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Work is under way on O'Gara's security-training center, but foes are appealing Westmoreland's approval of the facility. |
BY FRANK DELANO
Opponents of an O'Gara security-training base now under construction near Montross have challenged Westmoreland County's issuance of zoning and building permits for the project.
In another response to the uproar over the O'Gara operation, county supervisors have also asked the Planning Commission to eliminate schools as a by-right use of agriculturally zoned land.
A bare majority of three supervisors--Lynn C. Brownley, Russell Culver and Lawrence Roberson--voted Sept. 14 in favor of referring the change to the planners. W.W. Hynson voted against it. Chairman Darryl E. Fisher abstained.
In the appeal filed Thursday to the Westmoreland Board of Zoning Appeals, neighbors of the O'Gara project said that the county's former Zoning Administrator, the late Gary Ziegler, erred last year when he ruled that an unnamed security-training facility was allowed by county zoning ordinances both in the county's industrial park and on adjacent agricultural land.
"The Ziegler opinion
The appeal says that Ziegler's ruling and errors have been improperly adopted and used by current Zoning Administrator Robert Fink in approving O'Gara plans and permits.
"No proper, legal, zoning administrator decision has ever been rendered with respect to The O'Gara Group project, and the current zoning administrator has refused to render a new or proper land-use decision, yet continues to approve O'Gara applications," the appeal alleges.
Ziegler's memo of Sept. 17, 2008, was not publicly known until January, when the county's Industrial Development Authority approved a $679,178 contract to sell O'Gara a 50,000-square-foot building and 25 acres at the industrial park.
In July, O'Gara purchased 351 adjacent agricultural acres for $2.5 million from S. Bryan Chandler of Montross. O'Gara is now constructing three firing ranges and a cluster of modular administrative and classroom buildings totaling 10,730 square feet on the Chandler tract.
The sale of the county property has been delayed because of a lawsuit contesting the legality of the January meeting. The Virginia Supreme Court last week appointed a retired Charlottesville judge to hear the case after all of the judges in the 15th Judicial Circuit, which includes Westmoreland, declined.
George and Susan Ripol, Mary Porter Hall and Harry and Bonnie Boyden are the parties challenging both the January meeting and the county's zoning decisions.
The appellants argue that Ziegler characterized the military training facility as a kind of manufacturing allowed in the industrial park, "then completely reversed himself and declared that such a military training school was either a 'general education school' or a 'school, commercial or special instruction' allowed in the A-1 agriculture zone."
O'Gara's use of "explosive ordinances, firing ranges and live weapons training are not traditional 'school' functions as contemplated in the ordinance definition," the appeal states.
Noise from the O'Gara operation was the topic of a report issued last month by a consultant who was hired by the county and paid $10,000 by O'Gara.
The consultant said, "O'Gara must be required to implement more aggressive noise controls," including higher berms of at least 25 feet on all four sides of the ranges and sound-absorbing, firing-line enclosures.
"We're going to do everything we can to make it quiet," said O'Gara attorney Richard H. Stuart of Montross.
"A military training facility, with firing ranges, use of explosives and other military devices, located in the middle of an agricultural use district, is so fundamentally contrary to the intent and purpose of the stated land use ordinance that it can not withstand review," the appeal says.
Zoning Administrator Fink said the appeal would not stop work at the O'Gara site. He said the appeal could be heard no earlier than the Board of Zoning Appeals meeting in November.
Frank Delano: 804/761-4300
Email: fpdelano@gmail.com
