CRANBERRY TWP — The township might soon have an ordinance that governs the length and height of residential fences.

There currently aren’t any laws on the books concerning fences, and fences already in place won’t be affected by any new rules.

Director of Community Development Ron Henshaw said Monday that the township drew up the new ordinance after receiving complaints from a resident about his neighbor’s newly constructed fence.

That fence went all the way up to the sidewalk, Henshaw said, effectively blocking the view of oncoming traffic for neighbors attempting to back out of their driveways.

“That incident caused us to take a closer look at things and we saw this was a problem,” Henshaw said. “We saw it was something that needed to be addressed ordinance-wise.”

The board of supervisors last month briefly discussed the issue and is expected to vote on the proposed ordinance at an April 1 meeting.

As of now, the new ordinance would prohibit fences higher than 6 feet.

In addition, any homeowner who wants to build a fence more than 3 feet high first would have to obtain a permit from the township. Those fences would have to be cut off within 14 feet of the back edge of a curb, or within 6 feet of the back edge of a sidewalk.

“Not everyone has sidewalks, so we used different measurements to equal the same thing,” Henshaw said.

Any fence less than 3 feet high would be deemed “decorative” and wouldn’t fall under the new ordinance, he said.

Henshaw said the township hasn’t yet determined how much a permit will cost, but added that he doesn’t expect to see many cases come through the planning commission.

“We don’t expect to see a lot of these,” he said. “It’s just a precautionary measure to make sure we’re taking them safely into account.”

The supervisors granted preliminary approval to the ordinance at a meeting earlier this month.