WILLIAMSBURG — The controversy over the use of a self-styled private shooting range on Village Hill Road will likely continue after zoning officials restricted the times when shooting may occur on the property, and the owners vowed to sue the town.
In October, the Zoning Board of Appeals reheard a 2015 ruling, and revised a set of conditions designed to regulate shooting activity at 74 Village Hill Road, a property owned by Thomas C. Hodgkins and his nephew Robert Hodgkins.
“We reconstructed the conditions in a way that we believe makes them more enforceable for the building inspector,” acting ZBA Chairman Gerald Mann said. “We arrived at this decision by a unanimous vote.”
The original appeal, filed by Keith Harmon Snow and his family members James A. Snow and Dawn L. White, requested that the property owners be issued a cease-and-desist order for allowing loud, excessive and prolonged shooting on their property in violation of the town’s zoning bylaws.
That appeal was unanimously granted and laid out special conditions under which shooting activity could take place on the property.
This included limiting shooting to a total of four hours on any given day between the hours of 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.; requiring a property owner to be present and red flags to be posted during shooting activities; requiring signs to be placed at all entrances indicating that shooting may be taking place on the property; and mandating that “shooting on the property return to pre-2003 patterns of usage and scale,” though these conditions were not specified.
At the Oct. 3 public hearing, the board clarified pre-2003 patterns of usage and scale based on public testimony, noting that residents did not hear automatic gunfire, explosions, prolonged periods of shooting or shooting on more than one or two days a week prior to 2003.
After hearing additional concerns about noise, public safety, and soliciting ideas from the public as well as the attorneys representing Snow and the Hodgkins family, the board closed the hearing and rendered its conditions on Oct. 27.
The new conditions allow shooting on Wednesdays and Sundays between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. and on the Fourth of July; ban commercial groups from using the property; and ban firearms testing, the use of automatic weapons, weapons modified to resemble automatic weapons and targets designed to explode when shot, among other restrictions.
In addition, a property owner or designee must be on the property when shooting is occurring, and the name of the owner’s designee must be provided to the chief of police prior to any shooting on the property.
Permanent signs must be placed at all entrance of the property and red warning flags must be up when there is shooting activity, and the property owners must also raise the height of an existing berm to 20 feet and construct a shooting shed from which guns are fired.
“I think that the decision was excellent and I really appreciate the ZBA for taking a firm position,” Snow said Wednesday.
“The big question now is will there be any enforcement.”
According to Snow and other residents who have registered complaints with the town, loud, rapid-fire shooting activity at the property has continued despite the original 2015 ZBA ruling.
Building Commissioner Louis Hasbrouck said the new conditions are much clearer, which will make them easier to enforce.
Robert Hodgkins, however, had a different opinion.
After the original 2015 ruling, the Hodgkins family filed a civil action in Hampshire Superior Court, appealing the ZBA’s decision. That case however, was never heard as it was sent back to the town because of a procedural mistake made by Hodgkins’ attorney Nathan Lynch of Walpole, New Hampshire.
It was that remand that allowed the ZBA to take another look at the decision and revise the original conditions of its ruling.
“This is a violation of the Constitution, and it is totally unenforceable,” Hodgkins said Wednesday.
“We are going to continue our lawsuit, but we are revising it because of the new demands that they put forward.”
While Hodgkins asserts his right to fire weapons he is legally licensed to possess on his own property, he also said he personally hasn’t shot at the property “for years.” He said he doesn’t know when the land is being used, or who is doing the shooting, and said he has had to kick people off the property who didn’t have permission to be there.
He characterized the ZBA decision as being a product of the “anti-gun crowd.”
“They are just so extreme. I really don’t think they know what they are doing and it is going to cost the town a lot of money.”
Hasbrouck said he received complaints of guns being fired at the property as recently as Tuesday afternoon. By the time an investigator arrived at the property, he said, the shooting had stopped.
People using the range are turning it into a team sport, Snow said.
“It’s like just a slap in the face to the community,” he said.
Hasbrouck did note that the revised conditions do not go into effect until after a 20-day appeal period, after which the decision is filed with the Hampshire Registry of Deeds.
“I guess it is now up to Hodgkins and his lawyer to see where things go from here,” Mann said.