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Approved 6/8/2015 OC Board of Adjustment – 12/08/2014 Page 14 of 49 while we have discussed in broad terms the issues that will be brought up t onight, we obviously have not had a 1 discussion on the merits applicable or any major elements of this case. 2 3 Larry Wright: Mr. Morphis, proceed with your case. 4 5 T.C. Morphis: And this is strictly on the issue of jurisdiction. Is that correct Mr. Chairman? 6 7 Larry Wright: No. Just present your case. 8 9 T.C. Morphis: You want us to present our witnesses? Or proceed with my opening statement? 10 11 Larry Wright: However you want to proceed. 12 13 T.C. Morphis: I know we are halfway into the evening but I do want to thank you all for being here tonight. We very 14 much appreciate your time and your patience. The emphasis I want to place, I cannot state this strongly enough, is 15 the question before you, is there an illegal shooting range on property owned by Mr. Will iam Klein. You have heard 16 all these questions about jurisdiction but I am going to read [North Carolina General Statute] 168 388 v. 1 Section 8 17 and this is your charge for jurisdiction, “the official who made the decision shall be present at the hearing a s a 18 witness, the appellant shall not be limited at the hearing to matters stated in the notice of appeal. If any party or the 19 city would be unduly prejudiced about the presentation of matters not presented in the notice of appeal, the board 20 shall continue the hearing”. As Mr. Harvey said, the Board of Adjustment may “reverse or affirm wholly or partly 21 modify the appeal from and shall make any order, requirement, decision or determination that ought to be made. The 22 board shall have all the powers of the of ficial who made the decision”. I also, and I have a Memorandum of Law I am 23 going to hand out to you a little later and I have some additional motion I need to file but I will hand that out in a 24 moment. I do want to cite to you the County of Lancaster v. Mecklenburg County. It is a 1993 North Carolina 25 Supreme Court case that states unequivocally that appeals to this board from a determinatio n of the zoning official 26 are De Novo and that is an important distinction because you are going to hear arguments from various attorneys 27 that tell you this is limited. This is limited to whether he was right to rescind the determination or not. That is not the 28 issue in front of you. The issue in front of you, what De Novo means is that you get to hear anew. You get to make 29 all the factual determinations that you need to make and you are not bound by the evidence that was in front of Mr. 30 Harvey or presented by Mr. Tabai or suggested by the county attorney. You get to determine anew. What you 31 determine is whether he was correct in 2013 when he determined that this was a shooting range. We additionally, I 32 believe one of you members had asked about this, believe there is evidence to support the idea that it is likely if not 33 definitely on the Bingham Woods Mobile Home Park. County staff has suggested that there is staff response that we 34 can’t go on a fishing expedition. Well, we are not but respectively we can use this time to determine the evidence 35 that is available. We can use it to create new evidence so that is what I want to focus on tonight. Is this a shooting 36 range? When I was growing up in Hickory, North Carolina, it seemed like everybody had a gun. It would have been 37 in the 1980s. We had a 12 gauge and a 410 shotgun underneath our bed. Long story short, the world has changed. 38 People used to use guns primarily for hunting and self -defense. Now there are more guns and more people of higher 39 caliber than ever before and what you are going to hear here tonight is testimony that shows this isn’t simply nimbus 40 moving from Chapel Hill or wherever out into the woods being upset by traditional uses. You are going to hear that 41 my clients, some of them are gun owners themselves. Some of them use guns on their properties and they have no 42 objection to hunting or a little bit of target practice. The use we are talking about now is qualitatively different. You 43 will hear testimony and I’m going to submit evidence from the sheriff’s department that there are structures on the 44 property, structures sufficient to make this determination. One thing I want to emphasize to you , and again, this is in 45 more detail in my memorandum of law; there is not definition for shooting range in the UDO. As one of you 46 suggested, you do not have the authority to say what the standards for regulation ought to be. You can’t say there 47 should be a set back or noise limits or things like that but your job and it is uniquely your job is to determine whether 48 the use exists and so what I would ask for you tonight is after you hear all the evidence to determine this is a shooting 49 range and say to the County Commissioner, now you do your job and enact better regulation. We are not asking you 50