Quote:
Originally Posted by Slickcraft
In Today's Baysider:
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Unbelievable!! There would have been no petition proposed had this person just once in the last 41/2 years made one effort to sit down with her neighbors to discuss how much they bothered people. She was called many times, the police tried to get her to sit down with the neighbors, and letters were written and she either didn't respond or wrote a nasty letter back saying she was not going to do anything because she had the right to keep the roosters because she lived in a rural zone. Unfortunately that rural zone abuts the lake and that meant that everyone in the lakeshore residential zone right across the street has to put up with all the rural uses including crowing roosters. So if the neighbors in the rural zone want to be angry at someone your friend the rooster lady is your gal. We have all lived here for 50 plus years and no one had a problem with the rural zone or with each other till this person moved in and brought her 5 roosters 41/2 years ago.
As for the people who signed the petition they are all registered voters and many have been to our houses and couldn't believe what we have all had to put up with and worse that the town of Alton was basically ignoring us. We exercised our democratic right to do this petition and the rural people exercised their right to counter it. We respect their rights to protect their property and we only ask they respect our right to protect our properties. We also ask that they get both sides before they rush to a judgement and hate their neighbors for doing what we think they would have done if they had to put up with what we have all had to endure for the past 41/2 years.
The town of Alton is at fault too for having a noise ordinance that exempts roosters. Our hands were tied and this petition was one way to get them to pay attention to a serious problem of very valuable property and as a result very high taxes, not being protected due to unfair zoning.
This lady is angry right now because the lawyer found out that she has a nonconforming lot and now she either has to go before the Zoning board to get a special exemption to keep her chickens and roosters or get a lot line adjustment to get the 2 acres she needs to keep them. If the town of Alton had just once responded to our letters and phone calls they could have told us this before we spent thousands on a lawyer to help us and felt we had no choice but to do this petition. If she had not ignored our numerous calls and letters she would have her chickens (we have no complaint with them and never did), there would be no petition, and this neighborhood would not be torn apart. She might even have kept her 5 roosters because we were willing to agree to ask her to just let them out 1 or 2 hours a day. We are tired of being villified. We think we have been more than patient and have tried every way possible to solve this neighborhood nuisance. And just to let everyone know, several of the people complaining live in the rural zone.
Nature Lover