Dawna Pederzani and her rescue dog Layla in front of her home in Williston on Thursday, Sept. 5. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
Shortly after the latest in a string of zoning complaints was filed against her, Dawn Pederzani staked three signs into her Williston home’s front lawn.
Two of the signs feature skeleton hands, flipping off the neighborhood. “You make me wish I had more middle fingers,” one sign reads. The third is adorned with a rainbow, and reads, “Human-kind. Be both.”
Pederzani admits she’s embarrassed by the signs, saying, “I know this is not sweet and old-lady like, but I have a right to my feelings and a right to express the invasion that we feel.”
She has lived in the small suburban neighborhood with her two children since 2010. When she moved there from Hinesburg, Pederzani brought her dog rescue operation with her.
Vermont English Bulldog Rescue was for many years small and funded through Pederzani’s personal income. In 2015, it became a nonprofit and started bringing dogs of all breeds in from San Antonio, Texas — matching hundreds of dogs annually with adopters in Chittenden County and throughout Vermont.
But in 2022, things took a turn. As more and more delivery trucks loaded with dogs clogged up the small street, and more potential adopters began arriving at the house, neighbors started to take issue with the at-home rescue.
It turned “into a circus,” said Ron Bliss, a Lamplite Lane resident and one of 16 neighbors who have challenged her operation. “That’s when everybody really started to notice it.”
Two years ago, they took their complaints to town zoning officials. Now, the long-running neighborhood feud is heading to the Vermont Supreme Court, which will decide whether Pederzani’s use of her home for a dog rescue violates local zoning law on home businesses and outdoor work spaces.
‘These animals have no voice’
What began in 1998 with four to six dogs a month grew into the operation Pederzani has today — with roughly 700 dogs a year matched with Vermont homes, she said. Pederzani and her volunteers also take in local dogs that have been given up by their owners.
“These animals have no voice,” she said. “If you want to see why we do what we do, you have to come to one of these adoption events, because every time you see an 80-year-old man sitting there crying with a 15-year-old dog because no other rescue would adopt him, or a family who has been looking for a dog and finally found it — that’s why I do it.”
Bliss, who’s lived on Lamplite Lane for 19 years and is acting as the spokesperson for the neighbors, said the operation was “pretty quiet” for many years. Two neighbors now involved in challenging the rescue even adopted a dog from Pederzani.
But problems began as it grew. Vans transporting dogs would arrive late, disrupting adoption times, and people would sometimes all come at once, he said. An 18-wheeler once sat at the intersection for hours.
“Here’s the reality: these dogs come in — and this is no disrespect to the dogs or to the rescue — but these dogs have had a tough life,” Bliss continued, adding that, at times, dogs have sometimes gotten away and run through backyards.
Then the neighbors learned Pederzani didn’t have a permit.
“Once that got out, I think that’s when the complaints started,” he said. “Everybody was like, ‘Well, wait a minute, she’s running a business that’s not permitted.’”
Pederzani, who said in an interview that the operation “just sort of morphed,” admitted that deliveries and adoption events created traffic that was at times chaotic for the neighborhood.
“I will take responsibility for the fact that there were transport days when I was in my office buried in paperwork and not paying attention to what was going on out on the street,” she said. “There was traffic that was not parked where they should have been, and that was wrong, and I’ve apologized to the neighbors for that. It was never my goal to just basically say, ‘F you, this is my house, and I’m going to do what I want with it.’”
But still the tension built, and in the fall of 2022 a petition with more than 50 residents’ signatures was delivered to the town. Matthew Boulanger, Williston’s zoning administrator, subsequently issued a violation against Pederzani for operating a home business without a permit.
Kennel or home business?
At issue is the use of Pederzani’s backyard and the surrounding neighborhood to walk the dogs. Businesses that operate in residential neighborhoods under town zoning cannot use outdoor work spaces, and must operate within the home itself.
After the violation notice, Pederzani made two attempts to obtain a permit. Boulanger approved her second application in 2023, concluding, he told VTDigger in a recent interview, that language in the town’s bylaws allowed for kennels.
But the neighbors appealed his administrative approval to the Development Review Board, which reversed the decision. Pederzani then appealed the DRB’s decision to the state environmental court.
Christian Chorba, her attorney, has argued that what Pederzani is doing at her property is no different from typical dog fostering, which does not require a zoning permit.
The environmental court ruled in favor of her neighbors in January and found that her rescue constituted a home business, which, per town zoning law, is not allowed to use outdoor workspaces. But Chorba argues that the environmental court erred when it defined the rescue strictly as a home business rather than as a kennel. Town zoning allows for “a more specific exception to that prohibition allowing for kennels,” he said.
A Supreme Court hearing on the case has not yet been scheduled.
Bliss said the goal has never been to try to close the rescue down.
“If they move it off to a commercial site… we have no issue with it,” he said. “We have never once — contrary to what she said — said it should shut down. It just shouldn’t operate in this neighborhood.”
Pederzani claims she is in fact shifting operations to a new building in Taft Corners.
She said it’s been years since she’s had a transport of rescue dogs come to her Lamplite Lane home. Instead, she said, they’ve been going to the Green Mountain Masonic Center on Merchants Row, where, she said, the rescue has been slowly moving over the past several years.
Pederzani said she hopes to begin the permitting process to be able to start full operations out of the building in the coming months. She said she is working out a lease for the building, and has received assurances from the town that the rescue is permissible in the commercial area. Dogs would be kept there in kennels if need be, and adoption events will take place at the location on weekends, she said.
“We’ve been really grateful we were given a space to continue because we’re now up to anywhere between 45 and 60 dogs a month,” she said.
But even with a new location lined up, Pederzani has no plans to drop the court case. She said she was “surprised how many people, how many adopters, called me and emailed me and said, ‘You need to have that answer, whatever it is… There’s a chance that you could win, and you don’t want to walk away from that.’”
‘Minding our own business’
In the meantime, the drama on Lamplite Lane continues.
On Sept. 24, the Williston DRB will address another zoning violation issued against Pederzani on July 24. That violation stems from six complaints that have been filed against Pederzani since March that allege she continues to operate “business as usual.”
Volunteers walk dogs in the backyard or around the neighborhood “every morning and every afternoon,” while Pederzani is not home, one complaint claims. Adoptions continue to take place out of her residence, according to a complaint filed by Lamplite Lane resident Sanela Beric, and rescue dogs continue to be dropped off at the home.
“To detail the continued violations that have been occurring since the last complaint would generate a novel making the novel ‘War and Peace’ look like a short story,” Bliss, the neighbor, wrote in a zoning complaint, including photographs as evidence.
Chorba, Pederzani’s attorney, has argued in a letter to the DRB that no enforcement can be pursued by the town until the Supreme Court makes a decision, but Boulanger said the town has been advised to adhere to its standard process for reviewing the complaints.
For Pederzani, the complaints and the photos constitute an invasion of her privacy. She’s since filed no trespass orders with the town against both Bliss and another neighbor. She claims both have been photographing her at the Masonic Lodge.
“We’re sitting over here minding our own business, and he has got nothing better to do than drive around on a Sunday morning and take pictures of us sitting outside the building,” she said.
Bliss disputed that claim. The other neighbor, he said, had been driving to CVS, while Bliss was on his way from the Hannaford supermarket to town hall. Neither of them had been photographing her or her volunteers, Bliss said.
“I look up at the light next to CVS, and she’s behind me,” Bliss said. “I go over to the town hall, I drop off my paperwork, I go home, and a short time later, the police show up and trespass me,” he said.
“We’ve been trespassed for driving by,” he added. “That’s all we’ve done. It’s ridiculous.”
Bliss and his neighbors fear that Pederzani’s appeal to the Supreme Court is an indication that she plans to continue her operation on Lamplite Lane.
“This is about our neighborhood. Wherever she wants to run her operation and bring in her 700 plus dogs a year into Vermont, have at it,” he said. “It just can’t be done here.”
Pederzani, for her part, said her neighbors’ effort “has really hurt us in a huge way.” She estimates she’s spent $70,000 on legal costs.
“Whatever their decision is, is what it is,” Pederzani said, of the Vermont Supreme Court. “It’s not going to shut down the rescue. It won’t even change what I do at home, because there’s nothing at the house, and there’s no jurisdiction over fostering.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: A neighborhood dispute over a Williston dog rescue is headed to the Vermont Supreme Court.