what is woke zoning?
Woke Zoning is a play on words. Woke means to be aware of and actively attentive to an issue.
In the case of the proposed Allen Township Zoning Ordinance, the township trustees and Zoning Committee appear to be anything but aware. They come across as oblivious to the situations they will create, through their chosen language within the very Ordinance they drafted for our vote.
For a link to the draft ordinance, click on Helpful Links in the menu at the top of this website.
- They have crafted a proposed Ordinance that would make over 90% of residences in Allen Township “non-conforming” by blanketing the township as agricultural, including some homes/properties of Committee members that would become non-conforming.
- Within the allowances for agricultural property, a primary residence must be located on 2 or more acres to be considered conforming with Agricultural A-1 Zoning (Section 401, paragraph 1, page 13 of the proposed Ordinance)
- They mandate that they have the right to determine if a home-based business is allowable, with almost no criteria provided as to what may or may not be acceptable (Section 402, paragraph 1, page 13 of the proposed Ordinance)
- Despite requiring their approval of your home-based business, the Zoning Committee ignores human safety in section 502, paragraph 5.a and 5.g by allowing private swimming pools to be installed with no review and approval and only recommending a fence around any pool.
- They wrote clauses in the proposed Ordinance that allows them to “impose such additional conditions” as they deem necessary for protecting property rights and the general welfare of the public. Impose is a very strong word – not recommend, not propose, not offer for public approval. No, they want to impose their will upon all residents of the township. (Article XIII, second paragraph, bottom of page 24)
- They propose to zone 1 square mile of land containing the Hancock County Landfill, as I-2 General Industrial District, allowing the following extremely dirty, highly polluting types of businesses to be built and operated there (Article XII – I-2 General Industrial Districts, Section 1201, page 23 – 24):
o Junkyards
o Garbage Incinerators
o Steel Blast Furnaces
o Acid, Alkali, Concrete and Lime manufacturing
o Copper, Zinc and Iron smelting operations
- Within this one square mile you will find:
o 8 residential properties totaling over 34 acres
o 3 farming operations totaling just over 53 acres
o 530 acres designated as an Ohio Department of Natural Resources wildlife preserve
o 17 acres of state protected wetlands
- Where will the exhaust gases, odors and potentially toxic emissions from these types of operations go? East with the prevailing winds, possibly blanketing the Van Buren School, the Van Buren Sports Complex and Soccer Field, and dozens, if not hundreds, of residential properties in Allen Township.
- No consideration for protection of the environment, the farming operations, the 8 families living in that square mile appears to have been given.
- One could only wonder what the motive is to zone a wildlife preserve and wetlands for use as a steel blast furnace or a garbage incinerator?