ABSTRACT
The ordinance does not reasonably serve any of the specified purposes. The use to be made of the premises was carefully avoided in the application and in all the formal papers, but the depositions taken under the rule incidental to the writ prove beyond doubt that the purpose is to operate a saloon in the midst of a neighborhood zoned for residences and scarcely more than 100 feet from a church property. Indeed, after the ordinance was passed, the council proceeded to grant the license. The owner of the premises is himself a member of the common council. Although he did not vote, his membership on the council seems to have had its influence on the passage of the ordinance. At the meeting, one of the councilmen expressed himself to the effect that the owner "had served the city faithfully for six years and really deserved something." The first reading of the ordinance was given in such haste that not only had the recited resolution of the board of adjustment not been received, but the ordinance itself had not been prepared; it was read partly from a writing and partly from the body of another ordinance; in other words, no ordinance had actually been introduced. The common council, as well as the board of adjustment, took no testimony. An attempt to wrench a single small lot from its environment and give it a new rating that disturbs the tenor of the neighborhood should receive the close scrutiny of the courts lest the zoning enactments, constitutional and legislative, be diverted from their true objectives. I conclude that the ordinance is not a reasonable exercise of municipal power.
