Ordinances
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In My Humble Opinion
Jodi McDade
It’s time to have a discussion on ordinances. I would think that all large cities and towns and the majority of small towns have ordinances that have been passed since the time these cities and towns were formed.
Ordinances are laws or decrees that are put in place by local governments to generally forbid or restrict certain types of activities or to put in place the ability to control public health and safety, zoning, public morals, behavior, and general welfare. Some examples include noise, snow removal, pet restrictions, and building/zoning regulations. Most citizens are not even aware of most of the ordinances that have been put into place in their cities or towns.
Generally, ordinances are related to basic common sense, but are in place in case something unusual happens. They are guidelines that are in place should there be a state of emergency, an unruly person disturbing the peace, someone ignoring garbage disposal, etc. In larger cities they protect someone from moving in next to your $300,000 home and putting in a $2,000 trailer. Obviously, we do not have that type of ordinance in Coosa County.
When the shooting range was put in on County Road 18 the residents in that area were in an uproar because there was no ordinance to prevent it and they ended up having to go to court and taking several years to close it down. If there had been an ordinance in place, it would never have been there to start with.
So now, the Rockford Town Council has been going through the ordinances that have been on the books – some for more than 100 years – to update the language and determine if they are even still needed. Some towns find they have ordinances that prevent women from chewing gum on the sidewalks or other things that are totally outdated. The ordinances were passed at some point when the local government felt they were needed to be able to step in immediately to address a situation should it arise.
I moved to the country to not have to live crammed up next to people so I could enjoy my privacy and the quietness of nature. I do not want a house full of rowdy people moving in next to me playing loud music and having parties all night long without the ability to call on law enforcement to stop it.
I moved to the country so I would not have to worry about riots in the streets over controversial topics and the local government not having any way to control it. Unfortunately, we now live in a society that lacks common sense and personal responsibility so we have to be prepared to deal with issues that most of us would never have thought about!
All of the ordinances in place in Rockford (or any other municipality) are available to the citizens to review in Town Hall. They have a conference room where you can spend all day if you’d like to read some or all of the ordinances.
Some of these are necessary for day-to-day life, and some are only needed once in a lifetime. But, if your next-door neighbor decides to never cut their grass, doesn’t bother to pay for garbage pickup and burns their garbage on your property line, or parks 20 broken down cars in their front yard, wouldn’t you like to be able to complain about it and have something done?
Enough about our local state of affairs – our world is in crisis. Israel has been attacked by a radical group that wants to wipe it off the face of the earth with no consideration for human life. In the meantime, we have a wide-open border that people from every nation in the world are using to get into our own country with no idea of who they are. We have an administration in Washington who puts the rest of the world ahead of our own country and people. The president of the United States finds time to fly around the world and spend time at his beach house, but who has NEVER been to the southern border to see what is going on.
Our government is providing free housing, food, medical care, education, and voting rights to non-citizens while our own people are struggling to provide the same things for their families. We are now dependent on foreign, unfriendly countries for our gas and oil while the administration is trying to outlaw gas stoves, refrigerators, air conditioners, and making gas cars illegal. At the same time, the push for ALL electric energy sources without an electrical grid that can provide the power is still not existent. The wonderful energy sources of wind, water and charging stations all require some type of fossil energy to power them so they are not really even cutting out the fossil fuels they claim to be against.
Please pray for the people of Israel and Gaza who are being killed, taken hostage and attacked by Iran and Hamas. We also need prayers for people here in our county who are fighting horrible illnesses and diseases. Until next week…