Planet of the Apes?

With God as my wittness, not a word of this is made up.

Some backstory:

My friend Dev is a blackbelt in karate (which is worth about one hundred hilarious stories in and of itself), and his old instructor's brother recently bought some substantial acreage in Wilson, on which he has constructed one of those epic, Tasteless Mansions that anyone who lives in the almost-country knows and loves. No one really knows how this guy got so much money, but we are aware of one source of his income. "Charlie the Chimp," a small chimpanzee with relatively impressive martial arts training, is a staple at state and county fairs. When our new neighbor goes to the local grocery store, you can bet that Charlie is with him, seated comfortably in a bag while his master peruses the Hamburger Helper. I suppose "Karate Chimp" counts as a helper animal, though I'd be more inclined to use the word "henchman."

Remember what I said about this being true, and stay with me here.

For the past two years, this guy has been trying to construct a chimpanzee sanctuary on his property. Some problems:

1. His first proposal utilized a chainlink fence and, I'm assuming, prayer to keep the chimps inside his property.
2. Since animal sanctuaries are untaxable, everyone assumes he's doing this as some kind of a crazy tax dodge, especially as his McMansion is on the same part of his property as the sanctuary would be (and would therefore be tax-free).
3. Neighbors are afraid that the chimps will escape his property, eat their garbage, and be impossible to shoo away as they will be trained in karate... I'd just like to recap here: they are afraid that chimpanzees trained in the martial arts will get into their garbage and run amok, due to their superior skills in hand-to-hand combat.

In response to all of the above, there was a huge town meeting a couple of weeks ago to attempt to resolve the issue. He unveiled elaborate blueprints detailing a sort of chimpanzee compound/supervillian lair, with three layers of concrete walls and automatically-sealing doors, a cage network, and for absolutely no reason, several thousand birds. Experts were brought in from across the region, character witnesses attested to the fact that, no really, this guy isn't a Batman villian, and a neighborhood watch official from an area in Niagara Falls that has such a sanctuary reported that he had experienced no chimp-related incidents, though the Niagara Falls chimps went untrained. "They have the strength of ten men, you know!"

However, I am sad to report, the Karate-Chimps-Will-Eat-My-Garbage-And-Render-Me-Helpless-What-With-Their-Plank-Breaking camp stayed firm, and the issue goes unresolved. The two-year battle continues. It isn't even a legal battle, really, as there's nothing stopping him from building the sanctuary right now. That's actually the most baffling part of all of this. His neighbors include a dairy farm and perhaps two other houses, depending on your definition of "neighbor," and he still demands community support before he begins constuction.

I'd send Charlie my condolences, but I'm afraid he'd eat my garbage and incapacitate me.