Gibson residents say no to zoning
Published: October 14, 2009
Font size: [A] [A] [A]
e-mail this
share this
Businessman Rick Marcho presented Gibson Township supervisors with 34 pages of petitions with some 648 residents names on them. The evidence caused supervisors to reverse themselves on being a part of the Eastern Susquehanna County Partnership.
A group of GibsonTownship residents intent on not having anything to do with zoning, presented its supervisors with 648 petitions supporting their cause last Monday night (Oct. 5).
In return, the supervisors gave the residents a gift.
They reversed an earlier decision when the township became part of a zoning coalition known as the Eastern Susquehanna County Partnership.
For nearly three years, representatives of Thompson and Union Dale Boroughs and Ararat, Gibson, Herrick and Thompson townships had been working together as the Partnership to prepare a zoning ordinance tailored to their communities.
On Aug. 29, a pair of public meetings was held in Gibson and Thompson to unveil the future, and well, a few residents didn’t exactly like what they saw.
“When we looked at the whole zoning arrangement, we realized that our little township would be losing control of its future to other municipalities,” Mary Phillips said Saturday morning.
So at the next GibsonTownship supervisors meeting, many concerned individuals asked what could be done to stop it.
Two of the three supervisors were already for it, so Phillips asked if they could prove that the majority of the residents were against it, would they listen up?
No one dreamed what happened next.
A group was formed of like-minded individuals consisting of JoAnn DiPalma as chair, but also including Phillips and her husband Gordon, Rick Marcho, Jerry Davis, Joe and Nancy Decker, Barbara Hill, Tom Salansky and Jerilyn Watson.
“We went out and purchased voter lists and a list of landowners, and went to work,” Phillips said.
What they did was divided up the township into territories, went door-to-door, took out ads in local publications, and finally realized success.
Phillips said they could have kept going, except they ran out of time with the Oct. 5 meeting lingering on the horizon.
She said that in the hundreds of people visited only about a dozen said they actually were for zoning.
“One lady told us she was for it because she really wanted to clean up the property of the person who lived across the road from her,” Phillips recalled.
When she was told that zoning might not be able to do anything about that neighbor because present uses are usually grandfathered in, it got her to wondering about zoning.
Which is what Philips said her group was trying to accomplish.
Marcho said Saturday afternoon it was a great feeling to see his fellow residents be able to set themselves on a path, and then realize success.
“We’re exhausted from all of the activity of the last few weeks, but we feel wonderful,” Phillips said.
“When our supervisors knew what the people wanted, they changed their vote,” she said. “That’s the American way.”
