The problems may not be entirely settled for the participants, but the Putnam County Board of Commissioners rendered three decisions on contested rezoning requests in the past two weeks, denying two and approving one.
Two of the three involved, directly or indirectly, the degree of protections for lakeside homes on two coves, one on Oconee and one on Sinclair.
The third focused more on leeway for interpretation of the zoning ordinance while balancing what was termed long-term “public trust” in the potentially precedent-setting decisions.
The first request would create two roughly 20-acre tracts at 842 Harmony Road, which today is essentially a 7-shaped pasture. The proposal for the Harmony Road tract would shift it from an agricultural (AG) zoning to commercial (C-2), with proposed commercial usage on seven acres, another nine for storage of recreational vehicles, with the remainder in a private road to access to the second 20-acre tract.
Behind that tract and between it and coveside homes off Farrier Lane, the requested RM-3 zoning would allow up to 39 small residential lots and a pond.
The commission approved the requests 4-0.
The second rezoning request proved more rancorous, triggered initially by a week of rain washing away a dam under construction for a farm pond. Emory Drive residents along an already shallow Sinclair cove complained of a “muddy mess” that limited their access to the lake.
The retired couple and one of their children who had bought more than 35 acres of off-lake, interior land requested rezoning from residential (R-1) back down to agricultural usage (AG). Until a decade or so ago, the land was used as a tree farm by Weyerhauser Corp. and was then zoned AG. An intervening owner had the land rezoned to R-1 in an unsuccessful attempt to develop the land.
Various jurisdictions – and timing – complicate the matter. The local R-1 zoning does not allow farm ponds. However, the U.S. Corps of Engineers and the state’s Environmental Protection Division control all waters in the country, and the Corps of Engineers’ regulations readily allow farm ponds without permits, if the property is locally zoned for agriculture (AG).
The commissioners denied the request, 4-0.
The third commission decision actually involved a final appeal of earlier recommended denials by the county’s planning and zoning director, Lisa Jackson, and the Planning and Zoning Commission. Lowell White Sr. and Jr. have an expiring June 7 contract for a purchaser to buy the first two non-family lots in a 117-acre development off Pea Ridge Road on Overlook Drive.
The final plat for the subdivision was filed last June, but the potential purchaser’s plans would have required an amendment to a final plat less than a year old.
The commissioners upheld the denial, 4-0.