Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, June 29, 1993                   TAG: 9306290201
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By DAVID M. POOLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SALEM MAY AX BAN ON TRUCKS

He sure wasn't looking for trouble with the law.

But that's exactly what he got.

Milam received a letter from the city of Salem stating that he was violating an obscure zoning condition attached to condominiums and town houses in the Ridgewood Farms development.

In 1978, Salem City Council made it a zoning violation to park any truck - including pickups - in front of homes in Ridgewood Farms.

Does that mean Bubba is not welcome in Salem?

Salem officials made it clear Monday that they have no intention of fining Milam or anyone else because of vehicle preference.

"We might say, `You can't have gun racks, but you can still have pickups,' " City Manager Randy Smith quipped.

The city's truck ban in Ridgewood Farms is no laughing matter to developer G.L. Mattern.

Mattern argued that allowing pickups - even nice ones - would open the door to broken-down heaps detracting from property values. "We may be the class of the whole metropolitan area," he said, "and we'd like to protect that."

Mattern said an apparent oversight in deed restrictions for Ridgewood Farms opened a loophole for pickups. The best solution, he said, would be for Salem to take action against pickup owners under the 1978 zoning conditions.

But City Council members said they would not waste taxpayers' money chasing pickups out of Ridgewood Farms.

"I don't think that's the city's problem," Councilman Alex Brown said.

Council voted to hold a public hearing on deleting the truck ban at Ridgewood Farms, which Mayor Jim Taliaferro said didn't make sense in the first place.

"We didn't care if you had concrete trucks in front of your house," Taliaferro said.