Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

So I would like to call this meeting to order. And for clarity, there's two bodies here. It's the county council and it's the planning commission. So it's the one joint meeting, but it's two bodies. So I'm going to call to order now the Edgefield County Council on the September 15th joint meeting with the planning commission. At this time, I've called to order the Edgefield County Planning Commission for September 15th, 2017. And so with that, it's all one meeting after this, and the minutes will reflect one meeting, because it's the same meeting. So with that, I think I'd like to start with the invocation, which will be led by David Goodell, our administrator, followed by the pledge, and then I'll have some other instructions we need to go to, because for us, it's an eating, working meeting. So with that, everybody will please stand, and I'll turn it over.

Lord, thank you for this opportunity to allow us to all come together and consider the county's business. Lord, as we do that, we pray for humility. We pray for wisdom. We always pray for good judgment, Lord. Lord, as we have a meal provided tonight, I would also ask that you please bless this food and nourish our bodies. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen.

Please join us for the pledge. So with that, before we go any further in the agenda, I did tell Lisa she had an announcement, so I'll turn it over to her real quick because it was more informal tonight.

This is just really quick, and it's something that I've been working on since June, the end of June, due to art camp. We had a little boy named Charlie. And Charlie's mom said, where can I take Charlie to get art lessons? And I had to stand there, being an artist, and say, I don't know. That ate at me and ate at me. As of right now, we have Edgefield County Arts Council. We are a 501c3. All three mayors from all three towns are a part of it. David Caddell's part of it. We have our board. We have our first board meeting Thursday. What we can do is we can encourage not only Charlie's age and have art classes, have teachers lined up of all kinds that are ready and willing to come and teach. This is a great thing for homeschool kids because they need to have somewhere to come. But also seniors. I learned that during art camp. They want somewhere they can go and have art classes. So as of right now, we have an Edgeville County Arts Council, and we plan on being very active.

All right, with that. So with that, what we're going to do is, for the people around this table, apologies to the people here, this is an eating meeting for us. So we have subs in the back. So everybody around this table, please go to the back, get your drink, get your sub, and we're going to come back here. And when everybody arrives, we already have the blessing. You certainly can start eating, but I want to go ahead and start the meeting with item number two, with the approval of the agenda at that point. So if we can, let's go get our subs and come back here and get to meeting. And that includes Rick, yes, because Rick is our guest speaker tonight.

I guess I'm doing fine. Cigars.

Thank you.

I'll get the money. I'll leave it here.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

If I eat butter, two or three things.

But butter don't worry about me. But what happens?

Once I eat it every day, do I have butter? Yeah.

At last, I mean, I know I eat that about once every two weeks or something like that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. One, two, three, four. I'm sorry. You're all right. I wasn't counting you. I didn't count everybody but you, like I don't count me sometimes.

Thank you.

Are we on right now?

All right. Are we going to be live?

Yes, sir.

All right. We're broadcasting, so we've got everybody back. I appreciate it. We'll just eat as we go. I appreciate everybody doing the informality tonight. So we're back from our little recess. I'll ask, can we have approval of the – do we have a motion to approve the agenda as presented?

So moved.

Okay, Jackie makes motion and other seconds. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please signify by raising your hand. All opposed? Motion passes unanimously. All right, so appreciate everybody being here tonight. You can see the agenda. What we're going to do is have a few opening remarks and then we'll go through the new business that you see there and we'll do it, I think, you know, in a way that will be good and and kind of get through this. I don't expect tonight to be a long meeting, but we'll see. I will say as far as the agenda goes, we've got members of the public here, and I appreciate that, and we did deliberately put public comments on the agenda. My expectation, and I think everybody's expectation here would be those comments would be related to things to do with the Planning Commission and county councilmen that way versus Some other comment has nothing to do with planning commission or something from county council. So if that makes sense, I'm just trying to make sure people understand that that's kind of what I'm expecting. And the public comment period will be just like it is for our meetings, five minutes max. So, you know, just to give everybody an opportunity. So we'll get to that point. If there are any questions, that's fine. We can answer those then in terms of how we'll do that. But with that, I do appreciate everybody being here. And before I turn it over to the Assistant Administrator and the Administrator for anything they need to say, I'll turn it over to Fab. Do you have any opening comments you want to make tonight? FAB GILBERT- Basically, yes.

I think it's a good idea. I appreciate the council and all the staff that's meeting together. I think that part of the communication is the most important thing. We have good communication with the council and the I'm a fan of the commission, and we appreciate you working with us. And we appreciate the public coming in and so forth, and they come along. So basically, everybody's doing well. And I think from tonight's meeting, it should happen to be going forward with good intention and unity.

DAVID BURRAGE. Thank you. So David and Doc, David, do you want to start? And then Doc, I think, has some things to go through.

DAVID BURRAGE. I don't really have much to say except that Housing is always on the top of our minds in the county right now. Affordable housing, for one. It's very important that we try to ensure that new homeowners, retirees have housing that's as affordable as it can be in this environment. But at the same time, we want quality subdivision. are aesthetically appealing, that the amenities are readily available. And having those two items match, because honestly, they conflict in some ways, is a difficult task.

And it's one that I think we really need to work on.

We need to make our subdivisions as attractive to people as they can B, while also keeping the contract such that we're able. So I think we need to keep both of those things in mind as far as we're able. Okay.

Well, I had originally planned to speak informally about some of the items that we accomplished since the last meeting that we had, but it was quite a lengthy list, so I decided I'd write it down instead. The last time the County Council and Planning Commission met together was January of 2024. And I will say that it hasn't always been easy. There have been disagreements. There have been unexpected issues. There have been legal challenges. But through it all, everyone on the County Council and the Planning Commission and the staff have stayed committed to working together and making Nashville County a better place to live. So I wanted to take the time to thank everybody here for your dedication We don't always agree or share the same vision, but we're all trying to get to the same end point and the same goal. And we continue to move forward as a team throughout it all. And we often do that without any recognition whatsoever. So I felt it was important to give that recognition myself at this meeting. To continue, the summary I put together, some of the main topics that we had at our last meeting and I wanted to go over some of those key items and what we've accomplished. So besides the numerous applications that have come before the Planning Commission and County Council for that matter over the last few years, we've also had complete updates to our plan development process. We've completely updated the use table several times, the lot size table several times. We've created a new rural agricultural zoning district We rewrote all of the application processes for private development throughout the county. We've updated the comprehensive plan. We've zoned over 2,000 parcels of land countywide, essentially doubling the amount of protected zoning in the county. We've created three new conditional use regulations, including getting ahead of the data center issue. We've updated several different conditional And we've written a mass grading and tree preservation ordinance, which we established from scratch. Those all took care of 90% of what was on the last action item. The other two things that were on there were user fees or impact fees. The last action item was overlay districts. We have expanded our overlay districts to cover more of Sweetwater Road, all of Highway 25 south. So from where it stopped at Greenhouse Road, we continued it all the way up to the city limits of Edgefield. We also... uh put an overlay district on all of highway 121 as well as a large portion of martintown road these protective overlays regulate things like signs billboards any large impact structures with architectural controls to keep our highway frontages looking neat and clean we've accomplished a great deal since the last meeting and again i want to thank you all for your

All right. Thank you, Doc and David. Appreciate that information. I think that does help kind of calibrate us a little bit, that sometimes you don't remember what you've done. You've done so much. So I'm thankful to everybody here for their part in that. Before we move to new business, I did have just a couple other notes to make. One, tonight's agenda is not meant to be all-encompassing. We all know things are going to come up a month from now, six months from now. Well, this is just some things we want to talk about to get us all on the same page if we need to be or vet some ideas. When we get into the discussion areas here, it's wide open. Whoever wants to talk can talk. It doesn't matter, council or planning commission. I did want to point out we're not taking any votes tonight. This is a Q&A and discussion time between us, so there are no votes that will happen. And I did want to also point out when we get under new business number one, A lot of it's just informal, whatever we want to talk about in there. So I would just tell you, if you're interested in talking about the subdivision regulations, wait till we get to subdivision regulations. If you're interested in talking about any zoning changes anywhere, wait until we get to zoning changes. So in other words, that first block of discussion is sort of other than those two topics. We'll talk about those other two when we get to it. So with that, unless I've missed something that we need to discuss or talk about relative to logistics, we'll just get into new business number one discussion. And the first one is a brief discussion for the PC to inform council of any planning items that they are looking forward to addressing in the coming years. So I'll turn it over to Doc and Fab, whatever y'all want to talk about. related to the coming year.

So this would be items like additional conditional use regulations, overlay expansion, or new regulations altogether that y'all might want to discuss with county council before we bring it up to the planning commission. I personally think that we've done quite a lot of that

I think we've done a kind of tough job on some situations, but I think we've worked them out. And I always say we need to try to keep it, whatever we plan, what we do to try to keep kind of in mind that growth plus what impact it's going to have on the citizens and things of that sort. In our regulation, we don't want to have them too strict. We don't want to have them too strict. You can have things too strict, and then you can have them too lean. So we need to be in the middle of that. We can be flexible to that. We can kind of lean one way or the other, adapt to impartiality. That's my idea of it, and be fair enough. I know I've probably been around longer than all of you have, but that's what the nine years is looking at from experience. We are in, I think it kind of, basically, this county is in good condition, basically. What I do, I deal with some of the other counties that go around, some of the largest counties, and some counties are in real bad shape, considering what we are considering now on our ordinance and things of that sort. Some of the counties put themselves in bind because they made them too strict. And when everybody get upset, nobody can think right or what. But we've got to keep in mind that we don't want to let power structure overcome our individual thinking and common sense, I call it, common sense. Because see, at the speed that the eye and all that we are going at this time, we've got to be careful with the decisions that we make. Let's not make quick decisions, but let's think about it, discuss it, and then bounce them out before we present them.

I do. I've noticed there's a movement in the Midlands, upper Midlands, and coastal area. It's a citizen-led movement. addressing massive development. And their opinion is that maybe the state stormwater infrastructure requirements are 30, 40 years behind where they should be. That even though there are some storm drainage regulations in place for the state and in some counties, they are seeing an increase in flooding. And their neighborhoods and people around Lake Lake Murray are seeing flooding that they've never seen before because of developments upstream. And so even the coastal areas see flooding that they haven't seen before in the last 15 years. So I think we need to keep an eye on that. maybe the state may be addressing that, the EES may be addressing that, and increasing stormwater runoff requirements and regulations. In that same conversation, are people paying more attention to the wetlands surrounding their communities and needing to protect those wetlands? Those are being destroyed by the flooding, quick increase in development, and so Everything flows down, you know, in South Carolina. Everything flows down towards the coast, and so it's really affecting our coastal cities and, of course, the Savannah River. So I think that we need to keep an eye on that. So I think that might be something we may need to be addressing. We need to keep an eye on that movement in the state and addressing that. I think we did a great job on the data center ordinance. I know y'all just passed that, but there seems to be more information coming out and more effects coming out from communities on that. So maybe in the next year we may need to look at that data center ordinance again and see if there's any new information that we need to consider to amend that ordinance. But that's my two, those are my two main points. I just feel like these are moving pieces in our state and in our country and we need to keep an eye on it and see what we might need to do in Edgeville County for those things.

So the stormwater regulations as they're written are designed to have and it impacts the downstream quickly. The tension ponds take that heat down and they spread it out. The ponds designed to catch, treat, and release that water over a 24 hour period instead of letting it go. What it doesn't do is it doesn't reduce the overall volume of the water. It reduces the flow rate, but it doesn't reduce the volume water regulations. I think our pre-ordinance has gone a long way to doing that by having larger buffers, better landscape buffers. But that is going to be an important issue that the state is going to be trying to trickle down to counties. And we've made a good first step with it. We actually built one of the first infiltration

Thank you for the new district that you created and holding so many public hearings and so much public I appreciate that, and it grew way bigger than either of us thought that it would ever, I think any of us thought, yeah. It just expanded, and that was a citizen-led expansion, and I appreciate y'all listening. last meeting at COG I could be wrong but I think we're the only county in our COG that has anything put together yet and they were absolutely amazed and we're seeing how they are and we did have some that literally said we're waiting on the state to do something and when David and I first talked about it I was like waiting on the state is not a good idea you know we need to get in front of this and y'all went to work immediately on this and David and Doc went day one and got in there and started putting something together. So we are not seeing all this. We have something in place. Now, the state may end up coming in and taking what we have out of play, but y'all put something in to fill that gap, and I truly appreciate it. And we're not facing the troubles that these other counties that we are seeing. But what you were just speaking about, we had a, at our last call meeting, we had a lady from DNR come speak to the Anna sounds right. I have her information at the house, but she did a great presentation. I think that she may be worth looking Once again, I feel like we are being proactive, not reactive. And while I watched a lot of our counterparts being very reactive to it, and I don't want us to do that anymore. I do want to be on top of it. I think she would be a great asset to come in. I don't know if it's just starting with planning commission or having her come in and speak to both of the groups.

and then let the Planning Commission make recommendations from there to the county.

I think we could maybe reach out to some other agencies or experts in that field, too, that could guide us and advise us on that.

And that's her job, too, is to kind of network for y'all, and she has a lot of good networking. I was very impressed with her presentation, and it just seemed to really kind of, it was just hand in hand with what we were going through and what we're already talking about. Y'all want to have another meeting or just have her come maybe to one of your work sessions or something that you already have scheduled and have her speak.

She also made mention, don't hesitate to call upon her in a particular time, and I thought that was very inspiring for her to make that kind of comment.

I think there are other people out there that would be good resources for us in addition to her that we'd like to invite and educate us in. and guide us on it. Maybe I can put, maybe I can work on getting a list of names together to suggest who. Yeah, that's right.

All right, so then I'll ask, is there anybody else on the Planning Commission that wants to talk about anything you're looking forward to address in the coming year? Hearing nothing, then I'll go to item B, which is a brief discussion for the County Council to direct the PC on any items that we feel are important to address in the coming year. So I'll open it up to County Council. Anything you want the PC to address this year?

So that does not fall under subdivision.

I'll say that from a regulatory standpoint, campground, basically. It really depends on how they do it, and that's what makes it complicated. If all they're doing is building a six-inch platform off the ground to set the tent up on, and there's no power or sewage or any of those concerns, we don't really need to regulate that. It's an elevated campground. However, if they're going to have utilities there, if they're going to have restroom facilities there, if they're going to have anything that's going to require infrastructure or could potentially cause issues, that's something we need to consider. And we need to think, does our current campground regulations cover that sort of thing?

I seem to remember y'all talking like it may have fallen under more of a resort type deal. And we don't have anything for that, is that correct?

That's correct. So the thing we're talking about is a Christian retreat, and he's doing a pick-your-own fruits and vegetables type thing, some walking trails, and have a Christian summer camp type program, and then he's got an area for just regular tent camp. There's no RV hookups or anything that requires... So for the most part, we're just going to classify that amusement and not be concerned with it. But that could be something that comes up, you know, if they start building elevated platforms. Now you're talking ADA issues. It can become a thing that we need to consider. And really our campground ordinance is basically made to regulate RVs because of the waste and power and water requirements that come with them. And so we don't really regulate or haven't historically regulated regular camping spots. But there are concerns after a certain period of, like I said, ADA requirements, stuff like that, that it might at some point be regulated.

Well, if you have people camping outside, there's got to be some facility, right? So, I mean, could you

In that case, it would be more like a centralized building. If you go to the lake, they have the bath house up on the hill. They have something like that, which is fine because you have to submit all of that for a building. But if you put a little 10x10 platform out there to put a regular tent on, there is no no regulatory authority on that, that somebody from the county is saying, yes, this is safe. I mean, they don't have to meet any, you know, fan tables or building requirements, and they could end up building something that's, you know, not safe or doesn't really meet a standard that you would expect out of a commercial enterprise. approve that.

So like I said, you have to be out there making sure they're not putting something like that in.

Somebody will tell them. 100%. A true composting toilet would be something. If I show up somewhere and there's an active outhouse, I'm chasing everybody.

So y'all will be working on that then. It sounds to me like you're going to have to do some

feel something from scratch to identify and... Well, it's going to be a balancing act because it's how far is too far when you're talking about camping in a tent. I mean, how far do you really want to step into that is really the question. Like I said, I think if you get to the point where we're talking, you've got 65 platforms out there, they're elevated platforms, or you've built a jungle gym out there and there's potential hazards and you've got to have handicap accessibility and hard surface walkways and all these sorts of things, then we might need to step in and regulate. But someone buys 60 acres of land and say, hey, we're going to have a Christian retreat and we're going to have about 40 tents out here, you know, two months out of the year. I'm not sure we want to step into that.

And I'm not saying, I'm just saying I knew that that had come up.

but I've heard about it in other parts of the country, but not in our area, but that is something we need to be prepared for.

Glamping is becoming a possibility.

And it kind of ties in a little bit as well with our agribusiness is growing Sarah's Farm and Venture. Now that I'm saying we need to regulate that, love me some Sarah's Farm, but I'm just saying, I'm just saying, what if something like that pops up elsewhere? Yeah. Yeah. It's just more so this glamping type resort.

That doesn't sound glamping.

Well, glamping to me is a stay in the hill. I'm with you. I'm not staying in the tent. But I know that there are, I know y'all have brought this and said we didn't have anything.

Glamping has been bigger.

out west in Montana, I know it's big in Wyoming, it's also big in upper New York, but they do yurts and that's no normal tent. So if you have a huge yurt and that's glamping. Sticking up a tent on a pallet platform, that's not glamping. So we're talking a whole different ball game there, but glamping has been going on for the past 20 years. And it's just now getting here.

Well, historically, if you have a nice piece of property with a nice pond, and you've got some people coming out there and they're just setting up tents and camping in the back of their little campfire, we don't typically get involved. We never have. And I don't think really that's what we want. To me, if you're putting some sort of permanent facility in Pelley, and to be completely fair to the property owner he's 100 up front he came to me in april right off the bat when he first purchased the property he sat down with us and talked about everything he wanted to do it's not his fault we don't have a classification for him so we we we have worked with him he's been 100 up front he's a great guy We have had no issue whatsoever. It's just not a regulated item.

And I don't want to hurt his business either because we are behind the eight ball. So, you know, we don't want to impede his business or whatever he's going to do. Y'all sound like you're on it. I just wanted you to know where we are. And if y'all are looking

Anybody else on County Council have anything to add to things, items you want the PC to look at?

I just want to thank y'all for the tree preservation and the buffering. What little bit left is left in my district. I would like for it to stay what's already there, like the Ferry Town, the Pinewood Plantation, all of that. So I appreciate that. And I think y'all hopefully have what's remaining down there protected for no more I'm not going to name the subdivision, but y'all know what kind of subdivision I don't like, so I thank y'all.

Any other county council members need to talk about anything? All right. Then if not, I'll move to item C under number one, which is general discussion and questions. We've had some general discussion already, but is there any other general discussion or questions before I move to the subdivision? From county council or PC. All right. Hearing none, then we'll go to number two, which is the subdivision regulation. So, Rick Green, I will turn it over to you.

Thank you. First of all, I'd like to say thank you for having this type of meeting. I think this is a great idea. It ought to be done as regular as you can do it. I wish all of our counties would do something like this. It's a good idea to get both bodies together and talk about some issues. I know most of you, some of County Council members might be aware, but your planning commissioners are required by state law to have an introductory planning class, and then they have to have training every year to keep up with their certification. And Edgefield is one of the models. I think I always talk to my other counties and say, why can't you do it like Edgefield does it? But the county plus the three municipalities get together and do as many people as we can. I get our training done at one time. Usually it's one of the last Thursdays of June get that annual training out of the way that's a big positive and i'm glad to hear that you all are taking these issues on especially that tree ordinance thing that was a really big deal very positive thing for you all to work towards as far as subdivision goes i i don't really have a subdivisions what they look like. You want to have regulations but you don't want to be too regulated. You want to take care of the environment and not have negative impacts or cause negative impacts that weren't there in the beginning by this new development. All those things are wrapped up in those subdivision regulations and what has to be in place. And the end of that is management by county staff. So you can have a really All the bells and whistles, subdivision regulation, but you're putting a big burden on your county staff if you don't have the number of people and the amount of people to put some attention to it. Plus you're a growing county. Not every county can say that. You're growing a great deal. So the subdivision regulations, the items we talked about, the appearance, that bumper with the tree, all those are good things to do. All those are good things to consider. I think previously we talked about maybe trying to space out and looking at maybe some of the design elements that each subdivision offers, maybe having some different looks to each of the houses or requiring at least some different types of look to the houses rather than having the same house over and over and over again. That's a good thing. It's been done in some places, but there again, that's an extra burden where you design burden that you put on your staff and on your volunteer boards and commissions too. So I will, I will, end by saying that I mean there's a lot of things that we could talk about and a lot of things that we could do but I think your your people here are pretty much on top of what they're doing and they're anticipating as with the previous discussion with the data center dealing with this glamping issue that comes up there's always going to be something that pops up something new that you don't anticipate that's why you ought to keep having those regular meetings keep revising your ordinances as you as you need to every so often remember 15, 20 years ago, maybe there was an issue of coin-operated, those coin machines that people were getting some money out of video poker. That was a big issue. You don't hear about that issue so much anymore. So there's things that happen, and they come and they go, and you have to deal with them and be very flexible and nimble with your planning activities. I think your planning commission and your staff is on top of that and doing as much as any county of this size is try to do that. There is that Hannah Huckabee Smith with the Department of Natural Resources. There's also an Office of Resilience, a fairly new state agency that is interested in helping communities develop plans to prepare for natural disasters primarily, and then also to recover from natural disasters. We're going to have our county administrators up to my office Thursday. that meeting. So that office, Office of Resilience, Shea Davis is the person for most of your county. You've also got a little bit of Edisto River Basin, which would be a different person, but Shea Davis is the main person for this area, and then Anna Huckabee-Smith for the Department of Natural Resources. So those are two important resources. We could have them come in for a future county of your size.

So, I have a few questions.

Before you ask those, let me just say one thing real quick. For County Council, we haven't seen this yet because the Planning Commission hasn't sent it to us. So this, this, the regulations we're going to be talking about will be all news to us in the sense that we just saw this, in the sense that we had a chance to read it before this meeting. But my point is, This will change probably in some way before it comes to us anyway. So just FYI.

The Planning Commission will do a revision on it before they vote, and they'll have public hearings on it before they say it.

So just FYI for us. I'm sorry, go ahead.

So I don't really have, I think most of this, everybody on the Planning Commission already agrees with for the most part. But I do have some areas that I highlighted in here already. that I think we do need to regulate in some way. I'm just not 100% sure what the best way to regulate it is. Two of the big items are sidewalks and curbs and gutter. There are so many different types of subdivisions that can be built in a rural area. Cities always pack things in as tight as possible to limit the infrastructure requirements as much as possible. That's always the goal for a city. But that's not the case for a county. We have unique issues that we have to look at. And you can have subdivisions where you have 105 acre lot. And everything is hugely spaced out over a great distance. And there's still dirt roads, gravel roads, what have you. And that's a whole different ball game from what you will see inside of a city. So we need to have a subdivision ordinance that if somebody does come in and say do a planned development or a major subdivision where they're quarter acre lots or et cetera, there's a point where you need curb and gutter to handle the stormwater appropriately. But you don't need that if you're having two and a half acre lots subdivision. So my question is, in here, is it better to do a curb and gutter a curb and gutter and sidewalk requirement based more off of lot size or number of lots? Because, I mean, 500 lots are not always going to be equal, but if you have a 500-lot subdivision, that's a huge subdivision. So I can kind of see it both ways, and I'm not sure which exactly, you know, I've seen it done both ways. So I don't know which one is better for us to go through, and should we make a chart have a list of requirements for each.

I was actually looking at the water and sewer supply chart you did here where you have if it's so many if it's less than 50 what's required. If it's more than 51 or more what's required. But then you have the exception here that says unless the lots are 5 acres or greater in size.

So

I don't know why we couldn't. I would agree with creating a chart like that, but for the curb and gutter section, saying if your lot sizes are above a certain size, I don't know how big we would go, an acre? If they're more than an acre each, no curbs and gutters needed? I don't know. I'm not sure of the size.

My only concern there would be And it might be a case that you can't plan for every eventuality. But even with large lots, there can be situations. They've got clubhouses. They've got community pools. They've got community event spaces. And there's a certain amount of walkability then that you want to require to be incorporated. And I just don't know how to pull all of those elements in. Obviously, yeah, if they're over five acres, you're going to have to walk a significant distance to get to any sort of public infrastructure at that point anyway. But you could have a one-acre lot size requirement subdivision and still have enough public amenities that you might not need curb and gutter, but you at least need sidewalks, right?

I'm just asking a clarifying question. This major subdivision ordinance, does this apply to planned developments?

That would be up to you.

Okay. So a planned development. Correct.

So a planned development, the entire land development regulation is thrown in the trash. Nothing in that applies to a planned development. You cannot because you are creating a custom law specifically for that development. That being said, you as the planning commission, and then after you've made your recommendation to them as county council, you can use any document you want to as a guiding principle towards getting what you want out of that development. But there's nothing that you can write into a land development ordinance that they have to meet.

You mean for the plan, the PD?

The PD, correct.

Okay. So just because we have it in this ordinance doesn't mean it would necessarily apply to the PD.

That's correct. The PD, when it's drafted, there's a literal narrative document that lists all of the legal requirements for that development. And planning commission has to make a recommendation to council, and the council has to read it three times in the law, and it becomes a custom law that applies just to that property.

So my follow-up question or thought is, I would think that if a developer's coming in and he's looking at a golf course in the community center, maybe a restaurant, that most likely is going to be a PD.

At that point, yes. No matter what the lot sizes are.

So that developer is probably already going to plan, don't you think, for that walkability in the sidewalks in the Irving, if it's going to be that type of neighborhood?

One would hope so.

You would hope so. But that would be a negotiation with the developer. Correct. Because he's coming with the PD, right?

Correct. And y'all have the authority to grant or deny at leisure.

Okay. So we could be a little, maybe a little looser on the major subdivision, a little more flexible, because most likely somebody that's going to put those amenities in is going to come with a PD. So basically, could we think that when we're really thinking about someone that wants to bring a major subdivision that's not a PD, that's what this ordinance is for, right? So I think we could put in, I think we could safely put in a chart, like we're only going to require curbs and gutters if your lots are below a certain size. If they're above a certain size, we're not going to require the curbing and cutters. Because with the PD, that's going to be a negotiation anyway, right?

Yeah, it would be.

So, Rick, what was your thought on that?

Yeah, I think if you're getting to the stage of having a PD, then I would say it would almost be a basic tenant that you're going to need sidewalks and curbs and cutters within that PD because you're going to have mixed uses together. If there's a residential component, which there usually is, part of your planning commission negotiation with that developer.

But this is if it's a non-PD.

If it's non-PD, I agree with what you were saying about having that chart. I would say curb and gutter for every residential development, but that's just my opinion. I understand what you're saying about the larger lots too. And sidewalks, they're a huge, tremendous expense, but they are necessary in a gravel trail instead of a sidewalk with a large scale, depending on the character of the neighborhood.

If I could take my planner hat off for a second and put my county administrator and CTC director hat on. The reason I don't want a harsh requirement for things like curb and gutter is because a lot of the time, those roads get turned over to the public for maintenance. Herb and gutter, if you had a subdivision with three or four miles of road, would be much more expensive to maintain than a road without curb and gutter. So my mind kind of goes into what we're adopting and having to maintain with taxpayer money. So there's the balance there. Do we want to require something that's going to increase the cost on the taxpayer to maintain in the future if it's not necessary? So that's the That's the only reason I have the, let's not blanket statement, curb and gutter, all major subdivisions. And obviously, if it's a dirt road or a gravel road, you're not going to have any kind of curb and gutter anyway.

Well, if you have a higher density subdivision, you have a higher collection rate of revenues to pay for maintenance.

But if it's a lower density and you've got a lot of curb and gutter, that would be hard.

And where is that line?

Yeah, where's the line? I don't know where would it be.

Well, on your curb and gutter, to me, it depends on what type of soil you're in and the areas. Now, you know, take down an acre kind of place. If you haven't got a curb and gutter, you're ruined. But you can get in, like, clay and stuff like that. You can make some nice subdivisions without curb divisions. And, you know, the grass and everything, take natural. And the runoff is good. And if it looks nice, it'll stay more of a natural look. You can't do it in the areas. I think it should depend on what area you're in and where the layout of the land is.

Well, that goes back to the earlier discussion. There are a lot of people in the environmental movement trying to do away with curb and gutter when you're in sandy or lonely soil because you get infiltration in the ditches. Not in the clay ditches. It's going to run off. So you might as well have curb and gutter. That sort of goes to that where you encourage infiltration to reduce runoff. So that's a consideration.

So what would you consider a small lot? Because I know that Edgefield County has a much different opinion from most counties of what a small lot is. But most counties, 12,000 square foot is a minimum lot size countywide. Obviously, we have lot size requirements all the way up to two and a half acres. So we're a little different. And I know there are no other counties with lot size requirements like ours. But in your mind, just as a planner, What would you consider a small one? In my mind, just as a planner, a quarter lot, a quarter acre lot.

So I'd say my Edgefield branch is that big.

Two and a half acres is not small.

Are there other places in South Carolina we can look at other subdivisions?

So I actually did that homework. We are the only county in the state that has a bigger than a half acre lot size countywide. So it's going to be hard to find a comparable situation because no other counties do that. You can't even look at cities because they're so far out there that it doesn't even apply to us. We're less restricted than some counties in terms of architectural controls and things of that nature, but our zoning is where we have it. It's pretty tight. There's not really a county that does things the way we do.

It's fine.

We made it for us, not for them, but At the same time, I do want to have a line that I can draw somewhere that says, in black and white, if you're this, then this. If you're that, then that. Because ambiguity, when you get to a planning commission meeting and they're trying to rule on it, is a terrible thing.

And this is only if we're going to require someone to have gutter and curbs and gutters.

That's what I'm saying. What is the... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

down my road, I would think I'd died and gone somewhere else.

You still live on a gravel road.

I don't live on, I live on a rock road. So, the whole thing, I mean, if you just read this and it says a subdivider may desire to provide additional improvements in the subdivision according to the following, curb and gutter, that may desire

Yes, so I wrote that in there to be ambiguous while we work on it.

That's very ambiguous. It is. They could skip it. Yes, which is why it's in red. So are we going to legislate something that will be there, or upon the receipt of the subdivision application, Are they going to, if they.

Yeah, basically that's what I'm asking.

Well, I don't want to have anything that says that they may desire. I mean, that's what's holding me up right now. That's just for now.

That's just for working purposes. We're going to take that.

It could get written in there like that. We had one other one. Thank you.

Y'all go take that out.

I will say, other than GR, our frontage width is pretty much the same countywide at 100 feet. Well, RA, of course, is a little bigger.

It's two and a half.

But other than RA, 100 feet is pretty much the standard countywide. So we don't really have a whole lot of zoning districts that have different funding requirements. GR, but then again, GR isn't the only place you're going to have a really high density sub-district. Okay.

Might I ask?

But if you say, hey, developer, you can have a 25-foot wide lot, they will 100% cut out every 25 feet on the road and have a 700-foot long lot. And they will do it faster than you can blink because their goal is to shove as many lots as humanly possible on that amount of roadway while reducing the amount of roadway they have to build.

So what was the verbiage on Mount Vintage as far as curb and gutter went? Because they have curb and gutter, so what's the verbiage there? That's a PD.

Well, Mount Vintage was not a PD. Mount Vintage was not a zoned area at all. Mount Vintage, I'm not even sure, was a planned thing other than the developers decided to do it. I will say that I was still in grade school when that happened, so I don't really know What occurred at that time, that was before I... Yeah, that's before I... So do we have anything right now that we can look at and... We have no curb and gutter requirement in Edgewood County at all at the moment. Now, we do have sidewalk requirements.

Yeah.

But we do not have any curb and gutter requirements unless, you know, DES or somebody beyond us mandates it. So, obviously... If you get to the level of density like Windsor, for example, they're going to do curving gutter because they're moving stormwater to large retention areas or ponds, whether it's retention, detention, doesn't really matter. They have to move that water and they do not want that water to sit in lots. They do not want big ditches to have to dig and fill. They want to pipe that water straight to those areas and contain it because they're on 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 square foot blocks. Mount Vintage did it purely from the aesthetic point and only in certain areas. Not all of Mount Vintage has curtains.

So are there any areas of the county right now that have the curb and gutter that weren't

Oh yeah, there's plenty of subdivisions. Yeah, there's plenty of subdivisions. Not a lot of them, but a lot of the nicer subdivisions, especially around any sort of community areas, will have curb and gutter just there. Maybe not for each row of houses in it, but They want it to look really nice. But it's almost always done for aesthetic reasons until you get to moderate density housing like Windsor.

I don't know about y'all, but the aesthetics is not my, I mean, I'm concerned about where it needs to be.

Well, if I paid what they're paying, aesthetics would follow.

Well, I wouldn't pay it if I didn't like it.

Well, when it comes to the aesthetics, that's all good and well, but we still have to take those roads over and pay for that when it breaks.

I will point out that the county does not employ concrete crews. It's just a consideration. The bridge is crewed by the greatest dirt road in the business. It does a little bit of asphalt. But having said all that, I think the public safety standards

and I think we could just safely pull our current sidewalk requirement over and it's basically you know if the planning commission decides that your development is insufficient for walkability they can require sidewalks to be put in and typically you require sidewalks on one side not both sides and then Planning Commission would have to just decide at that time, you know, you don't have enough walkability, you need to put sidewalks.

This would be one of those cases where we're trying to legislate things out completely and when there could be choices made, you know, depending upon the property itself and the surrounding homes. You know?

Yeah. I think, you know, for a developer looking to put in a subdivision that's not a PD, I feel like for that developer, it just leaves a big question.

Are they going to require it?

Right.

Are they or are they not? It will be ambiguous to the developer. Like, well, I don't know if I'm going to have to do it or not. Now I'm having to bring it before Planning Commission and let them make a subjective decision on whether or not I can have this. I'm all for flexibility. I don't know. I just think it would be easier if we had something more black and white, like lot size.

So my guidance in the past to the Planning Commission on rare occasions that things like this have come up has been, what is nearby that they would want to? Is there a bus stop for the school? Are there mail kiosks? Is there a public pool? Is there a community event center? If the answer to those questions are yes, then that's when I suggest to the Planning Commission that we need to get sidewalks and keep children off the roadways. You don't want to put up a bus stop and a mail kiosk and have children just running out in the middle of the road. Let's put a sidewalk. If the answer to those are no, and there's literally no reason, you know, every lot has a mailbox in front of it, there's no community spaces, you know, that sort of thing, then the answer is no. We could literally write that if we wanted to, I believe.

Why can't you just say if you're going to have X, Y, and Z? Or if you're going to have so many of the X, Y, and Z? How's that?

The only reason I think it was written that way, and Rick might know because he was probably around when it was written, is what if you are on an interior street, let's say Murrow Road Extension or something like that, and the county already has a sidewalk there. When you come down to subdivision, you don't put any sidewalks in. So now you just have a sidewalk dead ending right there, going into a major subdivision and you have no requirement or no ability to require them to connect and continue. So that's the issue with not having the ability to look at the situation and say, well, hold on a minute. We've got all these sidewalks and walkability in the area. Now you're going to jump in here and there's just gonna be a gap between you and the school or whatever's down there that has sidewalks. It's nice to be able to say, nah, you're gonna put that sidewalk.

So can we put a list of, if you have this, this, this, and or this and this, you have to have curbs and sidewalks. Because if it's just a subdivision of just homes and the developer's not putting in any amenities, they're just taking a large parcel cutting a road in, putting in large lots. I just don't see requiring curbs and gutters or something like that.

Very few have sidewalk requirements. But that's a question that comes up all the time. I don't know if you could do what you're asking for necessarily. I'd have to think about that and look into it. But there are issues. connectivity within the subdivision and connectivity outside the subdivision.

I took the time to look up, you know, like Hilton Head and some nicer places that definitely have sidewalk requirements. That's way too much for Edgewood County. We cannot go that far.

Why would we not stay with the, I mean, we would have the discussion when they bring it in. We would have the discussion, and then dependent upon what the surrounding area is and what the actual thing is.

I try to limit the issue that developers will have when they come in for a pre-meeting. Because as you know, they have to come to me before they ever come. I'm not going to even let them talk to you until they talk to me. So in the pre-meeting, I usually look at whatever they're planning to say, hey, most likely planning commission is going to tell you you need sidewalks. Or, hey, you got one entrance and you got more than 20 houses on the street. You're going to need to put in another entrance or there's probably going to be some pushback. I look at those sorts of things up front whenever there's a pre-meeting before they make the application. But obviously, I don't have the ability to require at that point to do anything. But I do try to limit You know, what you're saying with the uncertainty, I try to tell them up front. You know, there's a good chance the planning commission is not going to go for this if you don't, you know, put something in there for walkability because you have XYZ. But then, of course, you have subdivisions like Little Horse. We don't really. I know. The one on Mount Zion. Yeah. I know what you're talking about.

I can't think of the name. But he has five-acre lots.

Right, he has five-acre lots, gravel road all the way down. You know, you have stuff like that. Well, no, I'm not going to make any requirements. Right. You know, that would be ridiculous at that point.

I guess, I mean, I would favor some language in there for clarity for that developer. You know, if you're looking at this lot size and adding amenities in it, then... Yeah, then, you know, you're going to be required.

I'm going to give Rick on that further and see if I can come up with some language. And then I will pass it by him before I bring it to y'all. I'll do some work on that. See if it's, you know, I don't want to write something that's going to be illegal either.

Yeah. Yeah. I think, I mean, something that's flexible but clear enough for the developer to know what to expect. Yeah. It's not so ambiguous.

Right. And then I'm going to turn this over to us. All the rest of y'all stay out of the rest of this because I don't suck the life out of you.

But as far as counties go, I don't know any subdivisions. So we'll have to look into that and do some more research. Cities and towns, definitely. County-wide, I don't know.

We're kind of under still, I'm going to call it A and B under number two. So does anybody have any other updates or amendments you want to see worked on?

I have a lot of notes on the subdivision regulation that I wanted to ask Doc and Rick and y'all about. On page three under R, so That definition of subdivision on R, two or more lots. But we have a definition, right, of what a minor subdivision and a major subdivision is.

So we don't.

The state does. The state does. So I'm trying to understand under R, are you requiring all these things If they take a parcel and divide it into two or more plots, is that more strict than the state?

So this is just a definition of subdivision in general. It's not differentiating between minor, major, and exempt.

Okay. I just wasn't sure.

So we did rewrite the major subdivision definition for Edgefield County. to differentiate, to be more restrictive than the state. So we changed it down to five or more lots. So we did change that. Exempt subdivision, unfortunately, that's not something we can change. Even if we want to, that's a hard code in state law. It cannot be modified or messed with in any manner. But this is basically just defining subdivision altogether. And just as a general thing, because as a subdivision regulation, it's not just applying to major.

OK. So it applies to the minor subdivisions.

So it can. It just depends on criteria.

So my next question was, and I have this question because I've run into this when I take a buyer. to a property that was a large parcel and it was divided up for a family and now you've got a child is moving to another state because of a job opportunity or parents pass away and they're selling the house. I bring the buyer to there and what I have been finding is the lender, when they find out about that situation and there's a private drop, The lenders are asking for a court-filed private road maintenance agreement.

We do that.

So is that a requirement we have?

So that is a requirement we have in our road section of our ordinance. So not in here necessarily. But if you go under land development general, then you'll have roads public, which lists DOT requirements and the gift yada, yada, yada, and then it has roads private, and yes, one of those requirements is that you have to file an agreement to maintain the land, maintain the road in perpetuity, and you have to file it with the courthouse. So, yes, we do have a private, yes, we do have a private.

So they have to file it with the courthouse. I just want to make sure, because I'm running into that in other sections.

The process for a private road is you have to come to us, you have to fill out your request, and you have to get everything landowner that would be touching the potential new road to sign off and agree on it. Then you bring us that and then you have to fill out a private road maintenance agreement. I have to send that private road maintenance agreement to Andrew and then Andrew has to get all parties to sign off on it, stamp it, and then it has to be recorded and then you can bring all of that to Jenny, who's our E911 director. and then she can name the road and make it official once all that's been filed.

And it maintains, it's still a private road?

It's still a private road, and we mainly have that requirement, you know, for dirt roads and gravel roads. People have a driveway, they have 25 acres, and then they want to cut something out for their two kids. Well, a driveway can't serve three addresses by state law, so if because you have to name it to get that third address.

Yeah, I didn't see it in here, so I thought I think that would be a requirement.

I can add like a C-section reference.

Okay, yeah, a reference, that'd be good. So on number seven under R, The term serial subdivision is repeated subdividing of a larger parent parcel over a period of time. It is a, okay, so that is a huge, huge problem. And that's what I've been, some of these people are also complaining about the storm drainage. They were like, well, yeah, and the developer here, you know, he went through some state loophole where instead of planning out the whole subdivision, he did the cereal. And so he avoided some of those infrastructure requirements. He did a smaller piece. So is that what this is addressing there?

So, and, well, Dean's been here long enough. I think Albert's been here long enough. So y'all certainly will remember. We used to have a requirement that if you went and subdivided a piece of land and came back within six years and subdivided again, once you hit a certain number of lots, it stopped you from being able to do another minor subdivision. And that got removed at some point because of a legal issue with probate. And I don't remember the full story. But this is basically trying to address that. And the reason it became a thing is Once people started regulating major subdivisions, some smart butt developer discovered that, hey, I can cut 10 lots out and it's not a major subdivision. And then come back the next year and I'll cut 10 more lots out. And then I'll cut 10 more lots out. And I'll cut 10 more lots out. And it never became a major subdivision. And if it's not a major subdivision, you're not creating a road Well, now you're avoiding DES requirements. Now you're avoiding all sorts of other requirements. Now, of course, I'm going to call DES and catalog you at some point. But they were trying to get around all of the regulations for major subdivisions. And so a lot of county councils enacted or attempted to enact rules that said, hey, if you cut so many parcels out of a parent parcel over a period of time, it's going to stop you and you automatically become a major subdivision. Some of those ordinances have had issues and there's been a failure to enforce. I think what I'm trying to accomplish here is say, hey, look, you can't do that. At some point, I am going to declare you a major subdivision, even if you haven't created a road, even if you don't meet the technical requirements.

So that's addressing that.

That's an attempt to address it. Is it sufficient? I'm not sure that anybody has ever perfectly addressed that issue. There's always been some wiggle room.

Is this language sufficient for that?

I think so. It's pretty standard. I mean, I use the language that's been most successful statewide. So that's my attempt.

So my other question, I think when we started talking about this major subdivision, we were talking about setbacks at some time, and changing setbacks, and I didn't see anything in here.

So yeah, that's regulated on the, there's a table, 24, 32. So 31 is the lot table, and 32 is the setbacks, lot size requirements, lot width, all that. So if we want to change those will pull a different ordinance. And that's changed by zoning district. Obviously, you can't have setback requirements other than minimums in unzoned areas. But if you're in zoned areas, you can have some pretty, like RA's setback requirements are much larger than, say, general residential.

And I've talked with Cherry, and I've talked about it. specifically in a neighborhood such as Windsor. The setbacks from the road are very short. So people that have three cars, which if you have a teenager, you're going to have a third car. There's a lot of street parking in that neighborhood. If you drive through Windsor in the evening when everybody's home, it's very tight streets. It's very narrow. And Jerry and I have talked about this too. Getting a large emergency vehicle down those roads is going to be very difficult. So that's affecting those neighbors' public safety. Can an emergency vehicle get to them with all the cars parked on the street? And it's because the setbacks are so short that everybody can't park on their property.

Jody ran away.

Yeah. Well, I mean, Jerry, the fire department, you drive those big fire trucks. Terrible thing. I mean, the ambulances are wide.

You make a way. You will make a way in those trucks. Trust me. An ambulance will go through the yard or through the car. But they shouldn't have to. There should be a certain amount of on-street parking. You don't have to, but we're allowed.

And there shouldn't be laws against on-street parking, especially once we take the road. Now you're illegally parked. I get that, but we are 25 feet from the curb.

and your family has three or four cars, there's no...

Here's the setback game. You have to park on the street. In the planning world, the setback game is all about parents. If you want to lower the appearance of density, you set the houses further back, and you increase the side setbacks, and now they're further apart, and now the subdivision starts to look larger and more majestic. Even if the lot sizes are the same, They're further off the road and further apart. It makes a difference in the appearance. That's one of the setbacks. But you also have to look at, are we going to do the front yard community or the backyard community? A lot of the times in places like Windsor, they want to maximize backyard space so that the children are not up close to the road. Okay, well, when you have 4,000 square feet, there's only so much you can do when you have a 2,000 square foot house and a 4,000 square foot lot. There's only so much you can do. But if you increase the front setback, you're automatically decreasing the rear setback unless you're increasing the lot size. So, again, that will have to be done zoning district by zoning district. The requirement in GR cannot be the same as the requirement in RD or, you know, RA. Because if you got a two-acre lot size requirement, you can make some massive setback requirements. But if you've got 12,000 square foot lot size requirement, you can't put a 50-foot setback on the front because they'll never be able to meet.

And I understand your aesthetic part of how things look. But again, my concern, and Jerry and I have talked about, like I said, our concern is public safety of those neighbors and getting emergency vehicles down those roads when everybody's home at night and you've got street parking on both sides of the street. I'm wondering, do we need to use a longer setback and they may need to do larger lots.

But what's the larger setback going to accomplish as far as people parking on the road?

Well, if they can get their car in the driveway. I mean, they don't even have a choice. Because of the short distance, they don't even have a choice not to park on the street.

They could park in their grass, but they're not going to.

Especially when the HOA requires you to keep it watered and green and pretty. Yeah, you can't park on the grass.

You chose that. My thing is that's more of a law enforcement issue. If you're illegally parked on a public road, you should get a ticket and that should be valid.

Just have five or six for visitors to park in. And generally, you'll see that you're managed. I've seen that in some of the neighborhoods. Yeah. That's a way. That's not the best way. It is a way. Or something that I would recommend. But it is an option to think about, too.

Yeah. I just, you know, for me, it's a concern for the safety of the people living in that neighborhood if emergency vehicles don't get to be. And with the homes, also, we talked about changing the setbacks for the distance between the houses because I don't know if y'all, I've seen three or four different videos, you know, in neighborhoods like that, one house catches on fire, and then the houses on each side catch on fire, too, because it just takes a spark to land on somebody's roof, or, you know, melting the siding. So, again, you know, the safety of the neighborhood.

The only way you If I were you, I would bring that up in item three.

So in here in the green space, I thought we had language. I think it's in the PD, but I wasn't sure if I was really reading it correctly here. Do we have language where the green space cannot include the required retention and detention funds and utility easements?

Open slash green space must be accessible by all within the subdivision, which means you can't count yards, you can't count retention funds, you can't count non-public areas. They have to be walkable areas, park areas, wooded areas. It has to be accessible to everybody in the .

My other question is if the developer says, well, I'm going to put a recreational pond in. That cannot be a retention or detention pond, right?

Well, it can be. So you can have retention ponds that retain water all the time, and they can be used as an amenity and still collect stormwater. Retention ponds retain water all the time. But obviously there are some design issues there. I have a no greater than 3.1 slope in there. That's to address, even if it was retention, if you had an extreme slope, a child could walk to the edge and then plunge 12 feet down into the water. That would be terrible. Because when you do a retention, and David could probably explain this better than I am, you have the amount of water it's normally supposed to hold. So that can't count as part of your calculation for what you're retaining. So the extra water has to be calculated in on top of the water that you normally have. You see what I'm saying?

So the level of the pond has to be able to go up and down a certain amount based on the calculation of extra water you're developing and generating to go into that pond. The retention pond is just the pond that holds the water.

pond so it would be accessible by the residents for fishing or canoeing or something. And that was my other question was, you know, about allowing natural plants that like to grow near water, that would be allowed to grow for aesthetics and for wildlife.

Well, in North Augusta, a lot of our stormwater detention ponds, we allow part of the ponds to go into a wetland pipe just to be able to clean in the ponds around the alcohol structure. And then we even...

and how it would be counted.

And just so we're all on the same page, I went to the master to write the retention detention file. I told him what kind of stuff you want to see. He gave me a list and I made an input. I'm not an expert on stormwater by anybody's imagination.

And then I have a comment too about the architectural controls one and two. Those two items are already an option. When you take a buyer to a new neighborhood and you sit down with the builder's agent, especially if they haven't broken ground yet, that buyer gets those two choices.

I don't understand what you mean. This is not giving you a choice. This is saying you absolutely will not have this floor plan right next to it.

OK, so the subdivisions already do that. That's what I'm saying. The builders are already doing this. You get a choice.

They're giving them an option. But we're telling them you don't get an option.

No, they do. They already get the options.

I'm saying these. You couldn't pick the same .

Well, I'm telling you the builders already do that. This language, one and two, is already part of the contract that the buyers are looking at when they choose a house in these subdivisions. Because the roof pitches are the same. Yes, they do limit it to four to five floor plans. And when you go in there with the buyer, they'll say, okay, what lot do you want this lot? What floor plan do you want? They get to choose the floor plan. Okay, what color siding do you want? They choose the siding. Do you want a brick veneer, you know, four feet up, or do you want stone veneer up, or do you just want all siding? The reason it still looks cookie cutter is because the roof pitches are the same, the gables are the same, they switch the garage from the left side to the right side. That's why they look cookie cutter. But when you take a buyer into those neighborhoods, they are already given these choices.

So my only thing about being more restrictive and say, hey, look, you got to have a custom route plan is now you're getting that you're you're basically eliminating track builders all together from your county. And you're saying you have to have a custom home to build in Hitchfield County. We can't really do that.

Well, I mean, I understand that. I think I think our goal when we talked about architectural controls was architectural diversity. in different types of architecture in the house. But the architecture that we're seeing in these neighborhoods, they're actually the same style house, which is why once you build so many, it looks like a cookie cutter neighborhood, even though the homes are different colors. And one garage is on the right, one garage is on the left. That's why they look the same, because they're the same architectural style. I'm just saying, I don't.

So I'm going to share my opinion. And I know at least three of the people here today are not going to agree. But I think it would be bad for the county to eliminate the possibility of track. I know they're not the most popular product. I know that people drive by them and hate them. Some of them that have been allowed in the past, even I drive by them and shudder as I go by. They can be horrendous. However, Edgefield County is vastly behind the Pell on affordable housing. And I don't mean by a little bit. We're talking 32 plus percent on average behind the state average. So my opinion is we do not do anything that would make it impossible. for them to come in and make a division. There are some things that you can require to, you know, improve the overall look. Say, hey, look, you gotta have a little bit of your lot. You gotta have more space in between. You need to set them back further. You know, you need to plant so many trees in the yard. Things like that. Yes, absolutely. But there does get, I know, right, exactly. But there is, there is a point where you're being so restrictive that now they're throwing their hands up and they're saying, screw it. And I know, but my opinion is that's not where we want to go. That's my opinion.

With the mask grading and the tree preservation combined, that took care of a lot of the cookie cutter-esque once you have a division of a little grove of trees or something like that in between, you know, you don't see it as readily.

So, I'm sorry, y'all don't understand my point. What I'm saying is. We do. Let me finish. If anyone in here thinks that the architectural controls one and two is going to change anything within the tract home subdivision, it's not. This is not going to affect what they are already doing in these track home subdivisions, because they already give the buyers these two choices.

OK. So I don't.

That's my point. I'm not saying it needs to be more strict. I'm not saying let's do away with all track home subdivisions. I'm just saying these Section K The track home developers are already doing that with their buyers.

Let me jump in. Let me jump in. We're not going to try to solve every problem tonight. We're not going to run every problem to ground. Let's just air them and we can't solve everything tonight.

Right.

And I'm not trying to solve everything tonight. So are there other things you need to bring up?

That was my last one.

I didn't want to cut Rick off. Rick, did she ask you a question just now? Did you want to answer anything related to that?

encourage the development of different facades.

Not to require it, but to encourage it. So on top of that, I also want to point out that in our tree preservation grading ordinance, we also do not allow them to mass grade lots anymore, and they have to build within natural slope of the lot within a certain degree. So changing the elevations of the homes as they go through is also going to drastically impact the appearance, you know, as well. So that's my only comment there.

I don't want to beat these things to death. But, I mean, it's good discussion. I appreciate that, by the way. I just want to move and see if anybody else on the subdivision regulations, does anybody else on Planning Commission or County Council have any other comments, updates, amendments, anything like that?

Can I just say one thing? I know, listen, don't throw anything at me, but I did want to share, because I'd asked Doc and David and Rick about this, but it may have been something y'all had thought, and I think if I can give them, maybe not, maybe it's nobody else can think like this. one comes and but this one hasn't gone you know this one's still there and it's not built out and nothing's happened but you put another one right down the street that kind of aggravates me and so i did say was there a way i asked is there a way we could limit that like you've got to have at least so much built out or you've got to have you know before you can bring another one in because i don't think i could be the only person who thought maybe there was a way Are you saying the same builder? Just any builder, just coming.

But how can that one builder? How can you tell that other builder what you can do with this property?

But it is kind of frustrating from a citizen point of view as well because we have citizens saying, well, they just put this subdivision right here. Why are they putting another one because nobody's living in this subdivision? So why are they offering another subdivision? It gets frustrating. Exactly. But I want this to be said in a public forum so everyone can hear it.

If it was the same developer, 100% I'd tell them, look, you need a pound of sand to get your house sold. But if they're two separate property owners, legally speaking, they have the right to develop their property as long as they need to walk. That's a constitutional right. We don't have any power over that.

But we do have people who ask us and get frustrated. And so I wanted y'all to say that because we tell them the answers, but We're not the only ones asking, or we're not the only ones hearing that.

Tell them, shall not be abridged.

Yeah. That's good. Sorry.

Anything else under the subdivision regulations before we move? All right. Hearing none, then let's move to number three, zoning changes. So this is a discussion of potential land use changes and zoning changes the county council planning commission recommends. Anybody got? Anything you want to talk about related to that?

I do, but I'll listen to everybody else first.

All right. Hold on. I think.

You and I were talking about rezoning that property that used to be.

For industrial? It's the old rock quarry right down the road from Turkey Federation. It's already industrial. The property is beside it. Beside it. There's another property. I've had a call before regarding changing that to industrial.

The old Beagle Hunting Club?

I'm not sure what it actually was. But it's not industrial right now, but it is contiguous to industrial. Between TranTech and the Billy's Superstore.

The Hunt Club is on the right. Did they ever sell that?

And then the Quas on the left.

Beagle Club Road is right there next to the property.

I think y'all talking about the old choir.

The old choir.

The old choir is on the left. That's on the left. The old choir is on the left. I'll look at it. What's that? What's that property? What is it? I don't know what it is. GC, I think. They want to change it to industrial.

I think that was our question.

How many would be in favor, especially when you presented it to county council of that area? That's enlarging industrial in that area.

I'm not going to speak for county council on this, but I am on the economic development committee. So I do hear updates from our economic developer partnership who we've hired to recruit industry for us. Industry is typically focused to areas that have a certain amount of Utilities, access, there's a lot of factors that go into industrial property besides, you know, a rock quarry can go pretty much anywhere there's rock. If there's rock there, that's where they want to locate. But a lot of other industries, they require, you know, they might have power requirements or water requirements or, you know, high-speed internet requirements or, you know, the list is endless.

And not too close to homes.

Right. If they're like a metal worker, they don't want to be anywhere near someone that's going to be bothered by noise. So that's my thing. When we look at industrial property as a planning commissioner, county council, we need to be looking at what's there, what's near there, and can it even serve industry? And that's when we get Will involved.

And he can say, hey, look, this property's got rail access.

It's got a transfer line going through it, yada, yada, yada. It really needs to be industry. And that's when we need to make changes. In this particular case, I think it's on the property owner. If they have an industrial purpose for it, then they need to come and apply to us to change it to industry.

And just personally, I can't offer an opinion tonight because I'd have to look at it and understand everything about it. I can visualize kind of where it is, but I don't want to look at it on a map and a GPS and an Earth view and count stuff. So I don't know if any of us can give an answer on how we feel about it.

It's not an idea of commercial air. There's things they could do.

If they were in the industry, they should have called the wheel first. All right, well, it's my turn to be the bad guy. Multifamily. We brought this up. Time has passed. It still does not exist. It needs to happen. We do not have nearly enough enemies. My opinion needs to be around towns. You need to focus that sort of stuff near towns. But we don't have anything designed to even allow it. And we need to change that. And that's all I'm going to say.

Is there anything available? All right, so now we have Tractor Supply coming in. We have KJ's across the street. We have doctors are going to stop us there. We've got a little area in that section over there. Is there anything available, you know, since there are amenities, so-called?

It has to be within three miles of a grocery store. That's their requirements when they start investing within three miles.

How many, is there anywhere in that area that

Well, I mean, so I don't think we need to write a zoning district that's so strict that it's just multifamily. That's not what I'm saying. I think we need to have a less restrictive zoning district that does allow multifamily. Which could still have single family. I mean, if you want to buy five acres and build your house on it, fine. Just know an apartment complex could be built next to you and that's on you. Right. I'm not saying we limit it to the point where you can't do other things, but we do need it where it can be allowed somewhere, and we need to apply that.

Walkability, and they see that as three miles.

Oh. Oh.

Trenton has a different problem because Trenton is not interested in growth.

Yeah, Trenton's not interested in growth. Johnston, I think, would love to grow. And surprisingly enough, they have the most sewer capacity. They're pretty much the only place in Edgewood County that has sewer capacity right now because they have their own sewer treatment plant. So, you know,

map it out and just say what's in this radius.

Y'all don't know this. Y'all might know this. I'm currently rewriting their conference plan too. I get tagged for these sorts of things. But that's something that the city, they do need to address that internally, but the county also needs to look at giving them areas and directions of growth. We need to make it easy for them to grow into an area. Don't create overdue regulatory burden on the edge of the city unless you just want everything to get annexed in and have absolutely no control over what happens. That's true, too.

Are they the only ones with a dollar general market?

Yeah. That is the only dollar general market. And it's a nice one, too.

I love it. I love it. I love it.

I love one out of 25, but one out of 25 don't touch y'all's. I've never been there. Check it out.

It's nice, man. Well, Doc, what...

The meat section is about two of these tables wide. Yes. And about an hour after they stock it.

They're gone. It's gone. Yes. Great.

I love you. So the little lady tells me when she's got a truck coming in. Sitting right there waiting.

So would your butcher shop count as one as well?

Would the butcher shop? Yeah, it's a brochure. They have more than just meat.

So I'm just saying, so...

And I can verify that with the particular investor that I was talking to.

I just, when we split GE up, we took multifamily out. And the intent was to create a multifamily zoning that's specific for that. And we just never did that. And I think it's important that we do. We need to honor that original commitment and make that happen and then we can sit down with maps and go, where would this be most appropriate?

We're going to get on that.

With that area of Rhyme Johnson, what is the area of potential? It kind of boxed in. I'm looking at the land that's available in Rhyme Johnson.

I mean, if you want my opinion.

I was born and raised there.

So you know where the apartments are going out? That area would be good. Now, I personally think that the city needs to leverage their property over there behind the armory or around the armory and get a nice planned development there. I think the city needs to contact developers and get something, especially for senior living, would be phenomenal because they have the sewer capacity, they have the water capacity, They have a nice park there, and they have 100 acres of land almost that they're doing absolutely nothing with. That's my personal opinion. But other than that, Slide Hill is good, and if we could, if they could rezone and clean up the area going, you know, the Long Cane here, not Long Cane, but the road right before Long Cane.

You're talking about a bus station?

The projects are right there, and then there's like a, If they could rezone and get rid of some of that bad part right there, that would be a great growth area as well.

Not that we need to be there. I mean, the town council.

I mean, the mayors. The mayors. The mayors. Yeah. For y'all to meet with them.

You know, I'm not shy.

I go and talk. I go and talk to them. I talk to them.

But it's different when you do it in that way. What if we extend an invitation for them to come to our meeting?

If we decide to create that zoning district, I think the first step is create the zoning district. We don't have to worry about where we're applying it. We need to actually create the text. This is what the zoning district means. This is what's allowed there. This is the requirements for lot sizes, setbacks, blah, blah, blah, blah. Get all that set first. Send that to council. Let council be doing the legal aspect of that. Then we can get maps out. And that's when we would call and say, hey, mayors, what kind of regulations would you like to see on your board?

But they may like to be in on it earlier, too, to be on the planning end of it as well. So it might be fair to just say, this is what we're working on. Y'all are paying attention. Because it's going to affect them the most than the county. So I think they need to have the opportunity to be in on the planning end of it.

But I will say that their precise needs are not going to be doable on a county level. They're going to want a level of density and a level of packed in that on a county level we just don't do that. We're not going to regulate something to where we're saying, oh, we need some 3,000 square foot lot. That's not a thing a county does.

Counties don't do that.

So that needs to be more on them. If you want to build at that density, then you need to ask for annexation.

We want that to happen at that point.

Because we don't want that. They can do that. But we also don't want to have commercial in an area that's primed for residential growth. We don't want to have industrial in an area that's primed for commercial growth, et cetera, et cetera. So we need to consider that, and we need to make an appropriate room.

I think council is willing to. I'll put something together, right? Yeah, we're ready.

I'd be all behind that. Yeah, 100%.

We'll do it next month.

Don't get excited. I'll bring it. We got to talk to the blonde one over there before you start making decisions like that.

Get on it, April. There you go.

I'll have it to you tomorrow afternoon. Thank you.

That's all I have for zoning. I think we have. We've done 2,000 parcels. We've created new zoning districts. We've rewritten new tables. We've rewritten setback tables. I mean, we have done a lot. I think it's important to remember that it's new. And we can still add more and change.

I have text.

Thank you all for what you did tonight.

Anybody else have any other zoning items you want to discuss?

OK.

Hearing none, then we will move to public comments. So Randy, do you have a public comment for us tonight? If you don't make, hang on. I'm asking you first, is the answer yes or no? Is the answer yes or no? Do you have public comments? OK. Do we need him to have the microphone? That's what I was going to ask. I didn't want you to start until we got to the microphone. And as I said earlier, we'll limit these to five minutes, just like our regular meetings.

As many of you, as most of you know, I'm the president of the Horse Creek News Reserve. Since I last addressed you, I have become a certified South Carolina Adopt-a-Stream water quality monitor tester, lake monitor, and I graduated from the Clemson Master Pond Specialist and Dam Ownership course. Horse Creek Nature Preserve is now conducting water testing and reviewing ponds and dams in coordination with state officials. We actually know how many gallons, millions of gallons of water are in the Horse Creek watershed. Our mission is to protect the five HUC-12 sub-watersheds that make up the Horse Creek Basin. from the headwaters in Edgefield County through Aiken County to the Savannah River. These watersheds are mapped and recognized through the federal and state water resource programs, including the U.S. Geology Survey and the South Carolina Department of Environmental Services. Savannah Riverkeeper is our environmental partner. The reason is simple. If we identify pollution and development-related problems in the headwaters, they can be addressed before they reach people's homes downstream into the Savannah River. In June, Savannah River Keeper CEO Tanya Bonatatibus and I met with SC Desk Director Myra Reese and her senior staff about our joint watershed protection plan. The meeting was scheduled for 45 minutes. We lasted over two hours. It was well received. Director Reese explained that the SC Desk does not have enough funding or personnel to monitor every watershed in South Carolina. and needs local environmental groups to help serve as the additional eyes and ears. That was exactly what we were doing. Water is not a side issue. Water is the lifeblood of our environment and foundation of public health, property protections, agricultural, wildlife, and future growth. Edge Hill County land development decisions will either protect that foundation or damage it. Blunt. Edgefield County, a current development process, does not adequately protect its water resources. To my knowledge, the county has not demonstrated that it operates regulated municipals stormwater program or that a watershed-wide TMDL protects the Horse Creek headwaters or any of the other 24 watersheds in Edgefield County. Once an environmental review is therefore left to state agencies, WHO HAVE ALREADY ACKNOWLEDGED SERIOUS STAFFING AND FUNDING LIMITS. THAT MAKES THE COUNTY'S OWN REVIEW PROCESS EVEN MORE IMPORTANT. AND I HAVE SETTING MEETINGS WITH DEVELOPERS WHO DO NOT KNOW WHAT A SOIL SURVEY OR HYDROLOGY STUDY OR EVEN WHAT WETLANDS DELINEATIONS WERE. PROVING PROJECTS WITHOUT COMPETENT ANALYSIS OF SOIL, DRAININGS, GROUNDWATER, WETLAND, STREAMS, WASTEWATER AND DOWNSTREAM IMPACT IS NOT RESPONSIBLE PLANNING. IT'S GAMBLING WITH OTHER PEOPLE'S PROPERTY AND WATER. I want to be equally clear about what we support. Horse Creek Nature Preserve and Savannah Riverkeeper do not oppose development. We support development that is lawful, scientifically supported, accountable, compatible with surrounding property and protecting the environment. In January, a resident asked county council to consider science-based development standards that protect the environment. The council's response was in substance, that it would not choke the land developers or developers. The meeting is public available on YouTube. That response treated environmental protection and protection rights as if it must be sacrificed for the other. Poorly planned development can damage the property rights and values of everyone adjacent and downstream. Every ordinance and development approval involving land distribution Stormwater, wastewater, wetlands, streams, ponds, and groundwater must address water impacts directly. If it does not, it's incompatible. Your boats have consequences. A development approval may benefit one applicant, but polluted runoff, failed wastewater systems, flooding erosion, and damaged wells and ponds CAN BURDEN THE ENTIRE COMMUNITY. THOSE COSTS DO NOT DISAPPEAR. THEY ARE TRANSFERRED TO THE NEIGHBORING PROPERTY AND TAX APPEARS. COUNTY COUNCIL AND THE PLANNING COMMISSION MUST REQUIRE RELIABLE SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE BASE APPROVING DEVELOPMENT, REQUIRE A SOIL SURVEY AND HYDROLOGY STUDIES WHERE CONDITIONS WARRANT THEM, REQUIRE COMPLETE ANALYSIS OF STORM WATER AND WASTE WATER IMPACTS, VERIFY STREAMS, WETLAND STREAMS, DOWNSTREAM CONNECTIONS IN THE FIELD AND IMPOSE ENFORCEABLE CONDITIONS THAT DO NOT APPROVE THE PROJECT UNTIL THE APPLICANT Five minutes. We'll show. Thank you. Thank you.

Anybody else want to speak tonight? Going once. Going twice. All right. Thank you. Appreciate that. From the public? So everyone, there are no other public comments, so I'll go to the next item on the agenda, which is comments from county council members and planning commission members. So it's okay, I'll start with county council. Any county council members have any final comments? I don't need to be able to say thank you. How about planning commission members? We've been here a little over two hours now, but I did want to say this so that everybody that watches this hears. There is no requirement that we have this joint meeting. There's no state law. There's nothing that requires us to do this. So I know it can be long and it can be a long night and a lot of discussion, but I do appreciate it. And I think, as Rick said, others should do this and don't. So I think it's a good thing that we do it, you know, even if it's only once every couple of years. And the other thing is, I think we're good at talking to each other. You know, and I think that helps, too, meaning that, I mean, I've heard from Lisa. It's my appointment on different things. You know, she'll ask me questions and whatnot. And so we communicate with each other. So I think that's good. With that, I'll ask the administrator and the assistant administrator any final comments before we adjourn. Don't blame you, huh?

I've done enough talking tonight.

All right. So we've got to do two adjournments here. So I'll start with county council. Is there a motion to adjourn the county council portion of the meeting? So moved. And Mr. Taubert makes a motion. Dr. Kenyon seconds. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please signify by raising your hand. All opposed? Motion passes unanimously. Anyone else? I've got a motion to adjourn. I have a motion. All those in favor? Right ahead. Good night, and thank y'all.