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Show LETTERS TO THE EDITOR . THE PARS N SHOP STORY First I wish to thank the editor edi-tor of the Iron County Record for accepting my letter to the editor. edit-or. Second, I wish to acknowledge the fact that I am very lucky to be living In America, where we still have freedom, and have a right to criticize our government, without fear of being executed. I'm also very grateful for being be-ing a citizen of Cedar City. I left a very good business in Los An-geles An-geles to come back home and go into business and raise our family. This is the best city in the world, and I'm proud of it. I have invested a lot of money in Park N Shop, because I wanted want-ed a give Cedar City a grocery store where they could be proud to shop. The people of ihis area have been very generous to me. In supporting my business, for which I'm extremely grateful. Their support has made Park N Shop one of the largest volume, independent supermarkets In this area. The series of letters to the ed itor, entitled the Park N Shop Story, will give you the background back-ground of the legal entanglements entangle-ments Park N Shop has experienced experi-enced during the past year, and finally culminated with a lawsuit law-suit served on us the 19th of December, De-cember, 1959. A suit over two technicalities of the law dealing with building occupancy permits per-mits and one portion of the city off-street parking laws. Park N Shop could conform to the wishes of the city council, and submit to overpowering authority. au-thority. But because this is America, Amer-ica, and because it is the moral obligation of every patriotic American to expose Inefficiency when it exists In our government, govern-ment, we will fight the lawsuit through the district courts. We sincerely believe that if a law is worth enforcing, lt should be enforced on everyone cyially. If It isn't worth enforcing on everyone, it should be repealed. This lawsuit Is a symptom of the declining standards of moral behavior, be-havior, we are experiencing in the United States today. The inability in-ability of our governing officials to stand up, unafraid, and enforce en-force the law equally on everyone. every-one. When Lincoln stated In his gettysburg address "Government of the people, by the people, for the people," he didn't mean the type of law enforcement we are experiencing in Park N Shop's case today. As was stated in the Iron County Record on page 8 of the Dec. 10 issue. "Before a new ordinance or-dinance can be adopted, certain corrective action must be made in order that some properties in the city will not fall into nonconformity, non-conformity, when the new ordinance ordi-nance is adopted. As a result the city attorney on the request of the city council, will file a civil suit against Park N Shop in an attempt to have this business rnply to parking standards before be-fore the new ordinance is pass- H " 1Un 1st, twn Ka.lr tint m. read this paragraph, and notice the word "icnw," This is exactly exact-ly what the city council Is doing, enforcing the law on torn, and turning its head the other way on the rest. It seems we have a government by favor and not by law. There are at least 60 businesses business-es violating the off street parking park-ing law In Cedar City today. Like Park N Shop these businesses never knew they were violating he law when their buildings were constructed, because when .hey got their permit to build, ihcy were never Informed of the aff-street parking requirements. What's more, the reason they were not Informed was because the city council and Its oppoint-ed oppoint-ed officers, hadn't studied the codes enough to know themselves. them-selves. Many buildings couldn't have been built or remodeled If the off-street parking law had been enforced at the time of application ap-plication for permit to build. I Now let's look at Park N Shop situation. We have applied for, and have been granted, four different dif-ferent building permits since Park N Shop was constructed in 1954 and 1955. Only on completion comple-tion of the last permit, were we informed that we were breaking the law. We have complied with all of the requirements, with one exception, namely, that we do not have a fence, not more than two feet high, constructed on the north and west property lines of Park N Shop. The fence is to extend back 20 feet from the intersection of 400 south and 450 West. Then we may have a 30-foot opening, in- which cars may park on our property then another 12 foot fence, another an-other 30 foot opening. We have the very same violation existing on other properties In Cedar City. As for the other point brought up in the summons served on us, was that we failed to get an occupancy oc-cupancy permit. I must admit, we also failed to get this permit In the other three time we enlarged. The code states that any person occupying. In whole or In part thereof, any residential, commercial commer-cial of Industrial building without with-out this permit is in violation of the law. May I ask this simple question. "Did you get an occupancy occu-pancy permit when you moved i Into your new homt? If you didn't did-n't you are a violator of the city ordinance, and I'd advise you to keep this Information to yourselves, your-selves, unless you want to get into the same trouble Park N Shop Is now experiencing. I have found no one who received his permit before or after they occupied oc-cupied their residential, commercial commer-cial or industrial building, but of course I haven't spoken to all of the citizens. I We'll have another letter to the editor next week with some more of the Park N Shop story, i t Forrest Hunter. I i |