To the editor:

To the editor:

In its Jan. 22 editorial, The Rappahannock News praised the Washington Town Council for its endorsement of the Architectural Review Board's outlawing of Mrs. Sisk’s chainlink fence.

I could hardly believe my eyes as I read the saga of the Sisk fence, but an editorial applauding this decision? Let’s see what we have here.

We have a fence - standard chainlink, not the prettiest type fencing but about the only kind that keeps dogs ptit. It is visible, but not noticeably so, from the street. It is neat as a pin, just like the Sisk house and garden. It replaces a tired, scrufly old woven-wire fence.

We also have a grand lady of 74 who was widowed a year ago. She and Mr. Sisk slowly built up their little property over 47 years (471), making it one of Washington’s little show places, ^

Just after Mrs. Sisk celebrates her first painful Christmas without the husband she lost last Christmas Eve, she learns that her new dog* proof fence has been ruled ‘inappropriate” under the Town’s new architectural standards.

Now, Mrs. Sisk learns that she must tear down her new fence or she will be sued by the Town (The News reports that the Town Council directed its lawyer, Frank Reynolds, “to do what is necessary to effect the ARB’s decision of inappropriateness - including legal action.”)

What should she do? She knows she can’t afford the destruction and reconstruction of a fence; must she now also hire a lawyer she cant afford? Will the sheriff arrive at her door with a legal summons? Will they dap her in jail? They left her no out - down with the fence or get sued. It’s baffling - almost incomprehensible. And it hurts. It’s enough to send a person’s blood pressure soaring.

What else have we here? We have a panel of three judges who rule that chainlink is a no-no. One of these judges had to have wrestled hard with her decision because she has many times the amount of the Sisk chainlink fencing ih her backyard, to house her German shepherd kennels, all within the Town of Washington, well within public view. Her fence is “grandfathered,” but I assume it is just as inappropriate as the Sisk fence - or maybe more so because there’s more of it?

So, yes, this must have been "a tough decision” that, as the News observes, “deserves our respect.”

But was it the correct decision? Or the right decision? Could or should tiie. ARB have considered other factore? Compromised? Should it have considered the hiunan factors of Mrs. Sisk’s situation - her age, her recent widowhood, her 47 years in that house, her financial difficulties, her health?

Could the ARB have weighted this fence against other “inappropriatenesaes” such as a costly but nonconforming building or painting a house passionate pursue - both intrusions of such enormity that they could not be defended, the one irreversible because of cost, the other too awfiil to live with? Could this fence have been viewed as a very miN nor inappropriateness?

Could the ARB have considered this: stipulating that the fence could remain during Mrs. Sisk’s occupancy of the house but that it must come down when the house changes title to new ownership? What about the simplicity of a stipulation that a wonderful clematis vine be planted this spring so that within afew years no one could even remember this forbidden chainlink? And are there not caring people around Washington to