HALVARD FALLS, Ohio — The Halvard Falls Zoning Board voted 5 to 0 on Tuesday to limit residential fences and hedges to 30 feet, a figure the board described as the foundation of neighborly trust. The vote followed 14 months of complaints about a hedge on Linden Street that a surveyor measured at 31 feet, 4 inches.
Board Chair Doreen Lassiter, who has served on the board for 22 years, said height limits are how neighbors keep faith with one another. “A fence is a promise made at eye level,” she said. “A hedge that goes over the promise is a broken promise, and the board has a duty to cut it.”
In March the board approved the Liberty Arch, a 250-foot structure over Main Street. The commercial district’s ordinance caps structures at 30 feet.
Asked how the arch was consistent with the ordinance, Lassiter said the board measures from underneath. The board has done so since 1994, she said, and it is the only correct way to measure anything that is over you. Under that method, the arch was found to be 29 feet, 9 inches tall, and it was approved without a dissent from the board, apart from one abstention.
Member Gil Podesta abstained. He said he had already measured it from underneath and did not want to measure it twice.
A 250-foot triumphal arch planned for Memorial Circle, near Washington, has drawn a statement from a planning commission that it would exceed the 130-foot height limit that applies there. Asked about it, Lassiter said she had no view on that arch. “It is not in Halvard Falls,” she said. “We do not have a view on things that are not in Halvard Falls.”
Public comment on the arch was limited to three minutes per speaker. Resident Ruth Kellerman used her three minutes to ask where the arch’s top was, and was told by the board’s counsel that the top was not a matter for public comment, as it was above the jurisdiction of the meeting.
The hedge on Linden Street was not consulted. On Wednesday, a crew from the township’s Department of Vertical Compliance cut it to 30 feet, 0 inches, under the supervision of a board member who was able to see the top from where he stood. The arch was not cut. It was measured again, from underneath, and it remains compliant.
The board will review the fence ordinance in January. Lassiter said she expects the hedge to be a model of its kind by then.