Nearly four years after the Worcester County Comprehensive Plan was adopted in 2006 by the County Commissioners, its implementation has finally been voted upon...well, sort of.
While missing the mark on many aspects of the Comprehensive Plan, (and thus these award winning concepts such as TDRs, Impact fees, alternative energy initiatives, and protection of flood plains from development were not implemented) the County's new zoning code and zoning map was approved on November 3, 2009.
With very few changes to the text of the Zoning Code, and one or two strange (?) changes to the Comprehensive Zoning Maps – the Worcester County Commissioners, in spite of themselves, voted unanimously to adopt the new zoning ordinance. Cowger was the lone dissenting vote to approve the Zoning Maps.
Assateague Coastal Trust's efforts to strengthen the language in the code for protection of our waterways and our natural resources remained as suggested in our public comments and as amended by the Planning Commission and Staff.
Our efforts to better protect our waterways through more protective zoning districts were for the most part incorporated into the new land use zoning maps.
Our efforts to force this Board to deal with the elimination of the Estate (E-1) zoning, as called for in the Comp. Plan, and place these flood prone areas into more protective zoning did not succeed. Commissioner Gulyas seemed to think the Estate Zoning was some live animal that would (in her words!) ‘die a slow death if we just leave it alone.’
While this means large areas of South Point and the Rt. 611 corridor will not be up-zoned to more dense residential but will remain Estate zoned, some areas of E-1 were indeed given higher density zoning - Gum Point Road and the Bishopville Prong area were both given R-1 zoning.
Commissioners Cowger and Church, obviously uneducated about the zoning and the code, made fools of themselves arguing moot points about how much money a certain developer had paid for a proposed project. Both Cowger & Church kept loudly arguing, mistakenly, that the Commissioners were ‘down-zoning’ the man’s property.
Commissioner Bud Church practically shed tears during his plea to the audience that a huge mistake had been made. What these two Commissioners didn't seem to understand is: 1. The parcel started as A-1 and stayed as A-1; and 2. Comprehensive Re-zoning is not determined by how much money a land speculator wants to gamble on future projects.
In another zoning map change, all the Commissioners voted to leave two parcels along Rt. 589 as A-1 zoning, against Planning Commission recommendations to change the agricultural zoning to residential R-1. The Commissioners argument for this was they did not want to add to the traffic congestion on Rt. 589 so they wanted to leave the two parcels at the current zoning.
What they were oblivious to, however, were the several hundreds of acres of E-1 zoned parcels along Gum Point Road, adjacent to and just behind the two highway fronting parcels. All that area was being recommended to go up to R-1 and they left it that way!
So somehow all this new residential traffic coming off of Gum Point Road onto Rt. 589 is not going to be as detrimental to the highway as that one little parcel of A-1 they fought so hard to keep A-1……..go figure?
They did not support a motion by Commissioner Shockley to add 2 more building lots to the already permitted 5 lots allowed per parcel in the A-1 zoned areas. They did however, support his text amendment to increase the total square footage allowed ‘by right’ for commercial buildings on an A-1 parcel from 600 sq. ft to 3,000 sq. ft.
Without adequate time to consider all the ramification of this major change, and under pressure by the Commission President to wrap things up, it remains to be seen what impact this will have on types of commercial businesses in our A-1 district throughout the county. At the very least they should have agreed to the 4,400 increase by ‘special exception’ review only.
Most disturbing about yesterday’s meeting was the total lack of assistance by the County Attorney to guide the Commissioners through this process, keep them focused and help them not make mistakes like they did on Rt. 589 and possibly to the A-1 district allowable uses. In my opinion he has proven himself, once again, to be lacking in the skills to adequately advise our Commissioners and this county.
The icing on the cake was the vote. Commission President Gulyas insisted on raising hands to signify yea or nay. She had to continually ask for people to keep their hands up for an official count, sometimes questioning if someone’s hand had been raised or not, they were all talking at once, Cowger wanted to continue his rant about the Sea Hawk Road property…..it was embarrassing.
What the heck happened to taking a roll call voice vote, right down the line, and make each Commissioner speak his/her vote? Very unprofessional behavior yesterday, but then that is what we have come to expect.
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