POTTSTOWN PA – You just can’t be too careful these days, Lower Pottsgrove’s solicitor figures.
Attorney R. Kurtz Holloway finished a months-long task Thursday night (May 20, 2010) as the township Board of Commissioners unanimously and without comment approved a complete re-enactment of the municipality’s zoning, subdivision and land development laws, some of which are more than 35 years old. The entire exercise, the solicitor explained, is intended to keep Lower Pottsgrove out of future legal trouble.
Neither Holloway or the commissioners changed a word of the laws as they are currently written.
Other municipalities in recent years have had their ability to enforce laws dealing with real estate use and development challenged because they could not definitively prove when those laws were accepted by their governing bodies. In some cases, Holloway said, written documents – such as a secretary’s minutes that recorded approving votes – were lost or destroyed.
That lack of proof has been used in earlier court cases to undermine municipal authority, and it’s not something he wants to have happen here, the solicitor noted.
As a precaution, Holloway asked commissioners to record for posterity and approve “a compilation of the procedural record” that “protects the township from challenge.” They obliged. To get to Thursday’s vote, however, the township spent about four months and thousands of dollars in the solicitor’s time, a court stenographer’s transcription, published legal notices, and a public hearing, to create a lengthy and hopefully un-lose-able paper trail.
Officially, the board re-enacted Lower Pottsgrove’s subdivision and land development ordinance of Aug. 5, 1974, and Chapter 22 of the 1995 code with all its changes, additions and deletions; its zoning ordinance of June 4, 1973, and Chapter 27 of the 1995 code; and the zoning map.
President Jonathan Spadt was absent from the board’s second meeting of the month, held in the municipal building, 2199 Buchert Rd., Pottstown PA, and did not vote.
Related (to the Lower Pottsgrove Board of Commissioners’ meeting of May 20):
Photo from Accountagility.com
Sign up to get The Sanatoga Post delivered free daily by e-mail. Share this article.
See our galleries for photos that appear in The Post. Got news for us? E-mail The Post.
