

Gabriel says there was no selective enforcement, and the issue is nothing more than someone erecting a building without a permit in the wrong place and being ordered to remedy the zoning violation.

Gabriel would not comment on the Stockton garage.

“She can take that up with the [township] supervisors,” he said.