Jeff Sharp
New subdivision requirements and clarification of current rezoning ordinances are coming to Oglethorpe County, likely increasing the waiting period between property splits.
The changes come after an influx of subdivision requests to the zoning board and the Board of Commissioners.
“I guess what triggered this was a lot of parcels being split and then split again a year later, and trying to slow that down,” said Jeff Sharp, the county’s director of planning, zoning and compliance. “In our ordinance, there’s a minor subdivision, which is basically three lots or less, or a large lot split, but we never had in our ordinance, what triggered it from a minor subdivision to a major subdivision.”
Sharp said the biggest difference between minor and major subdivisions is the requirement of new streets for properties with more than four divisions.
“We run on a rural quality of life, and that’s a major thing for us, and a lot of the voters and the people who live here right now,” District 4 Commissioner Will Brown said. “We want to do our best to maintain that same kind of rural living, while also focusing growth on the 78 corridor and around Crawford, Lexington and Arnoldsville. I think this will clear some stuff up and then help development go kind of the best way possible for Oglethorpe.”
Brown introduced the change at the commission meeting last month, when he proposed a 90-day moratorium on zoning requests, which passed 5-0. Eight of the 14 items on the June agenda involved rezones.
As a result, the zoning board canceled its July and August meetings, but if the ordinance is rewritten by August, that meeting will be put back on the calendar.
Brown said growth must be responsible in order to fit Oglethorpe County’s comprehensive plan, to maintain good roads and to ensure that school growth doesn’t outpace tax growth.
“It’s cleaned up some of the rules and preferences,” Brown said. “It’s modified some lot sizes and requirements for subdivisions and developments.”
BOC meetings will not be completely rezone free, however, as subdivision requests submitted before the moratorium will still be reviewed by the zoning board and the BOC.
“It’s standard practice to say there’s a moratorium on these things while we’ve reviewed the laws,” Brown said. “If you announce you’re going to be redoing a whole bunch of stuff, we don’t want to flood the office with a bunch of requests trying to get it in before we updated the rules.”
The job goes to Sharp to review the ordinance, receive feedback from commissioners and suggest changes. There will be hearings for public comment and the changes will need to be approved by the zoning board and the BOC.
“(Sharp) is extremely experienced in this type of stuff; he is a critical asset to the county,” Brown said. “He knows more about the intricacies of these laws, and he talks to the other counties, so he knows what worked in this county and what didn't work and why it didn't work.”
Sharp said it is standard practice in neighboring counties to have a waiting period of 3-5 years between property subdivisions and he thinks this could be a solution to slow Oglethorpe County’s growth.
“Waiting 3-5 years is the norm. We are not,” Sharp said. “The one-year wait that we have now is not the norm.”
He aims to have the ordinance edits approved by the BOC by September, but stressed that this is a long process and the timeline could shift.
“It’s subject to change, like if we get really deep in something and we can agree on it, or we think of something in this process that we need to add to it, we could extend it,” Brown said. “But that is the ideal timeline.”