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Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Ind. Gov. - "Woman may lose horse because of ordinance in barn"

Incredible!

First there was the original story. Here is an AP story, with photo, from June 21, 2010. Some quotes:

KOKOMO – A Kokomo man is protesting a backyard barn his neighbor has built to house her horse, saying the structure and its occupant are bringing down his property values.

Morris Parks says Kokomo shouldn't allow livestock within city limits. But neighbor Dyanna Neal says she told city officials what she intended to do with the barn when she applied for the permit, which was approved.

Kokomo has no ordinance against keeping livestock in the city. * * *

Parks is Neal's only residential neighbor. The area also includes an auto parts store, a church and a strip club.

"I wouldn't put something like this in if I lived in Forest Park," Neal told the Kokomo Tribune. "It's not like I'm in a residential area where it's house, house, house."

Glen Boise, the Kokomo/Howard County Plan Commission director, said Neal was honest about why she wanted to build the structure.

He said it's unusual for a city of Kokomo's size to lack an ordinance on urban livestock.

"I know we used to have an ordinance, but I don't know what happened to it," he said.

Boise said enacting an ordinance now could have broader ramifications because of annexations the city is seeking that could bring more livestock within city limits.

Now today the Kokomo Tribune has this story by Scott Smith headlined "City finds 1966 ordinance banning horses: Urban colt owner could be fined." Some quotes:
Dyanna Neal may soon be getting a letter from the city, telling her she can’t keep Poco the Judge in her backyard anymore.

The Kokomo horse owner learned Monday she’s apparently on the wrong side of a 1966 law against keeping “domestic animals” — defined as horses, cows, sheep, goats and hogs — within city limits.

But the existence of the law wasn’t discovered until months after Neal paid thousands to locate a horse barn on her South Union Street property.

Now Neal said she may sue the city to recover what she spent building the structure, if she’s forced to quarter her 11-month-old colt elsewhere.

“I did all of this above board. I never tried to deceive anyone,” she said at Monday’s meeting of the Kokomo Common Council. “I bought a show horse for my 11-year-old, and people have tried to say the horse stinks, that it’s dirty and that it causes health problems. Well it doesn’t stink, and it’s not dirty.”

Neal received a permit to build the barn after telling Kokomo-Howard County Plan Commission director Glen Boise she intended to stable a horse there.

Boise, who admits Neal was up front about her intentions, gave her the building permit in December 2009.

Earlier this month, Neal’s next-door neighbor took his complaint about the horse to the city council.

At the June 14 council meeting, Boise said he thought there was an ordinance against keeping horses in town, but couldn’t find it when he looked through the city code.

The mystery of the missing ordinance apparently was solved last week, when Kokomo City Clerk Brenda Ott discovered the ordinance during a search of city archives.

Monday, Kokomo Common Council attorney Corbin King gave council members a copy of the ordinance, which specifically bans keeping horses within city limits.

“All I can tell you is there’s an ordinance against it,” council president Mike Kennedy, D-At Large, told Neal Monday.

Prior to Monday’s council meeting, Kokomo city attorney Peju Okanlami said she would send a letter to Neal, informing her she was in violation of a city ordinance.

Kennedy said the council couldn’t make an exception for Neal.

“That would be no different than me telling you that you can go 50 mph on Markland Avenue, when everyone else has to go 35,” Kennedy said.

Neal tried to protest that she had a permit. Kennedy said the permit wasn’t for a horse.

“[Boise] did not give you a permit to have a horse; he gave you a permit to build a structure,” Kennedy said. “It was his mistake, I guess; it was somebody’s mistake.”

King, however, said the mistake was most likely made in the 1980s, when the city’s book of ordinances, the city code, was updated.

One animal control ordinance might have caused some confusion during the update, according to King.

An unrelated animal control ordinance — one dealing with rabid and diseased animals — had been added to the books, superseding certain older animal control ordinances, King said.

That “new” animal control ordinance did not supersede the 1966 domestic animal ordinance, he said, but nonetheless the domestic animal law apparently was left out of the new code book on the assumption that it did.

All of that confusion aside, the 1966 law is still in effect, King said, because the council never repealed or amended it.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on June 29, 2010 01:08 PM
Posted to Indiana Government