Planners nix cluster ordinance

Planning Commission recommends that Board of Supervisors reject zoning change to encourage clustered homes in agricultural areas

By RUTH FINCH

Date published: 3/24/2005

By RUTH FINCH Testimony heavily against Stafford plan

Promoting clustered houses was meant as a compromise, a way to satisfy Stafford's need to control rural growth and protect landowners who fear zoning changes may depress land values.

But that's not the way a proposal to allow clustering in agricultural zones was received at a public hearing before the Planning Commission last night.

After listening to 50 people who opposed the plan and only two who favored it, the commission voted 5-2 to urge the supervisors to scrap the ordinance. Commissioners Steve Pitzel and Debrarae Kearns were opposed.

But the proposal isn't dead yet. The Board of Supervisors will schedule its own public hearing and vote on the issue.

Slow-growth advocates complained that the proposal makes it harder, not easier, to control growth. Landowners and developers were no happier. They said the proposal doesn't offer enough flexibility to actually make clustering viable.

"When I first heard about this ordinance, I thought it was a good idea," said Bob Berner of Garrett Development Corp. "As I look through the ordinance and I see you have come up with 16 pages of regulations, that's more than what's included in the R-1, R-2, R-3 and R-4 [residential zoning districts]. I think we have overdone the issue. I hope you work hard on the next ordinance, because with this one you have succeeded in making everyone unhappy."

Clustering lets a builder condense all of the permitted lots for a certain parcel into a smaller space than would normally be allowed under the zoning ordinance. In exchange, developers must set aside large expanses of open space for permanent preservation. Generally, builders like the concept because it allows them to cut infrastructure costs with fewer miles of roads. County officials and slow-growth advocates like the idea because it preserves more rural land.

Stafford's clustering ordinance would double the minimum lot size from three acres to six acres in conventional subdivisions. But in clusters, a lot as small as one acre would be allowed as long as the average density remained at one house per three acres and 40 percent of the parcel was left open space.

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Date published: 3/24/2005