(4/6) At their April meeting, the Town Council approved a long awaited amendment to the fence height ordinance with two new sections being added to the ordinance. The amendments were met with very positive reviews by the council members leading to the vote being unanimous.

Commissioner Joseph Ritz commended the board of appeals for looking at the existing code and working to revise it. He also felt very positive about the ordinance change and the other commissioners were very happy as well.

Commissioner Frank Davis, feeling the same as Ritz, also apologized to the homeowner for having to go through a year plus battle to get the fencing ordinance clarified.

The homeowners' battle began over a year ago when they were cited after they replaced a "dilapidated" split rail fence with a new fence on their Pembrook corner property. While their new fence plan was approved by the Pembrook Homeowners Association, and followed Frederick County fence laws, it did not meet the town’s requirements for a corner lot fence, which prohibits fences being more than three feet in height, which the new fence was.

Per the amendments, front yard fences will be limited in height to no more than four feet, while side yard fences will be limited to six feet. The ‘side’ fence on corner lots may not extend past the front corner of the home’s lot. Also a front yard is the yard on the side the house faces, and the side yard is the yard on the side of the house.

While both amendments will keep the majority if not all original text they will only clarify the ordinance to make it easier to understand for zoning administrators. The first of the two new sections focuses specifically on placement of tall fences on corner lots and includes two illustrations in the code. The illustrations show two examples of corner lots at the intersection of Brookfield Drive and Carrick Court with yellow as the property lines, blue showing allowable fences and red showing the boundary for how far the fence can extend. They also show one home with a front lot on the long side of the property and the other home with the front lot on the short side.

The second amendment defines the term "lot front of’ to clarify how the front of the lot should be determined. Per code, "Lot, front of'' means "the side or sides of an interior or through lot which abut a street, a corner lot shall be deemed normally to front upon the street on which it has the least dimension." This amendment allows the Zoning Administrator to establish a different front yard if the house on the property is found to face the side with the greatest yard dimension.

This means lots considered ‘thru lots’ would be unable to have any fences over 4 feet tall. Traffic safety was the principle reason given for not allowing fences over 4 feet on ‘thru lots’ as they blocked the line of sight of oncoming traffic on the intersecting road.