Local perspective needed for county land-use code

Zoning has been set up which will be unfavorable to many and extremely favorable to a few. And it has been done arbitrarily without support from the Comprehensive Plan, actual uses on the ground or any county files. Local owners are sure to suffer and large out-of-state owners will benefit. This zoning cannot be allowed to go forward. The county commissioners turned a blind eye to the problem for months and just now have agreed to send another $100,000 to the seemingly incompetent consulting firm which created the monster. The total payment to Kendig Keast Collaborative is now approaching $500,000.

The responsibility for this mess lies with the county commissioners, who have steadfastly supported the consultant and this misguided and convoluted document in spite of public outcries at meetings and hearings and in phone calls, letters and petitions. These objections have come from members of the Planning Commission and the Technical and Advisory Committees as well as property owners from all across the county who have pointed out specific problems with the document.

All across the county 5-, 10- and 20-acre homesites will be made nonconforming by the Working Lands Large designation. This will affect expansions, improvements and financing. Vast areas will be downzoned. In many cases nearly 80 acres will be needed just to support a house because of the unfair way that acres are to be measured. At the same time other properties are to be greatly favored by unreasonable and unsupported upzoning.

In one area, 6,850 acres of steep, timbered hillsides in a rural area are proposed for zoning that will allow 6,500 houses or nearly one house per acre. And all eight of these adjacent properties are held by out-of-state owners. The commissioners, the planning staff and the consultant all seem to be unable or unwilling to explain this clear departure from accepted zoning practices. One suggestion was that an innocent error was made. Well, there are 213 separate parcels there. If each parcel requires its own mouse click to change the zoning, that is a lot of clicking. I thought only Ham (the piggy bank) in Toy Story had that level of out-of-control dexterity. Perhaps someone just wanted to bring home the bacon. At other locations, swamp land is to be zoned for 5-acre lots and out-of-state owners are to receive favorable industrial as well as residential zoning. Some favored property owners were told of an early opportunity to request changes in the zoning map, but most were not.

In my first college class in real estate, I learned that zoning limits property rights and values. Over the 50 years since then, nobody contradicted that position until one commissioner pointed out that property rights do not exist until they are allowed by zoning. Another commissioner observed that they did not need any more time for reviewing the document at the same time the third commissioner said the real problem is public education. One even observed that some members of the public don't want to be educated. And the consultant professionally observed that we have "a big-ass county." The public is educated and communicating, but the commissioners are not listening.

This proposed zoning code must be scrapped in its entirety. Let's continue to use the existing code until we understand exactly what is wrong with it. Then informed local people can work to amend or replace it. Qualified people will volunteer to do this if they believe they will be heard, and the cost will be insignificant compared with the dollars the county has given to Kendig Keast.

John McFaddin is a Medimont resident.