Communities around the region have recently used building moratoriums to put a pause on projects that their zoning and planning laws don’t cover.

New technologies like solar arrays and lithium battery storage facilities, and new and unfamiliar types of businesses, like cannabis shops, may not fit neatly into existing local development controls.

In those cases, moratoriums are legitimate tools to protect citizens from unwanted or harmful development.

But some communities use moratoriums not to prepare for development, but to discourage it, often resorting to a freeze on all applications in response to a single, unpopular project.

That’s not what moratoriums are........

© The Leader Herald