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Bravo for Spotsy's exempt-subdivision fix
CONTROLLING GROWTH is like--let's use a seasonal simile--controlling weight: It means the denial of many sweet things. Thus, some rural Spotsylvania County landowners suddenly find themselves banned from the plum pudding cooked up by a lax county land-use policy, and they're grumbling about a diet they never signed up for.
Even so, the Spotsylvania Board of Supervisors rightly voted 5-2 last week to tighten the exemption that allows rural landholders to sell pieces of their spreads to anyone at all while skirting the normal county standards for proffers, road design, and so on. Spotsylvania's growth rate, as measured by new lots, is about 4 percent--twice the targeted ideal--and fully a quarter of that takes the form of the "exempt subdivisions" that, scattered hither and yon, worsen--indeed, almost define--sprawl.
The Board revised in two ways the county's "two-two-two-20 rule"--so-called because it allows the owners of large tracts of country property to divvy up their land into three two-acre lots, ideal for children or grandchildren to set up housekeeping, and unlimited 20-acre lots. First, supervisors set stricter design criteria for roads, drainage systems, and the like. Second, they limited the recipients of the by-right land divisions to members of the owner's close family. Since fewer than five rural Spotsylvanians this year have used the exemption to create intrafamily homesteads (out of 450 exempted lots), the rule change should slow rural growth noticeably, says Supervisor Hap Connors.
Some affected landowners are naturally hot. They can get up to $30,000 an acre in today's market, which means that a quick two-acre sell to XYZ Corp. could pay for their child's college, a long Mexican vacation, or anything else 60 G's can fetch. Alas, this latitude, available in 70 percent of Spotsylvania, plays Hades with the county's growth-control doctrine and is unfair to landowners in busier areas who must play by tighter rules. Anyway, rural folks still have options. They can sell chunks of their property to anyone as long as they comply with the more restrictive regulations, they can unload all their acreage at once, or they can reap tax credits by keeping their land agricultural. These are dilemmas to love.
Of course, facing the family-only constraint, some Spotsy farmers may suddenly find Larry Silver cute enough to legally adopt. (Real estate is the mother--sometimes, literally--of ingenuity. Confronted last century by racist land-owning bans in California, some Japanese immigrants impregnated their wives, then bought tracts in the names of their infant children born as citizens in the United States.) However, those who receive land under the exempt-subdivision rule must bindingly pledge to hang onto it for at least five years, says County Attorney Mark Taylor. Real-estate lawyers presumably would catch would-be violators and refuse to close conveyances.
The board's action is unpopular in certain quarters, but supervisors deserve credit for taking that heat in the higher interest of keeping Spotsylvania County a fit place to live for all residents.
