Malinda Harris has been denied a place to live on the street where she grew up in Lillington by 3-2 vote of the Board of Commissioners. Her “crime?” She wanted to replace her home that recently burned with a mobile home. The Board ignored the fact that the lot next door and the one across the street have mobile homes. What gives the Board this power? The Conditional Use Permit process gives local governments almost unlimited power to decide how you will use your hard earned property.
According to WRAL here.
Under the current ordinance, someone wanting to put a mobile home
within town limits must get a conditional use permit. The planning
board recommended to the board that it allow the mobile home, given
Harris? circumstances, but in a 3-2 vote, the request was denied.
Of course, the three commissioners who voted against Harris could not be reached for comment. They don’t want to explain their arbitrary decision to the media or anyone else.
They did suggest that she put a modular home on the site, “but Harris said that would be out of her price range.” I guess it is also a crime to be poor in Lillington.
We recently mailed this checklist to more than 3,000 city council candidates providing them a quick and easy way to evaluate the operations of their city government. In the introduction, we remind city council candidates that, “The Declaration of Independence charged King George III with 27 acts of arbitrary rule. City zoning and land-use regulations can be equally arbitrary and capricious.”
