Roxbury Zoning Commission Bans Stabling Horses for Money

Local farmers to get unannounced visits, fines and cease/desist orders from new ZEO?

Contact: Shelly or Tom Holroyd

Telephone: 860-355-9808

(ROXBURY, CT - August 17, 2009) Now that the Roxbury Zoning Commission has
decided boarding horses on private property is a commercial venture and not agriculture,
will local horse farmers start getting unannounced visits, fines and
cease/desists from ZEO Mary Barton?

Wait. Back up. What?! When did the town agency decide to trump the
state on agriculture? Banning the business of horse stabling? In a
farm town? Are they nuts? Is the zoning commission confused about
the difference between agriculture and commercial enterprise?

Apparently so because that's the question unwittingly delivered to

audience members by the land-use commission following the panel's rancid
approval for Robert and Shelly Holroyd's application Monday night,
August 10, for a special excavation permit for a horse exercise sand ring.
The restrictive conditions placed on the approval, however, cannot be
interpreted any other way:

"If you exchange money with someone else for the boarding and care of
their or your horse(s) on your or their property, that's a commercial
venture and not allowed according to several members of the town's
commission."

That's a paraphrase used by member Elaine Urban as she pinned a

significant restriction to the Holroyd's private, agricultural-deeded
use of private property.

Did they not read or hear the clear, compelling evidence presented to them
three months ago? It was a cogent odyssey of knowledge presented to
a packed house attending the special hearing. Letters from the
Connecticut Farm Bureau, the state's Department of Agriculture, an Olympic
Trainer, even an endorsement from the Agriculture commissioner himself, all read aloud
into the special hearing minutes?

Obvious, serious confusion has now set into Chairman Bob Falconer's
panel. After another two hour session, they still don't get it. It was
almost as if member Elaine Urban never read the statement of use,
while repeatedly over several meetings, she asked for the statement of
use to review. The statement of use is a static one, it never changes from the original
application. But here is Urban somehow suggesting it had. Urban is the commission

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member who, in 2007, stirred up any outcry among town citizens when the panel wanted
to increase the minimum lot size for building. At that public hearing, she answered
an audience question of "where is the hue and cry?" with "there need
not be an outcry for us to update our regulations," further noting
that the town of Sherman "recently underwent the same process." She
offered no further explanation. Huh? Is a go-along, get-along
approach the one we want confused village leaders espousing when it affects
its citizenry? Find solutions to problems that don't exist?
Urban's further confusion about private use versus public use spilled out
in a way that perked ears and now has set the town view on this uncomfortable axis:

Horse Farmers & Lovers Beware! There's a new ZEO in town and she
intends to come knocking on your door!

Urban excitedly suggested that ZEO Mary Barton will need to make site visits to High
Meadow to determine who's riding what horse with who, where and how many.
Other than the feint click-click of her heels, Urban’s suggestion sounds terribly “city-
like” if not naïve or out-of-touch. Especially in an area where horse density-to-people
verifiably ranks as the state’s highest, as well second in the nation.

Urban became increasingly disoriented when she announced that horses

residing on one side of the street could use the ring but not the
other side. And if someone else owned the horse and stabled it on one
parcel could not ride on the other parcel. That is, some horses can cross an invisible line
and others can’t. What’s next, traffic volume counters?

When vice-chairman Jim Conway cleared his throat and began to speak, he rocked back
in his chair, removed his eyeglasses and face-flushed a beet-red tone. He had had enough
and threw his specs to the table,

“Okay, I’m going to try to explain this one last time.”

As a long-time panel member, Conway is also a farmer. Of horses, as well as crop and
hay. As a volunteer to this commission, he also leads the Roxbury Land Trust’s Farm
Management Committee, working over 450 acres with eight local crop farmers. By most
people’s standards, that would make him a valuable asset to the town’s leadership and
citizens. It should be simple, then, to recognize him as the zoning panel’s expert in
agriculture. And that when he speaks about agricultural matters, it is like the old EF
Hutton tagline, that “when Jim Conway speaks, people listen.” He does choose his words
carefully. He is patient and effuses from folks a humble country-chivalry that would not
dare usurp your ego for his own. Assuredly, over the years, his affable yet pragmatic
personality spoke volumes toward the notion of sensibility - horse-sense - and reason to
his peers.

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“According to the state statutes and our own zoning regulations, the raising & boarding
of horses is agriculture. This parcel is restricted in use to agriculture,” Conway explained
to Falconer.

“But its private land and you can’t have a commercial venture on private land.”

“Agriculture is not considered a commercial venture, the state has made that clear. This
is agriculture.”

“Yes, but it’s restricted,” chirped Falconer.

“To agriculture,” Conway replies, shaking his head in disbelief, referring to the Holroyd’s
deeded restrictive uses of agricultural and recreation. He is now leaning forward in his
chair, Conway turned squarely toward Falconer: “I’m done here.”

Chairman Falconer doesn’t get it. He cannot see the trees through the forest. This same
commissioner, in an earlier meeting, who denied the original waiver request by reasoning
his decision this way:

“You can’t have a house on one side of the street and the barn building across the road,”
Falconer said, “that is not a farm in my opinion.”

Tonight, Falconer cannot understand the parcel is privately-owned and its private use is
deed-restricted to guess what? Agriculture and recreation. Check. If it looks like a duck,
walks like a duck, quacks like a duck…”it” must be a duck. But Falconer is side-tracked
with denial. Never mind there are three existing horse farms along the road. Or that the
neighborhood has more horse residents than humans. Or, Katie - bar the door - that a
neighbor already stables five or six boarders in exchange for a monthly fee. Add the
Case-all & John Deere tractors, the brush hoggs, sand rake and manure spreaders and you
start to get an undeniable view that something dark looms larger in the town’s “smoky
back-room.” But Falconer blindly goes further, insinuating the land is not private and not
agriculture. Not private, not agriculture, as if he alone has already decided a chosen
winner and a loser. His hysteria lucidly implies that he alone could direct the owner of
this parcel to grow purple-headed corn if he so chose. He is unambiguously wrong.

To many people around town who know him, Bob Falconer is a smart guy. The town’s
leaders presumably think so too. So how could Falconer, in this moment, go dumb on
Conway and the overwhelming evidence before him? Pretending not to comprehend
Conway’s plain-talk explanation of what is and what isn’t agriculture?

And to ignore that horses are clearly included in that definition?

Did Bob forget to take his smart pill that morning? Was it low blood sugar? Or was
something else bothering him? The cue came early in the meeting with the curious
absence of Gail McTaggart, the town attorney who helped hatch and craft the restrictive
permit conditions, apparently on her own discourse. Why? More on that later. Although

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she had attended many meetings regarding this application, tonight McTaggart was no
where to be found. It was later learned, however, that while missing the Holroyd hearing,
she did show up for the next application, which the commission approved. McTaggart is
the town attorney and has earned over $90,000 in legal fees from Roxbury taxpayers
since 2004 pursuing the Holroyd case.

So when was the outcome of this meeting actually decided? And where? By whom and
why? More about these questions, answers and the unintended consequences in a later
entry too.

Meanwhile, it now also appears the town has placed the High Meadow application in a
category of firsts. According to ZEO Mary Barton, no applicant for a horse exercise sand
ring has ever been denied an agricultural waiver. Nor has a special permit for excavation
ever been required of anyone but the Holroyds. Spectacularly, by Barton’s own research,
the town has no record of any request to put in a sand ring on record. But there they are.
A view from the sky, however, paints quite a different picture from the Shultzy “I don’t
see nothing, I don’t hear nothing, I don’t know nothing” mantra coming out of town hall.
Google Earth and Virtual Earth, the web earth-satellite map browser, both visibly show at
least 14 sand rings within town limits. These sand rings, un-obscured by trees, brush and
shadow-casting, are plainly visible from the roadside. The figure, however, doesn’t
include those rings disguised by cover of various terrain and woodland density. Who
knows how many? But we won’t know that now or anytime soon. Despite the April
request from the Holroyds, Barton has still yet to site check any of these rings despite
having general address or intersection data. As a result, her responsiveness has failed the
Freedom of Information Act miserably.

So what’s going on here?

In Connecticut case law, the state’s common courts follow precedent. Judges rely on
past, adjusticated decisions as a sound basis to follow. In a town like Roxbury, the law is
no different. Precedents are typically set to demonstrate consistency over a broad swath
of relevant points of law. Judges follow distinguished state cases. Town leaders apply
prior situations or its ordinances to validate those decisions. This practice has been and is
known as the law of the land.

An approval for High Meadow Riding Club at tonight’s meeting is hollow and
obstructive. Observers, supporters and participants all agree: just because the Holroyds
got the monkey off their back doesn’t mean the circus has left town.

With the upcoming elections, perhaps now is the right time to re-visit a proposal remitted
last year from the town’s Planning Commission. The panel suggested to town selectmen
that the Planning and Zoning commissions should be combined and that, rather than
personal nominations remitted by Barbara Henry, those successful candidates should be
elected. I’ve heard it so many times before so I’ll say it once again: Time is now to take
back this town!