Below are three provisions of the Geneva Municipal Code.
“Title 11 – Zoning
11-1-2: – INTERPRETATION:
B. Where the conditions imposed by any provision of this title, upon the use of land or buildings or upon the bulk of buildings, are either more restrictive or less restrictive than comparable conditions imposed by any other provision of this title or of any other law, ordinance, resolution, rule or regulation of any kind, the regulations which are more restrictive or which impose higher standards or requirements shall govern.
11-14-4: – SPECIAL USE PERMITS:
- Authority: The city council has the authority to grant special use permits in accordance with the provisions of this title.
11-14-5: – VARIATIONS:
- Authority: The city council has the authority to grant or deny requested variations in accordance with the provisions of this title.”
Here is a quote from the Geneva Plan Commission agenda of July 22, 2021: “The applicant is making these requests in accordance with Section 11-14-5 (Variations) of the Geneva Zoning Ordinance.” But this statement is incorrect because it conveniently misplaces the phrase “in accordance with.” Accordance with the entire “title 11” was mandatory but fraudulently skipped over. A Special Use Permit was illegally joined to the Variances. Malone’s requests for a Special Use and Variances were simultaneously recommended for approval by the puppet Plan Commission and approved via collusion between the City Council and the mayor’s “professional” staff. In fact, the funeral home was not eligible for either a Special Use or a Variance because it was illegally expanded without the required Special Use Permit twenty years ago (early in the reign of the sitting tyrant.)
1-2-1: – RULES OF CONSTRUCTION: 5. May/Shall: The word “may” is permissive; the word “shall” is mandatory.
I am confident that any Geneva middle schooler, after being informed by the teacher that the Geneva Code defines “shall” as “mandatory” and that 11-14-4 is indisputably more restrictive than 11-14-5, could read the above and answer the following question correctly: “Under Geneva’s Code of Ordinances can an applicant for a Special Use Permit simultaneously successfully apply for Variances from the mandatory standards of the Special Use under 11-14-4?”
The seventh-grader would answer: “Of course not, under 11-1-2 the Code requires that the Special Use Provisions of Title 11 “shall (must) govern.”
Special Use Standard 8: “The proposed building, other structures and use comply with any and all regulations, conditions or requirements of the city applicable to such building, structure or use.” This standard adopts and mandates that ALL the provisions of the Municipal Code be met!!! No wiggle room existed until the current mayor took office decades ago. Now the City Council has completely destroyed the Special Use property value protections in Geneva and has infringed on a fundamental individual property right. Do not complain when the mayor approves a Tilted Kilt and massage parlor next to your house. (The Dunkin’ developer does these also.)
Parents ordinarily imbue their children with the principle that their default position on rules should be to understand and obey them. This is not to say that a rule cannot be protested and changed through the processes defined under our constitutional republic.
The “adults” on the Geneva Plan Commission and Geneva City Council (most of them parents themselves) have set many bad examples where they have violated, for political gain, their oaths of office and openly defied the rules they swore to uphold. What part of 11-1-2 do they not comprehend? Should Genevans let them get away with this treasonous usurpation of power? What kind of town is Geneva, and where is it headed?
Rod's Ramblings and Ruminations 