Chatham County is now Zoned

Do you feel more protected from your neighbors and friends now that the entire county is zoned? County-wide residential zoning was implemented Monday at the Commissioners meeting. Did anyone really expect that the outcome would be different? Early in the process an interim solution was proposed by some of the more conservative county commissioners, but their approach was overruled by the more left-leaning commissioners. Recall that the Chatham Democrat Committee went so far as to actively campaign against a sitting Democrat Commissioner who was not sufficiently supportive of zoning. This was a done deal, regardless of any public input from the people being zoned.

At the Commissioners meeting fifteen citizens spoke about zoning; twelve stood against the zoning plan as presented, while three speakers were pro zoning. Just coincidentally all three are registered Democrats, and two of them live in areas that were already zoned, residing miles away from where the meeting was held in Bear Creek. One pro-zoning speaker who lives in northeast Chatham County spoke as if the County would not survive another day without zoning. By her way of thinking we all need protection and only the Commissioners can provide that protection. Another supporter has spoken at least nine times before the Commissioners in the past year regarding zoning or environmental issues. Both these folks are already zoned; why are they so insistent on zoning those who are not, and why the rush? In fact, Commissioner Petty questioned the other commissioners about why now, and received no answer.

Jason Sullivan, the County Planning Director, stated that 300 businesses will need to be looked at (but I am not quite sure exactly what that means) and that the process will take many months. Then County staff will return to the Commissioners with an offer to rezone those business at no fee to the property owners.

Brian Bock presented the minority report from the Planning Board against zoning. He stated that the Planning Board was given only one option to review - that of straight up all or nothing zoning, with no other options other than the one desired by the Commissioners.

George Lucier presented the Planning Board recommendation, which he called The Commissioners Initiative, and gave 10 reasons to zone the entire county. I could not follow the logic with some of his presentation. His point number 4 was that farming needs protection, yet his point number 5 was that bringing in business was critical. I fail to see how blanket residential zoning achieves either of those goals.

Commissioner Hales made the motion to zone the entire county, and Commissioner Howard seconded the motion. That those two sponsored the zoning motion is not surprising given their history getting to the present vote. Remember that Commissioner Howard is up for re-election this November.