1. Attention District 5 Citizens: There is an opening on the Planning Commission for a resident of District 5. Ms. Dot Donato has resigned. If you live in District 5 (Shenandoah), and you would like to serve your community by being a voting member of the Planning Commission, contact Supervisor Carol Lee Strickler, 652-3211
To all of the conspiracy theorists out there, here's your chance to be part of the CLICK.
2. Planning Commission Work Session 13 November 07
The only item on the agenda was a review of the proposed By-Right Subdivision ordinance that was drafted by the By-Right Subdivision subcommittee over the last several months. The county planner went over the proposed changes to the ordinance enumerated in the blog below entitled “Consider These Changes Carefully.” Several of the commissioners asked that some of the language be refined to clarify its intent and that a few typos be corrected. Beyond that, it was a pretty routine session. The ordinance will be brought up for public hearing some time after the first of the year. If any of the proposed changes shock your sensibilities, now is the time to make your voice heard.
Alice's opinion: Although I didn't attend the session last night, I am struck by the idea that the Planning Commissioners didn't have much to say about it. There were only 3 commissioners on the subcommittee. The citizens in the audience were not allowed to give their input, as it was a work session. Yet the commissioners who weren't on the subcommittee didn't have substantive questions.
Why not?
Do you have questions about this change? One commenter said this was about keeping your neighbor from selling out to developers. No, it's not. The ordinance that relates to developers is contained in the Class A and Class B rules. This is about what you can do if your kids grow up and you want to split off pieces of your land for them. It's also about what you can do if your taxes get so high that you have to split off a piece of land in order to keep your house.
Read carefully, Citizens. This is about YOU.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
10 comments:
I nominate Chris says.
Do I here a second?
Too ignorant!It would be a step back even from Donato. There are already too many Yahoos on the Planning Commission.
"One commenter said this was about keeping your neighbor from selling out to developers. No, it's not. The ordinance that relates to developers is contained in the Class A and Class B rules."
What about the Foltz farm on 211 (whitehouse bridge)?? That entire farm is being developed as a by-right subdivision. There is nothing in the ordinance that says if you are a land developer you must do a class a or b subdivision.So why would you if you can slide around the rules using the by-right method?
The byright subd. only lets you devide once every 2 years, I don't believe developers work like that.
Not all developers buy a piece of land and immediatly put houses on it. They sometimes buy land and hold it for many years until the market is right. In the mean time they can, by our current rules, divide the property exponentially and save a tremendous amount of money. I read through the copy posted here and from what I can tell about the non-family part you can cut off a lot today and sell it tomorrow it's not like you have to wait 5 years to sell the lot. If you are developing a property you are a developer whether you are Ryan homes or a mom and pop. You need to consider the expense of doing a class a or b subdivision in your plan. Maybe PCW should move this and the comments above to "consider these changes.." so the subdivision chat is in the same place.
Thats true you can cut off a peice today and sell it tomorrow, but you can't cut out another peice under the existing ordinace for another 2 years.
Here's the part I don't understand. Suppose you own 40 acres, and you have a son you want to give 5 acres to to build his house. Let's say this son is going to stay and help you with the property. Maybe you need all the property, it's a ranch or something. So under this rule, you do that. Then something changes, and two years later, another son decides to move to Page. You can't break off another piece of the land for that second son until five years has passed, right?
There were two purposes to fix this ordinance. One purpose was to prevent the situation where septic fields were not located on the property, and roads were not designed correctly.
But I think where it went wrong was in attaching a second purpose to it -- one to prevent growth in the county. It looks like every move made by this commission and board is a move to "defend" the county from having anyone move in here.
But no one is trying to, are they? There are old people moving in, but barely at the rate of the young people moving out, isn't that true? Adding superfluous restrictions, like "five years" and "ten acres" sounds just mean and hostile, rather than anything that serves an important purpose.
Shouldn't it be enough to fix the problem defined: roads, sewers, wells -- and let the extra little digs like "five years" and "ten acres" stay out of the law?
Just to clarify, You can do as many family divisions as you wish. It is the non-family that has the time restriction.
Thanks, Darrel. I appreciate your response. Now that I go back and read it with that response in mind, I can see that's what it says. That removes what I thought was a problem.
Alice
Mr. Short,
Thanks for your time to help the rest of us better understand some of the nuances of the proposed By-Right Subdivision ordinance. As I suggested elsewhere, not all may agree but it is start to build understanding.
The format of a Planning Commission work session is not particularly conducive to providing the citizens in the peanut gallery with a complete understanding of the rationale behind an issue under discussion. Quite often they wander away from the peanut gallery left with only their interpretation of the stark written or spoken word on which to base an opinion. Seldom are citizens aren’t even privy to a document that is being discussed especially in the early stages of a developing issue. I can’t help but wonder why the less formal work session could not permit questions eliciting simple clarifications to issues that are being addressed. I guess it could open the door to more complications but if rules for asking the questions were in place, the Chairman could control the floor. Just a thought!
Post a Comment