BEATTY -- The Beatty Town Advisory Board's ongoing reworking of town ordinances came under fire at the May 23 meeting.

Resident Roni Odin read the body of a petition that accuses "someone who came to town and bought everything he could" and the town board chairman, Larry Gray, of having an "agenda," imposing restrictions and licenses and bluntly telling them to "stay out of our lives."

Later in the meeting, Gray and other board members defended what they are doing, saying that only the proposed ordinances governing older mobile homes and junk cars are new. Other than that, they are only working on bringing existing ordinances, written back in the 1960s, up to date.

One of the ordinances being updated is the business license ordinance, which has been on the books but as far as anyone could remember but has never been enforced. Gray insisted that the purpose of this ordinance is to protect citizens from fly-by-night operators.

Gray also said that the junk car ordinance the board had attempted to draft was more lenient than state law, something they were informed they could not enact.

It had been suggested that the town therefore simply enforce the state law. However, Justice of the Peace Gus Sullivan pointed out that one advantage of having a local ordinance is that the revenue generated goes to the town, not the state.

The last comment on the subject, then, was that maybe the town should simply adopt an ordinance based on the state law.

Gray argued that the purpose of all the ordinances was not to restrict people's lives but to protect the public, and he again invited people who are concerned about them to attend the workshop meetings and participate.

Resident Charlie Cook said he feared that people who oppose the ordinances and had signed Odin's petition might be equating them with the master planning process, and he felt they needed to be informed that the two are not the same thing.

The board also discussed the county's revised fireworks ordinance, which permits residents to set off "consumer" fireworks between 8 a.m. June 25 and midnight July 4, but only at a "designated shooters site."

The members of the board and the residents in the audience agreed that notice of the change came too late for the community to give the town time this year to properly select a site and provide for the required supervision and fire control.

The consensus was to work on establishing the site for next year and to table the matter for now.

The main item on the agenda was to continue work on the town's master plan. Gray reported that progress had been made on producing the needed color-coded map identifying the current use of parcels of land, but it had not been compiled into one map.

It was the first meeting for new board member Joannie Jarvis.

She and Teresa Sullivan suggested that specific items be put on the agenda for the next planning meeting, rather than continuing a vague approach.

The board selected two items -- identifying proposed commercial and historic districts. It also voted to send a letter to the water and sanitation district board requesting information on the utility's capacity for projected growth, and to have the request put on the agenda for that board's next meeting.