This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.

What Can Be Done?

For decades, Philip and Eunice Demond have lived on Old Whitfield Street, and in harmony with their neighbors. Eunice has been rescuing and saving wild animals for years. She herself is admired; her lifesaving work is (almost) universally lauded.

The location of Little Rascals is ideal: last house, dead-end street, adequate property, abutted by railroad tracks, low-volume traffic, no traffic jams, no noise generated.

Four years ago, Bill Freeman and Alicia Dolce bought the lot adjoining the Demond property, learned about the Little Rascals operation, built a house, and moved in, presumably giving tacit approval to the Demonds’ rescue work.

This year, Freeman filed a complaint with the Planning & Zoning Commission (PZC). Zoning Enforcement Officer Erin Mannix issued a cease and desist order against Eunice Demond and her shelter.

Now the complainants are attempting to have Little Rascals disapproved because of “negative impacts” upon the neighborhood. “It just doesn’t seem that this is a sustainable model in the long run,” Dolce wrote to the PZC.

Marjorie Shansky, the complainants’ lawyer, stated at the hearing that wildlife rehabilitation is “incongruous and incompatible” to the zone. She described DeMond’s work as a beautiful thing, but in the wrong location.

What rash judgments from a newcomer and an outsider!

PZC members realize that the regulations currently being finely interpreted, if upheld, will constitute an unjust judgment against Little Rascals.

What can be done to resolve this acrimonious case? Someone has an excellent solution. At the July 7 hearing, Zoning Enforcement Officer Erin Mannix made it clear that a lack of definition for a use does not preclude the PZC from approving DeMond’s application. “I am not yet swayed that an absence of definition [means] that we cannot permit the use,” she said.”

Judith A. Andrews

Guilford