[Vision2020] NSA illegall?

[Art Deco]

All,

After reading some more of the City of Moscow Zoning Ordinance, I begin to see more clearly the statutory basis which Mike Curley and clients are relying upon.  In my lay opinion, I think that they will eventually prevail (most likely in court, who knows what the City of Moscow will do given their history!).

It is not enough to read just Section 3 of the zoning ordinances which allows:

"Commercial schools, churches, synagogues, mosques, governmental offices, libraries, museums, art galleries, police and fire stations, and similar public or private institutions."

 

in the Downtown Commercial Zone.  I thought  and posted, erroneously (in total picture) before, that their was some unfortunate ambiguity in the phrase "similar public and private institutions."  There is such ambiguity, and this part of the ordinance is ambiguously written.  The legislative intent/meaning is not clearly given in this section by the phrases " commercial schools" and "similar public and private institutions." 

However, in Section 4 of the ordinance, the ambiguity of the meaning of commercial schools is at least partially resolved:

If you load Section 4 (http://www.ci.moscow.id.us/citycode/TITLE04/toc.asp) into Adobe Acrobat and do a search on "educational", you will find a number of times, the phrase:

"Schools, commercial schools, and educational institutions."

Clearly then, the legislative intent of the ordinance is to clearly distinguish between commercial schools on one hand and schools/educational institutions on the other.  It would be hard for NSA to successfully argue after all their disingenuous hype that they are a commercial school and not an educational institution.

I leave it to the reader to work out the implications of the above language and what a vigorous (legal) discovery process might reveal of how NSA/City of Moscow came to be in the present situation.


Many zoning ordinances have clear cut definitions of what they mean by schools, commercial businesses, churches, etc.  Such a practice reduces ambiguity and promotes clearer administration and enforcement.  The City of Moscow might consider adding such definitions to their ordinance to make administration easier and to avoid unnecessary litigation in the future.



Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
deco at moscow.com



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