BY JONAS BEALS
A procedural error has revived a debate over a proposal that could restrict where new homes can be built in Stafford County.
A subdivision ordinance amendment adopted 4-3 by the board Oct. 7 required subdivision lots 1 acre or larger to have a minimum contiguous buildable area of 10,000 square feet.
According to the amendment, that buildable area must be "exclusive of floodplains, wetlands, slopes equal to or greater than 25 percent, critical resource protection area buffers, setbacks and primary and reserve drainfields."
Developers and landowners filed lawsuits challenging the change. County Attorney Joe Howard determined that the amendment was improperly advertised, and that it would work better as an amendment to the zoning ordinance rather than to the subdivision ordinance.
An updated version of the ordinance came back to the board last week for a public hearing--the fourth on the proposed change. But supervisors delayed taking action on the revised measure after a dozen residents spoke against it.
Supervisors voted 5-2 to repeal the faulty amendment, with Supervisors George Schwartz and Bob Woodson dissenting. The board then voted 5-2 to defer a vote on the updated amendment until next month, with Schwartz and Supervisor Paul Milde dissenting.
Amendment supporters on the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors say it will protect both the environment and home-buyers.
"It crosses over from protecting our land from erosion into protecting future homeowners from buying homes they are not able to expand," Schwartz said.
Opponents think the amendment could unfairly reduce the number of lots available on a given parcel of land.
"There is no science behind this, and there is no problem to solve," Milde said. "It is a thinly disguised attempt to down-zone the county without compensation."
Milde said he opposed deferring a vote because he thought it was simply a delaying tactic, not an attempt to improve any flaws. He suggested that some supervisors did not want to approve the amendment with so many opponents in the audience.
"They decided to defer it until the room is empty," he said.
Supervisor Joe Brito, however, said he is having second thoughts about the specifics of the amendment.
"The ordinance was changed," Brito said, "and there was more public input the second time around. I think the 10,000-square-foot requirement is rather high, and we don't really have the development pressures now that we had then."
In the updated version, the ordinance would apply only to property zoned A-1 or A-2, rather than to any subdivision lot larger than 1 acre. Slopes would be based on a minimum horizontal distance of 25 feet.
Schwartz said those changes are not enough to deter him from voting for the amendment again.
"Without this ordinance," he said, "developers will continue to build without giving a thought to where and how they build."
Jonas Beals: 540/368-5036
Email: jbeals@freelancestar.com