Cedar Mountain planning members' message to residents: Please show up!
A committee has completed a draft of the Cedar Mountain Small Area Plan, which will be up for adoption by the Transylvania County Commission on Monday.
By Dan DeWitt
Brevard NewsBeat
BREVARD — Members of the Cedar Mountain Small Area Plan Committee have sat through countless hours of discussion and 19 months worth of meetings.
Now all they ask is that community residents attend one public hearing, at 4 p.m. on Monday, when the committee’s draft plan goes before the Transylvania County Commission for the first time.
“This is kind of the release-the-hounds moment,” said Lucia Gerdes, the committee’s vice chair.
Gerdes, who has probably been the firmest advocate of a plan “with teeth,” wants to confront commissioners with living, breathing evidence of support for such meaningful controls on growth and development in the rural community in southeastern Transylvania.
“It’s easy for (Commissioners) to hide behind emails and read the ones that are against it,” she said.
She and other members of the committee have repeatedly made some of the same points about the stakes of their plan.
Without county-wide zoning, Small Area Plans have been touted as one of the few available tools to manage development. And because other enclaves in the county, including Dunns Rock and Lake Toxaway, are lining up to follow this path, Cedar Mountain’s document will set the standard.
These plans are meant to reflect the sentiments of the communities, which in the case of Cedar Mountain has been overwhelmingly behind maintaining its rustic character.
An early survey showed strong support for such aims as regulating “the size, design, and usage of new commercial developments.”
The backing for such plans was reinforced in recent public input sessions, when residents were presented with elements of the plan and allowed to vote whether they approved or disapproved.
The most popular of the plan’s goals was to “Protect natural resources and preserve the scenic and aesthetic beauty of the area, including views/ridgetops and open space,” which was backed by a vote of 58 to 1 in these sessions.
Of the “tools” named in the plan meant to achieve such a goal, the two that place the firmest regulation on development are likely to be the most controversial with a Commission that is widely viewed as skeptical of government restrictions.
The first of these is to create a “form-based code” to “regulate the design of future development.” Fifty-eight residents attending the sessions supported this tool and only 12 opposed it. The draft plan notes that no county in North Carolina regulates such building details and that enforcement would require significant staff time and expense.
Residents supported, by an almost identical margin, another tool that calls for the county’s existing zoning ordinance, which now applies only to Pisgah Forest, to encompass Cedar Mountain.
“Those are kind of the tricky ones,” Gerdes said. “Those are the ones that probably don’t have the backing of the County Commission.”
Though she is targeting her appeal to residents who support such measures, another Committee member, Tom Oosting, said he also wants opponents to attend, hoping for a thorough discussion of what the plan does and does not do.
Because of restrictions imposed after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, public participation has mostly been limited to remote viewing and emailed comments.
“Public participation just sort of disappeared,” Oosting said. “I would personally call that a frustration.”
Some restrictions on gathering remain, Trisha Hogan, the clerk to the Commission, wrote in an email, but overflow seating will be available in conference rooms and “we will not turn anyone away.”
“We want all voices to be heard,” Oosting said, including those of “people who call it zoning.”
The plan itself is definitely not a zoning ordinance, said Allen McNeill, the county’s director of planning and community development. He has overseen the discussion and repeatedly reminded committee members and the public that the plan serves as a recommendation to the Commission and “is not a regulatory document.”
Even if the Commission adopts the plan as is, one of several options available to it at Monday’s hearing, each provision will need further action on the part of staff and/or the Commission to become part of county policy or law.
For this reason the draft also calls for the creation of a review committee to “shepherd” implementation of goals and tools and “help ensure plan priorities remain at the forefront of consideration,”
The biggest concern of another committee member, Mark Tooley, is that this will not happen, an outcome that is more likely if residents fail to show strong support for the proposal.
The planning process has been long and sometimes difficult, he said, especially because of changes in the direction of the plan due, at least in part, to turnover among planning staff.
“I hope it’s not all for nothing,” Tooley said.