A raft of proposals to “clean up” Elon’s development rules led the town’s elected leaders down a succession of figurative rabbit holes earlier this week.
Elon’s town council took no immediate action when the town’s planning staff presented these prospective rule changes on Tuesday. Its members nevertheless spent well over an hour plumbing the potential ramifications of these revisions, which included some potential provisions for food trucks as well as a plan to relax the limits on RVs in the town’s extra territorial jurisdiction.
The council’s jaunt through this regulatory wonderland began mundanely enough when the planning staff presented a number of proposed amendments to “clean up” the text of Elon’s land management ordinance.
Foremost among these housekeeping matters were recommendations to strike the ordinance’s provisions for food trucks and recreational vehicles in order to add more effective regulations to the town’s code of ordinances, which is separate and distinct from Elon’s land management rules.
In the case of recreational vehicles, this move was intended to benefit residents of town’s extraterritorial jurisdiction who have unwittingly broken a rule that prohibits people from parking RVs in front of their homes.
Elon’s planning director Lori Oakley acknowledged that she and her staff were, likewise, unaware of these violations until a complaint from the public prompted them to take a closer look at RV ownership in the ETJ. She added that their inquiries turned up 42 recreational vehicles that were illegally parked in front of homes in this area, which is subject to Elon’s planning authority although it lies outside the town’s municipal limits.
The council heard more about this conundrum from Kevin Vernon, a resident of the town’s ETJ who has inadvertently found himself in violation of a restriction that allows homeowners to park RVs in front of their homes for no more than seven days out of the year. During a state-mandated public hearing, Vernon acknowledged he knew nothing about the town’s prohibition until he became the proud owner his own recreational vehicle.
“I purchased an RV back in October and three weeks later I got a letter that I was violating the town’s ordinance,’ he recalled. “I would like to keep the RV on my property because we go out of town almost every weekend.”
Oakley informed the council that the town’s staff has held off on enforcing the rules against Vernon and other ETJ residents in order to consider other ways to regulate recreational vehicles. She added that she and her colleagues would ultimately like to insert the existing restrictions into the town’s code of ordinances, which only applies within Elon’s territorial limits. In the meantime, she advised the council to amend the land management ordinance to remove the RV restriction.
The planning director’s proposal hit a bit of a speed bump when Elon’s mayor Emily Sharpe reflected on the implications that the rule’s extraction would have on the town’s corporate limits.
“It’s my opinion that if you’re not in town and want to own an RV, you should be able to own an RV,” Sharpe told the rest of the council. “But if this is removed from the LMO entirely, what is to prevent anyone from adding two more residents to the same property if this isn’t regulated inside the town?”
Sharpe urged the planning staff to consult with the town’s legal counsel to see if the land management ordinance could be modified to exempt the ETJ from the RV restriction. She also suggested the possibility that the existing rule could be transferred wholesale into the code of ordinances without an intermediate period with no regulation.
The council agreed to postpone any action on the proposed amendments so that the town’s planning staff could explore Sharpe’s recommendations. This delay ultimately affected other potential rule changes, including a proposal to remove food trucks from the land management ordinance.
