Land Use Cases

I think it is about time we revisit land use cases and what commissioners are supposed to consider when approving/denying them.

A quick note. If you own property, you have property rights. We hear that all the time from the BOCC members... "They have property rights."

But, that does not mean you can do what you want with that property by right. There is zoning that dictates what you are allowed to do with the property.

If you do not like that, you can apply to make changes to the property or the zoning, but you are not guaranteed for approval. To get that, you need to go to the BOCC for approval.

Just about every single application the BOCC hears is because they want to do something with the property they own that is not allowed by right and requires special approval. Withholding that approval is not violating the property rights of the person who owns the property. They are seeking to exceed their rights by doing the application.

They know what they purchased and what is and isn't allowed to be done on that property, can we stop with the "they have property rights" as the reason to approve these developments?

Just want to make that clear because the BOCC tends to forget that.

Moving on.

Before getting into all of this... we need to talk about competent substantial evidence. In making decisions for approval or denial, the BOCC needs to use the evidence they get from the hearing for the basis of their decision. This is called competent substantial evidence. They cannot just take someone's word for something. There has to be evidence presented for them to consider whatever decision they are making. These are things like site plans, concurrency, LDC/Comp Plan guidelines, etc.

At a recent hearing, the developer started off by showing a conceptual rendering of what their project may look like. Commissioners loved the look of the buildings and how they flowed with one another.

Problem. Commissioners are not supposed to consider what buildings MAY look like. Why? Because nothing binds them to that design. After approval, the developers can change the design to just about anything they want.

That is NOT competent substantial evidence, yet several of them remarked how they liked the renderings they were shown. "Aesthetically pleasing" was what was said.

Why are they considering renderings when nothing binds the developer to that rendering?

If I recall, they had issues with developers on the 486/491 intersection for saying things, getting approval and doing something different because they were not bound by what they said. This can be the same situation. They see a pretty picture and may get something completely different. Again.. they are NOT voting on what it looks like. They need to stop paying attention to those renderings. They mean absolutely nothing.

There was also a lot of talk about workforce housing. The applicant suggested that these homes would be built to help provide workforce/affordable housing... which are homes on the cheaper end of the scale. When asked a price point for that, the developer would not answer.

One commissioner said she hoped that these would be sub $200k, but again, the developer would not commit. Staff mentioned during their portion that at the PDC, the developer said it would be market rate pricing. He mentioned later he could not give a price because of too many factors and suggested that these would me market rate.

Same problem as above. Nothing ties them to "workforce" or "attainable" housing and honestly, we do not even know what that means. We are working on creating a definition so that everyone is on the same page.

But why is that even being considered? Now that it is approved, they could build luxury townhomes that cost $400k if they wanted to. Again, no guarantee that these will be "affordable" housing units, as they were told. But this is competent substantial evidence they want to base their decision on?

There were a lot of staff concerns with this specific project. First, the lot size widths were smaller than what the LDC allows. No mention of that by commissioners. Second, the buffers required by the LDC were not met. They were significantly shorter to allow the higher density project. There was some discussion on this, but ultimately it did not matter. There was talk of the driveways being connected which would eliminate the need for sidewalks... again another LDC issue, but ignored. There were issues with water and sewer needing to be upgraded to provide service to this project... Again not really talked about.

The easy solution is to remove one or two of the buildings, reduce the density of the overall project and they could likely meet the all of the LDC requirements except the water/sewer. But.. no such discussion.

Also, remember the apartment project in Meadowcrest back in 2022? That was approved mostly because they would provide an affordable housing element to the county. However, that project was sold and now the plan is luxury apartments, although, it has not started construction yet. Again, nothing binds them to these things. I would be willing to bet that the BOCC back then would not have approved luxury apartments for that area. They were focused on providing affordable options.

Commissioners have been wooed in the past by "promises" of corporations coming. Remember Chic-fil-a? That was floated on 491 to get approval for a project, but they are no where to be found now. Again, commissioners voting on something that sounded great, but nothing binds that decision.

Those are just few examples, I could go on and on.

The point in all this is that commissioners far too often consider things on these projects that they should not be considering as nothing binds these decisions to what is being discussed. They keep waiving LDC and Comp Plan requirements to approve developments that may be nothing like they think they will be or based on promises that they are not bound by.

What good is the LDC and the Comp Plan if we continue to ignore it?