A group of Penn Township residents have circulated and signed a petition signaling their opposition to two proposed ordinances.

The proposals have been advertised for the past month and will come up for vote at the supervisors meeting Tuesday, April 8.

Ordinance 178 is intended to regulate unsafe and blighted structures in the township, while ordinance 179 is intended to regulate the accumulation and storage of junk.

The petition, located on change.com and authored by Jacob Leasher, criticizes the text of the two proposed ordinances as vague and overreaching on the rights of township residents. As of Monday afternoon, the petition has gained 291 signatures.

The petition calls for the township to delay the vote on approving both ordinances, as well as remove and modify certain passages.

Penn Township Supervisor Samuel Ward is aware of the petition but offered no comment on it.

The petition calls attention to certain passages of each ordinance which, if left intact, would give the township broad powers to inspect homes that could possibly be deemed blighted, unsafe or surrounded by an accumulation of junk.

Both ordinances, in their current form, contain nearly-identical language that gives township authorities the right to enter a structure and perform an inspection “...where it is necessary to make an inspection to enforce the provisions of this ordinance, or whenever the (official) has reasonable cause to believe that there exists in a structure or upon a premises a condition in violation of this ordinance.

“The ordinance gives the township broad powers to force property owners to make changes or face penalties — regardless of their financial ability to do so,” according to the text of the petition. “This is an outrageous violation of personal privacy and constitutional rights.”

Additionally, the petition criticized the township for, in its view, failing to provide a hard definition of what constitutes a violation of each ordinance; or what constitutes junk, rubbish or a blighted structure.

However, the public draft of ordinance 179 does provide a definition of what it considers “junk,” and ordinance 178 states that the township would be adopting the standards of the International Property Maintenance Code as to what constitutes a safe or unsafe structure.

The petition also says the ordinances would have a disproportionate effect on the lower-income residents of the township and could punish residents who may not have the income to make repairs to their homes.

“Many in our community live on limited incomes,” reads the text of the petition. “These ordinances ignore the economic reality that not everyone can afford immediate or large-scale repairs.”

Both ordinances were approved for advertisement at the most recent supervisors meeting March 11 and currently are available for viewing on the township’s website.

According to Ward, while the unsafe structures ordinance is brand-new, the “junk and rubbish” ordinance is essentially cobbled together from three township ordinances that already exist.

“We are combining three older ordinances that relate to junk, refuse and junk vehicles, into a new ordinance consistent with the Pennsylvania second-class Municipalities Planning Code,” Ward said. “We've been working on it for two years, with different issues that have come up, and this is the end result.”