What’s Rural about Residential?
The enormous turnout at the Board of Supervisors’ meeting was relieved to hear that two rezoning applications everyone turned out to oppose had voluntarily withdrawn their applications.
This followed the standing-room-only joint public hearing where everyone turned out to oppose them. Seems folks don’t actually like the county’s rural residential zoning ordinances when they’re locating in rural areas. Fancy that!
At the end of tonight’s meeting, John Zirkle of the Farm Bureau spoke in favor of eliminating those two zoning classes. He said that the zoning wasn’t consistent with either the county’s Comprehensive Plan or with keeping agricultural areas as active farms.
The concept isn’t new, but it’s great that Zirkle spoke up. Here’s a policy paper, Rural Residential Zoning, that outlines many of the unintended results from this type of zoning.
The proposal has been sent to the Code Committee for consideration on March 28th at 4:00 PM.
Correction 2 March 2006:
John Zirkle’s name is now right.
March 3rd, 2006 at 5:28 am
[...] Members of the Shenandoah County Farm Bureau presented the Supervisors with a proposal to implement sliding scale zoning. President John Zirkle (noted below) offered the plan as a way to reduce farmland loss and protect property rights. [...]