Carports only allowed in back yards?

The Jonesborough Board of Mayor and Aldermen amended a zoning ordinance so that it no longer requires freestanding carports to be built only in a person’s back yard.
The town’s building inspector, J.W. Greene, recently discovered the zoning ordinance required accessory structures like carports be in a person’s back yard in an R-1 residential zone.
That location, however, is often impractical for a carport, leaders said.
The amendment to municipal code approved at last week’s meeting adds conditions for which the location of a carport can be elsewhere.
Those conditions include providing a schematic showing the carport location and distances from the property lines and residence. The carport location must also meet existing setback requirements and be approved by the building inspector.
“Who would have thunk it? You can’t have a carport anywhere but in your back yard,” Mayor Kelly Wolfe said following the approval for the ordinance change. “That’s one of those things that you discover by accident, I guess.”