Is county ‘lot size’ a backdoor method to implement countywide zoning? Public, commissioners dubious

A prominent Prussian general once said that “no plan survives first contact” when opposing forces meet in real time.

This battle-forged wisdom proved true enough on Monday when Alamance County’s planning director presented the county’s board of commissioners with his latest proposal to introduce zoning to the county’s rural reaches.

Although planning director Matthew Hoagland touted this plan as the very “opposite of old-fashioned zoning,” his proposal nevertheless suffered the same dismal fate as every previous attempt to bring countywide zoning to Alamance County.

After being thoroughly mauled by a succession of public speakers, Hoagland’s suggestions encountered a mixture of uncomfortable silence and skepticism from the county’s governing board. In the end, the prospects for this proposal were perfectly summed up by Steve Carter, the vice chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners.

“I’m reminded of that old adage,” the board’s vice chairman declared before he gave Hoagland leave to return to his seat: “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

Carter delivered this inauspicious verdict less than three years after the county’s planning board scuttled another zoning plan that had zeroed in on the unincorporated community of Snow Camp. This so-called small area plan had emerged in the wake of a firestorm over a rock quarry that had obtained the green light from a previous planning director to set up shop in this rural township – unbeknownst to either its residents or the county’s governing board.

This project’s under-the-radar approval, which was entirely kosher under the county’s existing development rules, led to a concerted push from the site’s neighbors for tougher land use restrictions. The county’s planning department responded to this grassroots pressure with the proposed small area plan for Snow Camp. This plan nevertheless drew an equal but opposite reaction from anti-zoning crusaders, who managed to squelch the idea in the opening months of 2022.

In the wake of the furor over the small area plan, the members of Alamance County’s planning board hashed out a more modest set of recommendations that they hoped would offer rural residents a modicum of protection from large-scale development. In particular, the planning board’s members suggested a tweak to the county’s subdivision ordinance that would increase the minimum residential lot size from 30,000 to 65,000 square feet.

The planning board’s proposed threshold, which amounts to about 1.5 acres, failed to go anywhere with the commissioners after a tumultuous public hearing in 2024. The commissioners, instead, instructed the planning director to draw up a “more detailed” proposal that would address the array of concerns they had heard from the public.

“This is, to me, the opposite of old-fashioned zoning which creates complex rules and abrupt changes in land use. Instead, these rules aim to preserve natural and rural areas, encourage new development around current development, and provide flexibility in rules.”

– Alamance County planning director Matthew Hoagland

The plan that Hoagland pitched to the commissioners on Monday was the end result of this year-old directive to deal with the county’s land use challenges through a more systematic approach. Hoagland insisted that, in crafting this plan, he tried to avoid some of the pitfalls that had doomed earlier attempts to regulate land use in unincorporated parts of the county.

“This is, to me, the opposite of old-fashioned zoning which creates complex rules and abrupt changes in land use,” he went on to assure the county’s governing board. “Instead, these rules aim to preserve natural and rural areas, encourage new development around current development, and provide flexibility in rules.”

Hoagland proceeded to present the commissioners with a map that split up the county’s unincorporated areas into six land-use districts. These proposed subdivisions included “agricultural” districts that dominated the county’s rural reaches, “rural residential” zones along the state-maintained highways which crisscross the county, and “suburban transitional” areas on the margins of cities and towns.

Hoagland’s map was also peppered with varicolored splotches to mark out traditional “mill villages,” moderately dense “rural communities,” and “employment centers” that lie in the county’s planning jurisdiction.

Hoagland informed the commissioners that he had come up with different development rules to distinguish each of these development “districts.” In particular, he proposed minimum lot sizes ranging from 2 to 5 acres in the more rural of the six subdivisions. He also alluded to other rules that would allow denser land use in “suburban transitional” zones, permit mixed-use development in “rural communities,” and protect traditional activities in “mill villages” and “agricultural” areas.

“Too many places that we visited in North Carolina suffered from what we called suburban sameness. What drew us to Alamance County was the wide open spaces, the working farms, the small towns with deep roots.”

– Mary Beth Kissinger

Hoagland’s plan drew a few words of support from Mary Beth Kissinger, a Saxapahaw resident who was one of the eight people to weigh in on the planning director’s proposal during a designated public comment period on Monday. Kissinger said that she originally settled in Saxapahaw in light of the character and charm that she said Hoagland’s suggestions aim to preserve.

“Too many places that we visited in North Carolina suffered from what we called suburban sameness,” she told the commissioners. “What drew us to Alamance County was the wide open spaces, the working farms, the small towns with deep roots.”

Kissinger was the only one to speak up in favor of the planning director’s proposal. The other seven individuals who approached the commissioners were unanimous in their opposition to Hoagland’s prospective changes.

Of particular concern to most of these critics was the potential increase in minimum lot sizes to as much as 5 acres in some of the proposed districts. Jeff Throneburg, who spoke up on behalf of the local homebuilders association, contrasted this threshold unfavorably with the planning board’s more modest recommendation from 2024.

“The first time it was brought before y’all it was one and a half acres and now it’s grown tremendously. . . If you’re going to increase the lot sizes, it’s going to make the American Dream…unattainable.”

–  Builder Jeff Throneburg with the Local homebuilders association

“The first time it was brought before y’all it was one and a half acres and now it’s grown tremendously.” Throneburg declared. “If you’re going to increase the lot sizes, it’s going to make the American Dream…unattainable.”

Marlo Countiss, a realtor who also approached the podium on Monday, was equally concerned about the impact the proposed rules would have on homeownership.

“This is not protecting our rural character, this is pricing people out of Alamance County.”

– Realtor Marlo Countiss

“This is not protecting our rural character,” she added; “this is pricing people out of Alamance County.”

Kristin Foust questioned the planning director’s claims about the amount of public input that had gone into his recommendations.

“What is the reason behind this? We’ve not been given one, and what is concerning to me is that the majority of the county is unaware that this is going on.”

– Kristin Foust

“What is the reason behind this? We’ve not been given one,” Foust went on to assert, “and what is concerning to me is that the majority of the county is unaware that this is going on.”

Meanwhile, Mike Owens saw the proposed regulations as a betrayal of everything that the members of the majority-Republican board of commissioners had publicly opposed when they campaigned for their current positions.

“It’s going to be zoning, and it’s going to be very oppressive zoning. They, instead, need to address the root of the problem.”

– Mike Owens

“It’s going to be zoning, and it’s going to be very oppressive zoning,” Owens objected. “They, instead, need to address the root of the problem.”

In response to his detractors, Hoagland assured the commissioners that his recommendations had been vetted by the county’s planning board. He added that the board’s members haven’t formally voted on whether to endorse the proposals themselves, although they did give him the go-ahead to present his plan to the board of commissioners.

Hoagland was also at some pains to differentiate his proposals from the formal zoning schemes that exist in just about every other county in North Carolina.

“A lot of the other plans are a lot more rigorous,” he added, “and we also tried to allow for some flexibility in each of the districts.”

But for all of the planning director’s protests to the contrary, Hoagland’s plan looked a whole lot like zoning to commissioner Ed Priola.

“Color me skeptical,” Priola told the county’s planning director. “But I see zones; I see rules; and I see [other] things that I don’t like giving to bureaucrats as a matter of control. So, I’m starting out as a hard ‘no’ [on this plan].”

In the end, Priola got Hoagland to concede that his proposed “districts” are, indeed, based on the same statutory authority that allows local governments in North Carolina to adopt zoning.

The rest of the commissioners had little to say either for or against the planning director’s proposal – with Carter’s aphoristic remark being the final word on the apparently ill-fated plan.

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