County commissioners: No interest in planning board idea of increasing minimum lot sizes across county

No commissioner agreed with planning board proposal for doubling minimum lot size in unincorporated areas of county

A plan to increase residential lot sizes in rural parts of the county was essentially left in the field to rot when it came before Alamance County’s board of commissioners earlier this week.

The board of commissioners ultimately took no action act all after a public hearing on Tuesday drew stiff opposition to this planning board recommendation, which would’ve raised the minimum residential lot size from 30,000 to 65,000 square feet in unincorporated parts of the county.

The county’s planning board had endorsed this same rule change on July 11 – along with three other proposals that would’ve adjusted the dimensions of cul-de-sac lots and raised the minimum lot size in the non-critical portions of watersheds.

Yet, the hue and cry that went up at Tuesday’s public hearing was enough to discourage the commissioners from moving forward with any of the planning board’s four recommendations.

“I have to admit that the larger you require a lot to be, the more it’s going to cost to build a house.”

– Commissioner vice chairman Steve Carter

The icy response of the county’s governing board was perhaps summed up by its vice chairman Steve Carter, who echoed what had been the leading objection of residents who weighed in during the public hearing on the proposed increase in minimum lot size.

“I have to admit that the larger you require a lot to be,” he told his fellow commissioners after the hearing, “the more it’s going to cost to build a house.”

Size matters

The demise of these potential changes was, in some ways, reminiscent of an earlier flap over an equally ill-fated bid by the planning board to introduce zoning to the unincorporated community of Snow Camp.

Despite the county’s long-standing antipathy to countywide zoning, the planning board had initially embarked on its “small area plan” with the blessing of the commissioners after an out-of-town mining concern took advantage of the county’s lax development rules to set up a quarry in this rural community. The planning board went on to spend over a year fine-tuning this plan before it was unveiled in 2021 – to the utter dismay of many rural residents.

Pushback from the public eventually convinced county officials to abandon this experiment with rural zoning in 2022. Yet, it didn’t discourage some members of the county’s planning board members from seeking other ways to bring some order to the laissez faire conditions in the county’s rural reaches.

During Tuesday’s hearing, Matthew Hoagland, the county’s planning director, credited the inspiration for the planning board’s proposed lot size requirement with a suggestion that its current chairman Rodney Cheek raised in the aftermath of the Snow Camp debacle.

Although Cheek had initially proposed a minimum lot size of five acres, this figure was later whittled down to two acres by a subcommittee that the planning board had tasked with exploring Cheek’s recommendation.

In addition to a two-acre minimum lot size, the subcommittee’s members came up with two ways for developers to get around this restriction. One of these workarounds would be to design a “cluster” development, whose smaller lots would be offset by generous amounts of open space elsewhere in the same subdivision. The subcommittee also called for a special review process that would allow the planning board to vet and approve subdivisions that departed from both the minimum lot size requirement and the cluster development guidelines.

The subcommittee eventually presented these proposals to the full planning board this past October along with an accompanying set of goals to justify the potential changes. Among other things, these goals sought to “safeguard agricultural operations, reduce environmental impacts on water resources, reduce impervious surfaces and stormwater runoff, and allow for affordable housing.”

This reference to affordable housing would later be something of a sticking point during the public hearing. Even so, that particular goal wasn’t actually part of the proposal which came before commissioners that morning with the unanimous blessing of the county’s full planning board.

For all its grand aspirations, the subcommittee’s original plan would fail to catch fire with the planning board’s full membership. Hoagland recalled that the group ultimately deadlocked 4-to-4 when it voted on those recommendations in June.

A month later, Cheek introduced another proposal that abandoned the 2-acre lot size in favor of a more modest requirement of 65,000 square feet – or the equivalent of 1 1/2 acres. According to Hoagland, this proposed change would still be far less permissive than the current 30,000 square foot standard. As an illustration, he told the board of commissioners that, whereas a 10-acre subdivision would currently generate about 11 individual lots, the proposed regulations would lower that number to about five or six.

Cheek and his colleagues went on to propose this same threshold of 65,000 square feet as a new minimum requirement for residential lots in non-critical portions of watersheds. The county’s current regulations demand at least one acre, or 43,560 square feet, for each lot in these same restricted areas.

In the meantime, the planning board suggested some tweaks to the required dimensions of cul-de-sac lots. These proposed changes included a change from 20 to 26 feet for a lot’s required road frontage as well as a minimum width of 175 feet at the building line for cul-de-sac lots that are less than 2 acres in size.

No sale!

The planning board went on to give its unanimous nod to these four recommendations during its most recently monthly meeting on July 11. Its members also tacked on a proviso that noted these suggested changes would “encourage open space preservation” while “reducing development pressure in rural and agricultural areas.”

These assorted proposals were nevertheless almost universally panned by the residents who addressed the commissioners about the planning board’s recommendations on Tuesday.

Among those who approached the commissioners that morning were a number of development professionals, who expressed various levels of outrage over the proposed increase in the county’s minimum residential lot size.

The prevailing sentiment among these critics was that the planning board’s proposed figure would more expensive to develop homes in unincorporated parts of the county. Some speakers also saw this proposal as a blow to the subcommittee’s aforementioned goal of promoting affordable housing.

“They wanted affordable . . . but they shot themselves in the foot.”

– Chris Foust

“They wanted affordable…but they shot themselves in the foot,” declared Chris Foust, a local utility and septic contractor.

“It does nothing to help affordable housing by making lots bigger.”

– Jeff Allred

“It does nothing to help affordable housing by making lots bigger,” added Jeff Allred, who went on to surmise that the planning board’s members had “an agenda” in pressing for such a seemingly self-defeating proposal.

The affordability of homes was likewise on the mind of Jeff Throneburg, a local homebuilder, who identified himself as the current president of the Alamance-Caswell builders association.

“If you want to increase lot sizes, you better be ready to build cheap apartments because we can’t build them family homes.”

– Jeff Throneburg, local homebuilder, current president of Alamance-Caswell builders association

“If you want to increase lot sizes,” Throneburg told the board of commissioners, “you better be ready to build cheap apartments because we can’t build them family homes.”

“The average person out here trying to get started cannot afford a larger lot. We’re already in a struggling economy . . . and it’s hard enough for people to experience the American Dream…now, they can kiss it goodbye.”

– Dwight Epperson, local realtor

“The average person out here trying to get started cannot afford a larger lot,” agreed realtor Dwight Epperson. “We’re already in a struggling economy…and it’s hard enough for people to experience the American Dream…now, they can kiss it goodbye.”

The commissioners heard a more institutional perspective on this same theme from Nolan Kirkman, a civil engineer who recently retired from an assistant city manager position in Burlington.

”Given that property tax revenues are the lifeblood for cities and counties, it’s critical not to over-regulate in such a way that the tax base cannot keep up. The tax revenue generated by rural development under the new standards could drop significantly . . . and equally unfortunate, current property owners could see diminished land values.”

– Former Burlington assistant city manager Nolan Kirkman

”Given that property tax revenues are the lifeblood for cities and counties, it’s critical not to over-regulate in such a way that the tax base cannot keep up,” the long-time civil servant asserted. “The tax revenue generated by rural development under the new standards could drop significantly…and equally unfortunate, current property owners could see diminished land values.”

The planning board’s recommendations also tanked with a number of people who had previously served on this appointed advisory group to the board of commissioners.

These former insiders included Sandy Ellington-Graves, a local realtor and one-time planning board member who currently serves as the chairman of the Alamance-Burlington school board. Ellington-Graves recalled that, during her own stint on the planning board, she had chaired a subcommittee that floated a minimum lot size of one-acre as opposed to the acre and a half the board’s current membership saw fit to endorse.

“The [subcommittee’s] conclusion included a general agreement that a one acre lot size was gracious plenty. But after more than two years of debate, nobody has been able to identify a compelling reason to more than double the current minimum lot size.”

– Sandy Ellington-Graves, local realtor, chairman of ABSS school board, and former planning board member

“The [subcommittee’s] conclusion included a general agreement that a one acre lot size was gracious plenty,” she recalled. “But after more than two years of debate, nobody has been able to identify a compelling reason to more than double the current minimum lot size.”

Some former insiders were even more pointed in their criticism of the planning board’s existing members.

“The proposed rules have been pushed to you by the current planning board based on a personal agenda.  I don’t believe they solve a problem that exists outside the planning board itself.”

– Todd Lambert, a former planning board chairman and recently-retired engineer with the City of Burlington

“The proposed rules have been pushed to you by the current planning board based on a personal agenda,” insisted Todd Lambert, a former planning board chairman who recently retired from his day job as Burlington’s city engineer. “I don’t believe they solve a problem that exists outside the planning board itself.”

“At least several of the current members of the planning board have made this an issue not for the betterment of the landowners of Alamance County but for the benefit of their privacy and personal agendas. In essence, this recommendation is a backdoor way to impose additional steps toward county-wide zoning, without calling it such.”

– Realtor Ken Walker, former planning board chairman

“At least several of the current members of the planning board have made this an issue not for the betterment of the landowners of Alamance County but for the benefit of their privacy and personal agendas,” agreed realtor Ken Walker, who had also done a turn as the chairman of Alamance County’s planning board. “In essence, this recommendation is a backdoor way to impose additional steps toward county-wide zoning, without calling it such.”

In the end, the only person who spoke up in support of the planning board was Henry Vines, a farmer from Snow Camp who has made several unsuccessful bids for the board of commissioners. Vines argued that, rather than hobbling the local tax base, the planning board’s recommendations would limit one of the biggest drains on the county’s coffers.

“For every house built, their usage is $1.40 for every dollar they pay in. Who takes that up? Us farmers – our cows don’t go to schools. We’re basically subsidizing all the houses that are being built.”

– Henry vines

“For every house built, their usage is $1.40 for every dollar they pay in,” he told the county’s governing board. “Who takes that up? Us farmers – our cows don’t go to schools. We’re basically subsidizing all the houses that are being built.”

Best-laid plans

The tendency of many speakers to assume the worst of the county’s planning board wasn’t necessarily shared by the commissioners.

In fact, commissioner Craig Turner made a point of defending the advisory board’s motives after the shellacking it got during the public hearing.

“[These] motivations, I can tell, are nothing more than to advance the goals they set in public,” he told his fellow commissioners.

Even so, several of the commissioners saw an inherent contradiction in the goals which the planning board had espoused and the potential impacts of its proposed rule changes.

“I asked several planning board members: ‘what’s your real goal,’” John Paisley, Jr, the chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners, said on this particular score. “Some said preserve farmland. Some said ‘we don’t want to be Guilford county – population wise’ and ‘we don’t want cluster development. But it particularly concerns me that we’re really financially restricting [younger land owners]…Heaven help the young person coming out of college, or coming out of grad school…It looks like we’re cost prohibiting our young folks.”

Yet, the final takeaway for other members of the county’s governing board was the somewhat counterintuitive suggestion that it may be time to make another run at that ever-present bete noire of countywide zoning.

“I believe that this is one of those things that lights the fire of county wide zoning. I haven’t really been in favor of countywide zoning . . . But If you can do what you want with your land, so can your neighbor, and it may not be what you want across the street from you.”

– County commissioner Bill Lashley

“I believe that this is one of those things that lights the fire of county wide zoning,” declared commissioner Bill Lashley. “I haven’t really been in favor of countywide zoning…But If you can do what you want with your land, so can your neighbor, and it may not be what you want across the street from you.”

“Bill, I’m with you on zoning,” concurred commissioner Pam Thompson before she and her colleagues decided not to take action on the planning board’s recommendations. “But we keep skirting around that…I think there’s a lot of work to do on this, and we can’t keep putting it off to the next meeting.”

- Advertisement -