Planning Commission recommends changes to Land Ordinance

During the Floyd County Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission’s Joint Public Hearing last week, eight citizens, including two children, voiced their concerns about impacts the proposed ordinance could have on the future of the county.

Many speakers on Aug. 26 also noted “the optics” of having realtors on the Board while developers would seemingly have the ability to split a parcel of land into quarter-acre or two-acre tracts and sell off as many as they wanted.

One said the ordinance as it stood at the beginning of the hearing seemed like it was written by developers instead of engineers who knew how to work with all parts of the county government and community. 

Eli Schwartz-Gralla of the Locust Grove District said he felt the proposed ordinance, as it stood at the beginning of the meeting, took the development of the community in the wrong direction and would increase the pressure on Floyd’s “already maxed infrastructure,” such as the traffic light, emergency services, solid waste and more. 

He noted that one of his main concerns is the county’s limited water supply and how additional/deeper wells could impact it. 

“Bigger does not always mean better,” he said, adding that the Board could consider setting up a limited, targeted area close to town for higher-density development instead of opening the whole county to the possibility immediately. 

Seven-year-old Gwayla Yard-Gralla of Locust Grove said she loves Floyd’s beauty, including its green fields, woodlands and fresh water. She said she loves looking up at the stars at night and hopes her “children and grandchildren can do the same.”

Kate Glass of the Little River District said she likes the idea of updating the ordinance to meet county residents’ current needs. She said her concern is that the Board is opening “a Pandora’s Box.”

Glass said she saw Loudon County transform from a “pretty small agricultural county to the fastest growing county in the Commonwealth for years.” 

“You just need to know what you’re creating, and you need to be prepared to enforce it,” she said. 

Quinn Yard-Gralla, who is 12 and from the Locust Grove District, said she loves how rural Floyd is, and she loves its “beautiful fields and rolling hills.” She said she thinks housing complexes should happen close to town and not replace the more natural areas of the county. 

“As more and more houses are built, the wells and springs may dry up, and rivers and streams might become polluted,” Quinn said. “Even though most of us don’t want that to happen, as housing density increases, the likelihood becomes greater.” 

Yarrow Delanney-Yard of the Locust Grove District said the smaller lot size division option is her main concern and that “this type of development should be limited to the town of Floyd or within proximity to the town.” 

Delanney-Yard said she worries about the negative impact digging deeper wells could have on already established wells and that she feels “very strongly” that large developers will not refrain from digging deeper wells just because it is considered “cost-prohibitive.” 

“That cost will just be passed on to homeowners, driving the cost of property up,” she said. “I feel that this revision will be opening ourselves up for changes that will affect our lives for many generations to come.” 

Delanney-Yard also noted that it “appears there may be a conflict of interest driving some of the decisions" being made by the Board when taking into consideration individual Supervisors who own large parcels of land and those who are involved in real estate. 

Tyler McReynolds of the Burks Fork District said his primary concern was that the allowed parcel sizes could create the conditions for a sprawl of suburb-like development.

He said that he believes a lot of “poor decision making” made it possible for areas, such as Richmond, to be encroached upon and become “what a lot of people didn’t want” when they first moved there. 

McReynolds said he would hate to see a sprawl like that happen in Floyd County. 

“Let’s keep Floyd the special place that it is,” he said, noting that he also had water table concerns in regard to the proposed ordinance. 

Jeff Walker of the Little River District said the risk of hitting non-potable water increases as a well is dug deeper. He said the Board should “delete every single reference” to the prescriptive depth in the ordinance. 

“Do not include anything of a prescriptive nature in this ordinance,” Walker said. 

He also suggested that the Board “convene a working group of professionals who understand the basis of how we work with state agencies, how we work with land owners, how we work with people within the community…” to address the “crisis of housing” facing the county. 

“The optics are miserable… It looks like it’s drafted by surveyors and realtors, not by engineers and developers,” Walker added.

Abby Bentley of the Little River District said she and her husband lived in Canton, NC, for seven years and witnessed the “gentrification” of the area due to the subdivision of farms. 

“These development projects…did not make housing more affordable for citizens of the town, but instead attracted families from surrounding wealthier counties, who saw them as a way to profit off of smaller town economies,” Bentley said. 

Bentley also said she encouraged the Board to speak on the accusations of conflicts of interest they might have in regard to the Land Division Ordinance.

In a 3-2 vote, the Floyd County Planning Commission voted to recommend the Board of Supervisors to approve the Land Division Ordinance with the following changes: removing the provision that would allow for reduced lot sizes (of a quarter-acre minimum) on private centralized water systems, which required a 320-foot minimum well, and to establish a minimum lot size of five acres for all parcels not served by a public water system, as opposed to the two-acre minimum. Family Divisions are not impacted by the changes. 

Planning Commission Chair Deborah Baum and Commissioners Kalinda Bechtold and Richard Telling voted in favor, and Commissioners David Grimsley and Mark Sowers voted against making those changes at the hearing. 

The Board of Supervisors did not take action on the proposed Land Ordinance after the Planning Commission voted, and Supervisors proceeded with their regular meeting after a short break.