Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

It's time we're going to call the Edgefield County Planning Commission. We're at session for August 13, 2026 to order. And let's see, we got, yes, speakers. Third, old business. Review of the proposed change to county ordinance made by planning commission in previous meetings. And these changes will come to a vote. And if recommended by the majority, it will be submitted to the county council for consideration. Okay, what we got?

Now, Fab, if you want to, y'all can change the agenda to do new business first if you want to.

Okay.

That way we'll just give him a little bit more time if we need it, and then we can go to the other.

We need a motion for that? So we'll go down to new business. We're going down to new business item four, review of the preliminary facts of Submitted to the land development application for a proposed tractor supply store. Be located at the corner of Columbia Road and Star Road in Edgefield. Type service number 156-0000-084-1000. And I think we had an advocate who is Gavin. How do you pronounce that? Well, Gavin Millia has been the main contact.

My name is actually only in New Tennessee.

I live at home, so I guess. Right. Okay. So you represent... Property owner, tract supply, what? Come on up here.

We'll go over a few things first. Okay. You can see the preliminary plat behind us. It's located, of course, on the corner of Columbia Road and Star Road. It's general commercial. The plat, excuse me, the parcel is 18 acres now, and what's going to be developed is the 5.74 acres. There's going to be two entryways, one off Columbia, one off Star. There will be a shared entry right here towards the bottom. This being their property line, there will be a buffer that separates the tractor supply and the parking lot from that entryway. The site was also, so when we start talking about the tree preservation, the site was timbered several years ago before Helene. And when Helene came, of course, it just destroyed everything. And there were few trees left that were even salvageable. So they will turn in their tree preservation or their tree plan and their tree survey. before your last meeting for final approval. So currently the total site is 250,229 square feet. The required canopy is 50,048 square feet, which is 20%. They're going to meet and provide a 22.80% canopy. Okay. So if y'all have any questions other than what you can see, they're going to provide the employment for five to 15 permanent employees. And of course, you all know tractor supply. They'll provide things that are needed in a rural farming community and I don't think, I think y'all know pretty much what tractor supply is and does. There's not a whole lot for me else to say except for present the site plan to you. Questions?

It's still going to be. familiar to the one that just built in Saluda, roughly the same.

Yes. I mean, so it'll be the same prototype as the one you see. I haven't been to that store specifically, but the actual building itself would be a little over 20,000 square feet. And then you'll have a 20,000 square foot outdoor display area where you'll also have merchandise.

This is what?

Page 11. Page 11.

And so it's their prototype for tractor supply. And so it'll have a masonry facade on the front. It's fully a block building with masonry on the front. But I represent, my name's Elliot McKenzie. I represent Baseline CRE, and we work in partnership with Tractor Supply in helping them. We've done many projects here in the upstate and throughout the Carolinas. So appreciate the opportunity for allowing me to be here, and thank you for April for all the work she's been doing alongside Gavin, who you mentioned before, and also our engineer and other people that are designing this.

I'm just out of curiosity. On the right side of that site plan, that's a retention pond or detention pond there, right? Okay. And then below that, where the black line stripes are within the black, what is that area?

So that is going to be, there's not municipal sewer, and so therefore we have to provide septic, on-site septic. So we actually had to expand this parcel slightly from what we started with in order to make sure there was adequate room for on-site septic.

Now, did y'all buy the entire parcel, or you're just buying what you're developing? Just buying this. Okay. So the owners keep them built. rest of the acreage there. Correct.

And Tractor Supply will actually be who closes on this property, Tractor Supply Corporate.

If you'll look on page 10, you'll see the flat subdivision that's going to happen.

Okay. So, let's see. You got lot one and lot two. So, they'll be on lot one. They'll be on lot two. Right in the corner. They'd be on the corner lot.

Okay.

Okay, they talk about the entrance there. It's a driveway on the right before you get to the corner. Yeah, right. That's a driveway that's down there, or that's going to be a new one? Can we... We got one. You know, we got some already on there, but they're probably going to not be the same, though, right?

That's wherever DOT.

Yeah, right. Okay. That's what I wanted.

I looked at it already. After speaking, I guess, briefly with DOT, that's their proposed on both stores. Because, like I said, this one down here, off of Columbia, will be a shared drive for potential in the future.

Right.

But right now, that property line goes where you see that tree buffer, and then there's that shared driveway. Mm-hmm.

We lined it up with the development across the street on Columbia Road.

OK. Let's see. Are you going to have to put it on for the sewer? Are you going to have to put it on a lift station? Because across the road, they've got a lift station right across from you over there. Are you going to have to put one over there? You don't know.

So they actually don't have sewer access for this lot? So they are being provided public water, but they're having to put a septic tank in. I'm going to have to put a septic tank. Tractor supply has, it's not like, it doesn't even use as much water as a house.

So it's not a huge heavy lift, but.

They are having to use septic because sewer isn't available right now.

I know we had to put a lift station and they put another one over there.

And that's what he was talking about, down towards the bottom, right below where you see the retention detention pond for their stormwater.

Yeah, I mean, it's just two bathrooms and a tractor supply and then a dog wash station. So it's not a lot of use.

I'm excited about it myself. It's absolutely fantastic. I went over and took a two of it. The county council took it. Their county council did. We were talking about it. It's really exciting.

We're excited. Charter Supply is excited as well. So I appreciate everybody. And I think they're going to be a great community here. I think it matches up perfectly with the outdoors and the agricultural heritage you'll have.

Okay. In a moment, we'll go back to our old business.

Okay. from any existing towers. And I was wondering if y'all would entertain possibly making that a larger separation, greater than 1,000 feet. Because 1,000 feet is, if you look at it from one cell tower to the next, it's not a huge distance. So I'm going to start with that one, or you can start. Thank you.

I guess on that, my opinion, well, see, that could be, it could be where it would be okay and then it would be another place that would be, depending on the location. If you were out in the rural area, you know, I wouldn't have a problem if you're getting closer into a more denser area.

I think I'd be more excited. How would we... I mean, in my opinion, the 1,000 feet from a residence or school is a more restrictive requirement than, you know, I mean, if you're... If you're out in Woodlawn Road, way out, it doesn't really matter if the towers are 1,000 feet away from each other, but if you're going to require them to be 1,000 feet from houses, schools, and stuff like that, that's more restrictive than the distance between the towers. The only thing I would, I mean, I don't want to eliminate The distance from other towers, I mean, if you want to raise it a little bit, keep it, reduce it a little bit, that's fine. I just wouldn't want a situation where you have five different tower companies trying to get on the same piece of property. That would look bad. But other than that, I really don't have much opinion on separating the towers. If you're going to make sure that they're a thousand feet from any house or anything that would be looking at them all the time, I think that's more restrictive than how far they are from each other.

I agree. I mean, I just Googled it. This is independent health groups suggest minimum distance of 1,500 feet from schools and residents. So a minimum of 1,500 is what is recommended by people that study the distances.

That's entirely up to y'all. Like I said, I think that's more relevant than how far they are from one another.

Well, this is the most restrictive in Massachusetts is 3,000 feet, but it's recommended a minimum of 1,500. Make it 1,500.

I ain't moving so fast. I think, you know, even though I'm an anti-AI, in the future, it's probably going to be where some of the schools are going to have to put up, required to put a tile on their property because of, you know, to move up and see what they're doing. They're cutting down on the distance. When you cut down on the distance, that means you got to be more on the tower.

So I can tell you from doing the law enforcement center that once you build a concrete and steel structure, no outside signals are getting inside the building. The steel that's inside the concrete acts like a Faraday cage, and it blocks all the signals from getting into the building. So that building is actually equipped with antennas throughout the whole building they go back to miniature cell towers that are in the mechanical rooms. So if you go into the data closets, there's little tiny AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile towers, little blocks that have their name on it sitting in there, and then they plug into those antennas and it gets broadcast throughout the building from those little antennas. That's how we have to do it now, simply because of the nature of the structures. I imagine all big buildings that have steel framing have to do that nowadays. Yeah, they have a problem. Because 5G just will not go through. It will not penetrate a wall like that.

So, yes, you're right.

Schools are going to have miniature antennas built into them. I don't think you're going to see, you know. They will be tall way up there. You're not going to see a 365-foot tower. But, yeah, they have to have emitters inside the school for 5G if they want. I mean, personally, I think they should take all that out and just make cell phones not work at schools.

So, if the state requires that, or if there's a state law, that would supersede us anyway, any ordinance that we have.

It would, but the towers that the schools build are their radio communication towers. They're 100 foot tall. And it's technically a communication tower, but I always classify that as part of the school. It's attached to the school. It's built into the school. So when they have, like Thurman has a 100 foot tall communication antenna, I don't really consider that a cell tower, as in I bring that to y'all like I would a cell tower. You know, I bring y'all an entire plan for the whole project, You know, and that's just, like I said, I call it a cell antenna. It's really a radio antenna. And I don't, I can't, I can't see a time when they're going to be putting 380, 400 communication towers up for school. That's not likely to happen.

It's a thousand feet from any residential.

Does that include my own house if I wanted to put one within Say the fall radius is 500. I would say that we should write an exemption in there that if it is on your own property and you're the one that's actively seeking the lease and you are the one you can get an exemption if it's on your own property, but not your neighbor's property. So let's say you have 50 acres and you don't care that it's within 1,500 foot of your house. As long as it's not 1,500 foot of your neighbor's house, I think we should write an exception for that. But beyond that, no.

So we can write an exception like that in the ordinance? Sure.

Absolutely. It's one of those things we have to think about sometimes ahead of time. We have it happen a lot with property lines that are, you know, somebody wants to do something and they own both properties, but they put the second property into an LLC or something like that. Well, legally speaking, now you don't, same property owner doesn't own both of these properties and I can't let you split the line. You know, we have things like that happen now. So the more that sort of stuff can be thought of ahead of time, the better. So that's actually a good idea to put an exception of some sort in there for people who, you know, want to lease their backyard and they live in the middle of nowhere. The only person that's going to affect them. I don't see why we would have a problem with that.

I wouldn't have a problem with that. As long as they're not affecting the neighbor.

We'll have to make sure that we write that exception to be residential only, though.

Yeah.

It can't be within a school or near a school. You added this. Didn't we already have a screening section in there?

It's the fencing. There's no screening attached to that requirement. It's simply fencing around the base where people can't have access to the base of the tower. Number 15 is actually going to add a button of screening for the whole base.

So we got here vegetation or fencing, right?

Or improved fencing.

You know, like you had one closer to home, you probably wanted it to be a fence and not vegetation.

That's not saying they could have a fence or vegetation. It should be and or.

So they're required to have a fence now, safety fence, you know, like just a physical barrier so you can't get in there. But that fence is not required to be screened. So it can be a see-through fence. This fence would be where you can't see through it. So like a privacy fence, or I don't even know what they call those fences that have the little plastic slats that go all through them. But you know what I mean. But this fence would be that type of screening, more like a privacy screening. Or they can plant a vegetative screen.

So you're saying the fence could be the screen?

Yeah, and I think I'll get her to rephrase that or approve screening instead of fencing. That way it's clear that it's not your safety fence.

Right, okay.

Amen.

When they come to you for an application, they already have the FCC license when they apply for it.

Yeah, they do. Well, so most of the time, the power companies are working on behalf of a large carrier. So I mean, obviously, Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, T-Mobile, whoever, they have huge amounts of frequencies with all the FCC, Aviation Commission, all those things. 90% of the time, yeah, all of that stuff is provided up front when they apply.

Typically, they have most everything that we need from the beginning.

And if they didn't, they'd have to have it before we could approve it anyway. And when the county, and it's the same thing for us, I mean, even though we don't build the tower, if we lease space on the tower or put our own equipment on the tower, we have to do the same thing as the county. We have to and then somebody has to climb the tower, install our equipment. And so one tower could have 10 license holders on it. But generally speaking, the applicant is working for a tower company. And that tower company is working for a single person at that time. So when y'all see it, it's AT&T or it's Verizon. But a month after it's put up, it could have AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile,

and half a dozen other people on it.

But they all have to submit a license. Even if it's ham radio, you've still got to have a license. Believe it or not, we do have ham radio.

Well, I have on that, and we didn't have anything on that.

Were we going to discuss the major subdivision ordinance tonight?

I mean, you can in the open Q&A that's coming up next. That's the only other thing we have is just general discussion. That's going to be the primary topic on the joint meeting that's coming up. We're going to have a Planning Commission County Council joint meeting. And we're going to have subdivisions and several other. I can't even remember now. I wrote it a couple of weeks ago, so now my brain's broke. But that's the primary topic is subdivision. We haven't picked a date for it. But also one thing we have to pick a date for is our second education round. So we had the Piedmont training already, but we always do two classes. So we got to pick a date for that.

That'll probably be out in the first of October.

Yeah, and I was going to get someone from Association of Counties to come be the main speaker. But if we have other speakers or topics that y'all want to cover, let me know and we'll find someone for that too.

We have to attend one or both.

You only have to attend one.

If you didn't come to the last one, you'd have another opportunity.

Of course, you're welcome to attend all training sessions. But we offer two that aren't considered makeup. That way, if you can't get to one, you get to the other. And then if you can't make it to both of them, then you have to watch boring videos. I'm sorry.

And, of course, we'll partner with the towns again. It'll be a group effort for the next month.

the cell towers. We've got another one of those coming up, right? Did I see a note somewhere about a cell tower?

Application for another cell tower coming up. Close to Pleasant Lane.

Somebody put in a building application to put one up and I was like, wait, hold up, where's that?

Okay, now that got one up.

You don't have a permit. You don't have planning approval. They'll be coming here shortly whenever they get all their stuff. Okay.

The asphalt plant is going to come back in September. They should have everything that they need from DOT. I think that's their final site plan.

Do they have their DES already?

They have all of that. Their permit to construct. The only thing that they're missing is their DOT encroachment approval for them. And I'll come back to y'all for a final. So that's next month. And there was one other possible one. So we'll see if I can get everything in one time.

That's all we have.

Do y'all have any more questions about the self-power ordinance? Or do y'all have any?

John, until 6 o'clock, do our regular meeting. At this time, we will call our meeting to order for the Israel County Planning Commission for August 13, 2026.

Heavenly Father, thank you for this day and thank you for all the lives here tonight. Lord, go with us and be with us through this meeting as we do our county's business. May we have a good meeting and be safe on our way back home. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen.

Amen. And for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I need a motion for approval. of tonight's agenda.

Second.

Motion and second. All in favor? Right hand. Opposed? Ayes have it. I need approval for the minutes of our work session for July 9, 26.

Second.

Motion and second. All in favor? Right hand. I need approval for the minutes for July 9, 26.

Second.

All in favor? Right here. OK, good. No guest speakers? Public comments? Got any public? No public comments? OK. It's time for reports. Any reports or updates from the staff at this time?

five minor subdivisions, zero major subdivisions, two exempt subdivisions, and one final plat, which was heritage, and one preliminary, which is another update of hummingbird. And as Doc said, we're going to have a scheduled joint meeting within the next couple of months. That's all we have.

So the plat reviews, which is boundary line,

Any plat review is just a boundary survey. It's an existing parcel that someone has surveyed out to verify their boundary lines.

And I didn't hear what you were saying about Heritage Place.

They submitted a final plat. The one that we talked about last month that FAB signed, it was a final plat review for that strip up front.

Okay.

And the preliminary plat was hummingbird.

It's the one where they deleted the townhouses and turned them into single families.

Do you know how many units that went from so many townhouses?

They cut them in half. So they lost, what, 20?

I think that's what you said last week was 20.

So they had 40 and cut it down to 20 single families.

Okay. I appreciate that. Now we have... No old business. Vote on, so we'll move along. New business and vote in final discussion regarding the recommendation for approval of the preliminary plan submitted with the land development application for the proposed tractor supply store to be located at Columbia Road and Star Road in Edgefield. Title number 156-00-00-084-00. So we're open for discussion on that before we vote. Any more questions or comments on it? I want to be the first customer when they bill it. OK. And so I want to entertain a motion to, I think they met all the requirements and everything up to date on that. So I want to entertain a motion for approval. Second? Second. In discussion? Not all in favor of only for the preliminary plan that they submitted. Raise your right hand. Opposers? Ayes have it. So start digging whenever. OK, no exact session. If we don't have any comment, appreciate all of you coming. When you get your date, you're going to let us know the date on the other meeting with the county council, right? Give me a motion to adjourn.

Second.

Second. All in favor adjourn.