For Jusst Sooup, time to shift gears

“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”

– Alexander Graham Bell

Given the strong faith and noble purpose sustaining and growing Dale Dunning’s Jusst Sooup Ministry, it’s doubtful she and her supporters will dwell very long on the Sussex County Board of Adjustment denial of her application for a special use exception to feed the hungry at her new Coolspring facilities.

No one who dispassionately watched and understood the variance board process was surprised at the decision.  This was not a political decision; it was a technical decision.

For the past year, the variance board – under fire for long operating broadly like a political board and saying yes to nearly every applicant – has properly tightened its focus. Its job is not to decide whether an application has merit.  Its job is to decide whether an application meets the requirements for a zoning exception.  For the variance board, the Jusst Sooup application clearly did not.

In the spirit of the speed of the Extreme Makeover project, which like a magic wand landed the Dunning family in their new world, the variance route may have appeared the most expedient route to making optimum use of their full complex. There was, however, no magic left in the wand to make it the right route.

With the futile variance exercise finished, energy can now be directed to something like a conditional use application. That process, with public hearings before bodies with the power to help forge accommodations and conditions, could rightly permit the Dunnings to move ahead while addressing concerns of the neighborhood.

At the least, the variance process helped identify the concerns that will have to be addressed so the Jusst Sooup mission can achieve harmony while helping those less fortunate.