Cedar Mountain residents show support for small area plan before County Commission, which responds with silence

Supporters crowded the Commission Chambers in support of the Cedar Mountain Small Area Plan, which recommends maintaining the community's rural character.

By Dan DeWitt

Brevard NewsBeat

BREVARD — Cedar Mountain residents spoke out loudly in favor of a land-use plan for their community at a public hearing on Monday, while Transylvania County Commissioners stayed entirely silent.

Members of the Cedar Mountain Small Area Plan Committee had asked supporters to turn out Monday, when the draft proposal was presented to the Commission for the first time. The people complied, filling as many chairs as socially distancing allowed and lining the rear wall of the Commission chambers.

They listened to speakers and several emails, read aloud at the hearing, that overwhelmingly favored the plan committee members have been working on since September of 2019.

Several of the written and spoken comments framed the creation of planning process two years ago as a pledge from Commissioners to allow residents to guide future development in their own communities. They almost all pointed out that the people of Cedar Mountain overwhelmingly back the overall aim of the plan — maintaining the community’s rural character and preserving its natural resources — as well as the specific tools to achieve these goals.

Commissioners “sent the community on this path and its dedication has not wavered . . . even when there have been three different planning directors and turnover in the personnel of the planning board,” said Elizabeth Thompson, a Cedar Mountain resident who helped lead the opposition to the construction of the Dollar General store on US 276 and Becky Mountain Road

“Now is the time for you to stand up for your citizens, citizens who have given years of commitment to preserving the rural character of their county. Please adopt this plan,” she concluded, to loud cheers and applause from the audience.

If the Commission does adopt the plan, which carries no regulatory power on its own, it will be at a later meeting.

Commission Chairman Jason Chappell said at the start of the public hearing that the board would not vote Monday on whether to accept the plan, and none of the commissioners offered any comment after hearing public input.

Chappell said after the hearing that the Commission typically does not vote on issues discussed at public hearings until a later date. Holding off on a vote for the Cedar Mountain plan, he said, is particularly appropriate because it will allow Commissioners time to review the large number of emails they received on the subject.

One of the three speakers, who lives on Rich Mountain, objected to the plan, saying that the boundary was too expansive and could lead to restrictions on development in his neighborhood, far from Cedar Mountain’s small business district at U.S. 276 and Cascade Lake Road.

Members of the committee have previously emphasized that none of the plan’s tools seek to regulate use of residential property.

Typical of the emails was one sent by Cedar Mountain resident Peter Anderson, who wrote that the plan “has the full support of the (county) Planning Board and a majority of Cedar Mountain residents.”

He also called the plan “the best way for our community to adopt rules, policies and ordinances that match what our community members have expressed through several surveys and public input sessions.”

An early survey showed strong support for such aims as regulating “the size, design, and usage of new commercial developments.”

The most popular of the goals listed in the more recent input session was one that called for a policy to “protect natural resources and preserve the scenic and aesthetic beauty of the area, including views/ridgetops and open space.”