|
|
|
|
Early Zoning Ordinance Protest in Norfolk
(For more Norfolk geography tidbits, click here.)
Conway Whittle Sams, objecting to the city's planned zoning ordinance (May 23, 1924, Virginian-Pilot):
"Attempts are being made to pass an ordinance revolutionizing the rights of the owners of property in regard to their freehold estates. These rights are among the highest and most important that a person can have, and belong to the same class as the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness and freedom of conscience. To limit a man in the use  of his property is to take away a part of his power over it – that is, a part of his interest in and ownership of it.
The Constitution declares that this shall not be done without due procee of law, and that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation. That a regulation prohibiting the owner from using his property as he sees fit is a taking of his property from him to that extent, is too apparent to need argument. What the zoning ordinance proposed to do to all the land owners in Norfolk is to tie their hands and make them use it in the way the five men who were elected to conduct their affairs in this city in the matters covered by the city charter see fit now to tell them how they can use it.
No ordinance which has cost the city $35,000 to prepare should be adopted. To pay this great sum to anybody to prepare an ordinance is to encourage a waste of public money, which would set a precedent for other extravagances in the same line. No such proceedings as this ever took place here before the present business-like city government, which we now suffer from, came into being.
No ordinance should be adopted which the City Council, with the aid of the city attorney and his associates, have not the brains or legal ability to draft. This is proof enough that the thing is unnecessarily complex and cumbersome and should not be enacted.
No ordinance should be adopted which needs an ‘enabling act’ from the Legislature to support it. This is proof at once that the thing proposeed is outside of the functions which legitimately and properly belong to the city government under the charter which existed at the time they were selected."
|
|
|
| |
