Elon’s town council has laid out a road map for some regulatory changes that its members hope will address resident complaints about the municipality’s rules for recreational vehicles.
During its latest meeting on Tuesday, the council instructed Elon’s planning staff to tweak the town’s land management ordinance (LMO) to relax its parking restrictions on RVs that pop up in residential areas.
The council has resolved to make these changes to the LMO rather than the town’s code of ordinances so that the rules will apply both within Elon’s municipal limits and the extraterritorial jurisdiction, or ETJ, that lies outside the town’s borders.
Its members reached this decision in spite of a minor uprising that recently broke out among the ETJ’s residents when complaints about illegally parked RVs prompted the town’s staff to begin enforcing the rules in this unincorporated swath on Elon’s frontier.
The town council got its first whiff of this extraterritorial upheaval in February when the town’s planning staff proposed some amendments to “clean up” the text of the town’s three-year-old land management ordinance.
At the time, the town’s planning staff had observed that recent tips from neighbors had led to the discovery of 42 RV violations within the town’s ETJ. Rather than go after these breaches, the staff recommended moving the existing rules to the town’s code of ordinances, which applies strictly to Elon’s municipal limits. Feedback from residents nevertheless convinced the council to put the brakes on this proposal to give members of the general public an opportunity to weigh in on the current restrictions.
In the meantime, the town’s staff have temporarily stopped enforcing the town’s existing RV restrictions to allow the town’s leaders to consider a new set of rules in response to public suggestions.
The town went on to convene two community meetings on April 13 and April 26 about the town’s rules for RVs. During Tuesday’s council meeting, town planner Isabell Cooper recalled that some 27 individuals attended these meetings in order to share their rather consistent opinions about the existing rules.
Under Elon’s land management ordinance, the owners of RVs are currently forbidden to park their vehicles in front of their homes if they reside within an area that’s zoned for residential development. The existing rules permit them to leave the vehicles in backyards and side yards as long as they’re screened or enclosed in a building. The LMO nevertheless demands that they pay $60 for a “zoning compliance permit” to avail themselves of this limited privilege. It also allows them to move their RVs in front of their homes for up to seven, not necessarily consecutive, days in any calendar year.
Cooper informed the council that the participants in last month’s community meetings were overwhelmingly opposed to the LMO’s requirements for screening and zoning compliance permits. They were also unanimously against the 7-day allowance for RVs in front of homes, deeming this grace period to be overly restrictive.
Cooper nevertheless conceded that nearly two thirds of the people at both meetings agreed that RVs shouldn’t serve as permanent residences. She went on to note that the prevailing opinion among the first meeting’s participants was to soften the existing restrictions without transferring them out of the LMO. Meanwhile, the consensus at the second meeting favored a single provision to ensure that RVs are parked a certain distance from the public roadway.
The council, for its part, was initially divided in its response to Cooper’s report on the community meetings.
“People should have an RV and be able to park it in their yard. The way it’s written, if I had an RV, I couldn’t park it in my yard, and that’s just ridiculous.”
– Elon town councilman Quinn Ray
During Tuesday’s discussion, councilman Quinn Ray voiced particularly strong opposition to the rules as they currently stand.
“People should have an RV and be able to park it in their yard,” he declared. “The way it’s written, if I had an RV, I couldn’t park it in my yard, and that’s just ridiculous.”
Councilman Randy Orwig also expressed a strong preference for more lenient rules that he insisted ought to apply both to the town’s corporate limits as well as the ETJ.
“I think I am now leaning toward keeping it in the [land management ordinance] but loosening the regulations. No community around us has these [restrictions].”
– Elon town councilman Randy Orwig
“I think I am now leaning toward keeping it in the LMO but loosening the regulations,” he told the rest of the council. “No community around us has these [restrictions].”
Orwig went on to advocate a “less is more” approach to regulating RVs that Cooper admitted isn’t especially useful as guidance to the town’s planning staff.
Orwig’s suggestion that Elon is something of an anomaly in the way it regulates RVs drew a trenchant reply from mayor Emily Sharpe.
“The argument against that is that no community is like us,” she asserted before she slated her support for transferring the rules to the code of ordinance. Sharpe added that her own conversations with realtors have convinced her that the placement of RVs ought to be regulated because they can depress property values when left in front of otherwise high-dollar homes.
Sharpe’s inclinations were generally echoed by Elon’s mayor pro tem Monti Allison.
“Most RV owners are responsible. But let’s keep in mind what we do about the one who doesn’t have the common sense that you or I have.”
– Elon mayor pro tem Monti Allison
“Most RV owners are responsible,” he conceded. “But let’s keep in mind what we do about the one who doesn’t have the common sense that you or I have.”
Meanwhile, councilmen Michael Woods and Steve Exum combed through the town’s existing rules to pick out the ones that they felt could be salvaged. They ultimately keyed in on provisions that RVs must have valid tags, should be parked on a driveway or pad, and may not serve as permanent residences – as well as a couple of other restrictions.
In the end, the rest of the council concurred with the pair’s preferences. They also agreed to dispense with the existing requirement for screening and the mandate for a zoning compliance permit. A consensus also emerged to replace the 7-day grace period with a new rule what permits parked RVs to poke out in front of a home as long as they remain a certain, yet-to-be specified distance from the public roadway.
Finally, the council agreed to provide a “grandfather” exemption for RV owners who purchased their vehicles before the town’s land management ordinance went in to effect in 2023.
The council instructed the town’s planning staff to rough out some changes to the LMO based on these directives and bring them back for final approval after running them by the town’s planning board at some point this summer.
