By: Lydia Crawley The Parsons Advocate
Following debate between local residents and the Tucker County Commission over zoning regulations in the County, the Tucker County Planning Commission went on the record about a proposed Subdivision Ordinance that was referenced by the County Commission during a recent meeting.
Commissioners and residents have been hotly debating the issue of zoning over the proposed Ridgeline Project for the past few weeks after a determination by the Department of Environmental Protection that the project would not be subject to House Bill 2014, which would take away local government involvement.
Planning Commission President Ben Herrick said that there was some misconceptions among the County Commission and the public regarding the defunct Subdivision Ordinance and what it was intended to do.
“There’s been a couple of articles lately and people wanting to commence working on a zoning ordinance,” Herrick said.
Herrick said that the Commission had said at the Commission meeting that the County had already tried to pass zoning, however that was not the case. Herrick said that the County actually attempted to pass a Subdivision Ordinance.
“Actually some of the Commissioners are saying, well we tried that once,” Herrick said. “No that was a subdivision ordinance. Its different.”
The difference is in the geography of the ordinance, Herrick said. The subdivision ordinance is County wide and only effects those properties within the boundaries of the County. Each municipality enacts their own rules and ordinances regarding property.
“A subdivision ordinance is County wide,” Herrick said. ” A zoning ordinance is geographically bounded.”
The subdivision ordinance was not designed to effect the architectural aspects of building projects, Herrick said. The ordinance was never designed to instruct developers what could or could not be built within the County, only what guidelines and utilities were to be installed in the project to meet County requirements.
“A subdivision ordinance does not get into the architectural side of it,” Herrick said. “It doesn’t tell people what they can build or what they can’t build.”
Herrick said he lives on Kent Street in Davis on an unpaved street. After going between the State Highway Department and the City of Davis about jurisdiction and financing, the City will be paving his street during the current construction, Herrick said. A cost to the residents of the City of Davis of approximately $200,000 according to Herrick. Herrick said that cost should not be passed onto the residents, but to the developer, who would in turn pass it on to the residents of that particular subdivision. That was the intent of the proposed ordinance.
Other issues with developments in the Holly Meadows area that include streets that were too narrow for emergency vehicles, the Commission said. The ordinance was designed to make sure that any new developments, the infrastructure met those new requirements so that emergency vehicles could reach residences.
“The whole intent of that subdivision ordinance was whenever a developer came through looking to build something, the entire intent was to make sure that, that development included the necessary infrastructure so that the County wouldn’t have to pick up the bill,” Herrick said.
The ordinance did not survive the first public meeting, Herrick said. The Commission said it was never designed to tell residents what they could or could not do on their land, only developers what guidelines had to be followed to put in a new development. However, the public misunderstood the intent, Planning Commission member Angie Shockley said.
“The citizens totally didn’t understand that and there was a whole lot of stuff that happened and the Planning Commission got absolutely massacred because we were telling people what to do with their land, which we were not,” Shockley said.
The ordinance currently is complete, but sitting on a shelf at the Courthouse ready to be utilized if needed, the Commission stated.
“An ordinance is something that can implemented by your County government,” Shockley said. “Zoning has to be voted on by the citizens.”
Currently, there is nothing in County regulations, according to the Commission, to stop a developer from doing what they will with a property. According to Shockley, a developer can come in, buy land and do whatever they want with it currently other than oversight by the Health Department and Public Service District. She said that she was amazing that people “are now clambering for something to be done” when an ordinance is currently sitting on the shelf in Parsons.
