Lawful nonconforming ensures acquired rights are

Lawful nonconforming ensures acquired rights are protected for a lawful activity from prejudicial actions such as amendments. It is not intended to usurp existing regulations where there are restrictions placed wholly or partly on an activity that is lawful.

In this case there are pre-existing regulations in force. For lawful nonconforming to apply there must be a pre-existing, continual activity giving rise to the precedent allowing for lawful nonconforming (LNC) to apply. As we heard last night this land has not been farmed in some time, the top soil was removed and all that is left is clay and pools of water.

If there is growing inside that would be for a judge to decide whether the LNC would apply to an acitivity of that nature and duration where no saleable crop is intended but rather only a demonstration. Whether that would constitute a pre-existing activity giving rise to a precedent for the acquisition of rights under LNC is for a judge to decide.

A couple of observations.

If CEN was being grandfathered in, why were they represented by legal counsel, who read a letter from Bill which was, to say the least, rather tempestuous in tone? If these new rules applied only to new applicants there would have been no need to have legal representation at the meeting last night.

If LNC applies, why did the company have legal representation at the meeting? No need to have it there at all.

They had Joe Byrne there and the other lawyer speaking on behalf of the company but again, why? If zoning was not an issue, why have anyone there at all?

I did note the convenience of the lawyer leaving out a few key words from his presentation last night, which is fine, that was part of the strategy. Had he stressed the words Value Added in the same manner he kept stating approved zoning, he would have been closer to the truth, but hey, that is why lawyers get the big bucks. To represent the interests of the client, not tell the whole story. Council in 2013 stated they were in Agricultural Value Added but those last two words were omitted from the presentation. Still, that is a bit of a red herring in the context of last nights meeting.

I have said it before and I will say it again. Both the town and the company dropped the ball. Bill should have addressed the value added instead of chanting his mantra of no zoning issues earlier. He recognized the issue by virtue of applying for the zoning amendment. End of story. The discussions between the town and the company were being held in the media. It might be argued by shareholders that the landlord, Jim Shaaban, should have informed the company of the value added implications and potential for the restriction of processing size (in this case value added means packaging since HC does not allow processing but the town defines value added also as being packaging) as he ought to have known given his intimate knowledge of zoning since he has been down this road before albeit unsuccessfully.

It comes back to the shareholders left dealing with the outcome. The company still can appeal to the county to overturn the decision but a lot of goodwill was lost last night in my opinion and the town won the night. Where will this end up is anyone's guess and I can only hope the share price crawls out from under this latest event and moves higher so that shareholders are not punished for the ineffectiveness of both parties to resolve this dispute before it got to where it is now.