MINUTES
STATE
OF
The Henderson County
Board of Commissioners met for a special called meeting at
Those present were: Chairman Bill Moyer, Vice-Chairman
Also present were: Public
Information Officer Chris S. Coulson, Planning Director
CALL TO ORDER/WELCOME
Chairman Moyer called
the meeting to order and welcomed all in attendance.
DISCUSSION/ADJUSTMENT OF AGENDA
Chairman Moyer reminded
those in attendance that a public hearing was scheduled for
There were no
adjustments to the agenda. Commissioner
McGrady made the motion to approve the agenda as presented. All voted in favor and the motion carried.
CLOSED SESSION
Commissioner McGrady made the motion for the Board to go
into closed session as allowed pursuant to NCGS 143-318.11 for the following
reasons:
1.(a)(3) To
consult with an attorney employed or retained by the public body in order to
preserve the attorney-client privilege between the attorney and the public
body, which privilege is hereby acknowledged.
2.(a)(5) To establish, or to instruct the
public body’s staff or negotiating agents concerning the position to be taken
by or on behalf of the public body in negotiating the price and other material
terms of a contract or proposed contract for the acquisition of real property
by purchase, option, exchange or lease.
All voted in favor and the motion carried.
Chairman Moyer informed those in attendance that the Board
is going into closed session as the first item of business and then will come
out and take action on some closed session items.
APPROVAL OF CLOSED SESSION ITEMS
Chairman Moyer called
the meeting back to order and stated that there were a couple of items the
Board acted on in closed session that they need to report on at this time:
Sheriff’s Salary
Commissioner Young made the motion that the Board set
Sheriff Rick Davis’ salary for the coming year at $73,495, effective
Chairman Moyer stated
that he was very pleased that the Board was finally able to take some action
with respect to the Sixth Avenue Clubhouse.
Commissioner McGrady made the motion that the Board approve
an agreement for the purchase of the so-called
Chairman Moyer – “You
can tell from the tenor of the motion that we have been working with the people
at Sixth Avenue Clubhouse. We’ve been
working with the people at Mountain Laurel and I think we’ve come up with an
arrangement that’s favorable to everyone to be able to keep the clubhouse in
it’s place. It’s been a very important part of the community. It’s been of
vital interest to the Commissioners and we obviously are pleased that we’ll be
able to continue that clubhouse at that site.
I do want to mention that it will involve some funding from the State. Carolyn Justus has been a tremendous help,
working with the Board, getting us and staff in connection with the right
people to help with some funding for this and making sure that the state is in
agreement with what we’re doing. I was
hopeful she could be here tonight but she did have a conflict with some other
things she was doing and said she was sorry she couldn’t be here but she’s been
a tremendous help and that money will be of big assistance to enable us to move
forward, both in the capital side and in the operating side so it’s a, it looks
like a very favorable arrangement and we’ll be looking to close this by the end
of the year.”
PUBLIC HEARING – Market Value and Present-Use
Value Tax Schedules
Commissioner Messer made the motion for the Board to go into
Public Hearing. All voted in favor and the motion carried.
Chairman Moyer stated
that the purpose of the public hearing is to discuss the market value and
present-use value tax schedules. He
called on our Assessor, Stan Duncan.
Stan Duncan had
presented the two tax schedules to the Board earlier.
Stan Duncan thanked the
Board for arranging this hearing time on a short notice, back on December 4 so
that we could have the public hearing on the schedules that were presented at
that meeting.
There are two sets of
schedules that have been presented, for which this public hearing was called.
One is the Market Value Schedule which is a thicker document and allows staff
to appraise each parcel of real property at it’s market value as of
Stan Duncan explained
that notice was published of this public hearing in the Times-News on December 8, stating that it would be today at the
5:00 meeting with the public hearing to be called at 5:30. That was advertised in the front part of the
newpaper in the Local/State section. He
stated that they took it away from hiding it in the back in the legal
classified action. They plan to do the
same thing once the schedules are adopted.
Stan Duncan explained
that the adoption of the schedules is scheduled for next week, December
28. A special called meeting has been
set for
Public Input
He
stated that he would like to see the present-use schedule incorporated into the
Planning Board’s program of zoning within the county so that agriculture would
stay open use and not come under any strict zoning ordinance regulations. He
feels that agriculture district signs should be posted on farms and that the
public should be educated as to what an agriculture districting sign means. He
spoke, representing farmers in the county.
Chairman Moyer asked Mr.
Maybin to state his name and the various groups he is associated with so that
people know.
Theron Maybin – “I’m
Theron Maybin, Chairman of the Agriculture Advisory Board, Vice-Chairman of the
Soil & Water Conservation Board, member of the Historical Courthouse Board,
on the Board of Directors for Farm/City Day, Vice-Chairman of the Board of
Deacons at
There were no other
speakers.
No action was required
at this time.
Commissioner McGrady made the motion for the Board to go out
of public hearing.
Chairman Moyer had
distributed a copy of a letter he had received from Chairman Ervin Bazzle
(Chairman of the Board of Education) setting forth a schedule for touring some
elementary schools in
Following some
discussion by the Board, it appeared that three or more Commissioners might
tour schools on each date; there, it was necessary to set those dates as
special called meetings.
Chairman Moyer made the motion to set a special called
meeting for Friday, January 5 at
Chairman Moyer asked the
Commissioners to let the
BLUE RIDGE COMMUNITY COLLEGE AUDIT
There has been a lot of
information in the newspaper lately regarding
Commissioner Young
stated that the first thing was in the newspaper and Richard Sullins had told
Mr. Young last Thursday that he was sending him a copy of a report where the
State had done an audit at
Mr. Young had been
informed that there was an article in the Asheville
Citizen that the Henderson County Commissioners were subsidizing Dr. Sink’s
salary to the tune of $32,000 plus a year.
If BRCC is doing that, that is not how our money is suppose to be spent. He felt that the Board should find out about
these two things and have discussion because that’s about $100,000 of county
tax monies that need to be accounted for.
Chairman Moyer said that
it would be added, with the Board’s agreement, to the January 2 meeting and
representatives from
BUDGET AMENDMENTS
Stan Duncan explained
that a budget amendment is necessary to complete the Reappraisal. He stated
that there are three pages of line-item transfer requests. They have been broken down into two different
budgets. One is the Assessor’s budget,
which is in two parts. The first part is for professional services of
$247,280.00, with some data processing supplies of $1,075.00, and that is
summarized in detail on the page immediately following the part 1 Assessor’s
line-item transfer. Part 2 is for the
overtime request for the data base administrator and the FICA and Local
Government Employee Retirement System contributions. It does not address the
actual movement of the salary that is in the current year budget (’06-’07) from
the IT (Information Technology) Department for this individual over to the
Assessors’ Office. He feels that should be addressed as well. The Overtime
amount is $92,000 for a grand total of $378,205.
Budget Analyst
Following much discussion,
Commissioner McGrady made the motion to
approve the budget amendment as submitted. All voted in favor and the motion
carried.
Commissioner McGrady made the motion to approve the transfer
of funds from the IT Department to the Assessor’s Department for thirteen pay
periods for the position referred to above and the associated benefits. All voted in favor and the motion carried.
PARTF GRANT MATCHING FUNDS – EDNEYVILLE
COMMUNITY CENTER PROJECT
Commissioner Messer made the motion that the proposed budget
amendment to appropriate $200,000 in projected matching funds required for the
PARTF grant be approved for the
TREND FY2003 SETTLEMENT REPORT
The final overpayment of
State funds to Trend during FY2003 has been calculated to be $257,480 with
86.5% of this amount or $222,720 belonging to
The Trend Dissolution
Resolution, adopted by the Board of Commissioners on
Staff has reviewed the
settlement calculation with the Chief Financial Officer for
Staff has provided a
draft budget amendment for the Board’s consideration and approval appropriating
Undesignated General Fund Balance to pay this unbudgeted liability. Undesignated General Fund Balance is the
County’s contingency or emergency fund that may be used for paying these types
of unknown, unbudgeted expenditures that arise during the fiscal year. The County has enough available in this fund
to pay the $222,720 and not fall below the Board’s required 12% minimum.
Commissioner McGrady made the motion to approve the attached
budget amendment appropriating Undesignated General Fund Balance to pay for and
satisfy
Much discussion followed
the motion.
A vote was taken and the motion carried four to one with
Commissioner Messer voting nay.
PRESENTATION OF LAND DEVELOPMENT CODE
Tedd Pearce informed the
Board that the Planning Board had voted unanimously, 9 to 0, on the adoption of
the language of the Land Development Code and 7 to 0 on the mapping. Renee Kumor was on vacation at the time of
the vote and she has since indicated her approval of the mapping. Mr. Pearce was very pleased that the Planning
Board was willing to plow through the number of meetings. He stated that they had about 16 meetings.
They vowed to make this something that everyone on the Planning Board could
stand behind and were able to meet that.
Mr. Pearce offered himself if any of the Commissioners wished to meet
and go over things. He also explained
that
Chairman Moyer expressed
the Board’s thanks to the Planning Board for the tremendous effort they had put
into this document.
The Land Development Code (LDC) as an ordinance is not designed or intended to
be complicated or complex; however, a substantial effort has been made to make
it as easy to read as possible. The new
LDC draft is 42 pages less than the current ordinances. It is not intended to
be read cover to cover. It is written so
that someone can go to the areas that apply to their project. It is a document that is not intended to be
used by citizens free of staff assistance.
Mr. Starr explained that
the LDC combines eleven existing ordinances into one document, to make it
easier to use:
Zoning Ordinance
Subdivision Ordinance
Mountain Ridge Protection Ordinance
Soil Erosion & Sedimentation Control Ordinance
Vested Rights Ordinance
Manufactured
Entry Gates Ordinance
Flood Damage Prevention Ordinance
Signs Ordinance
Water Supply Watershed Protection Ordinance
Mr. Starr stated that the
LDC is user-friendly and contains:
Simplified Text
Cross-referencing
Defined Terms in italics
Logical flow of information
Comprehensive Articles, Subparts and Sections
Indication of reviewing Staff and Boards
He stated that the LDC
contains 14 Articles designed to establish and provide:
Legal Standing
Land Use Regulations
Review Processes and Procedures
The Legal Standing
involves the jurisdiction, farm exemption, violations and appeals, the official
zoning map, and nonconforming uses and structures. All these are found in Articles I, XII, and
XIII.
Agriculture is exempt.
We don’t have the authority to regulate that with zoning provisions and that
will remain the same as it is now. If
you operate one of the agriculture uses, including agritourism, you are exempt
under state law from zoning rules from a county and that will not change.
With the new LDC the
open use zoning district will no longer exist. There will be a zoning map
amendment needed because with the new LDC all the districts change.
Zoning and subdivision
land use regulations contain information regarding zoning district
requirements, permitted and special uses, use-specific development standards,
conservation subdivision option, and subdivision of land and can be found in
Article II or III. In the new LDC there
are ten general use zoning districts: four residential, four commercial, one
industrial, and one office/institutional. Currently we have 22 base zoning
districts. This is a key area where the regulations have been simplified. There are three residential districts: R1: 4
units per acre
R2 & R2MH: 1 unit per acre
R3: 1 unit per 1.5 acre
There are no lot size
requirements but rather average densities. There is a permitted use table with
references to supplemental requirements. The table is easy to use.
There are four
commercial districts: local, community, regional, and general. There is also mixed use districts (MU). This is a new option that will allow a
mixture of commercial, non-residential, and residential uses and allow some
innovation in those areas. MU districts
shall be approved as a conditional zoning district and would not be a
quasi-judicial proceeding but rather a regular rezoning type process.
There is a Planning
Board recommended zoning map and it illustrates the various districts mentioned
above. Anthony’s discussion regarding the zoning map elicited numerous
questions from the Commissioners and created much discussion.
Chairman Moyer explained
that even though there were additional slides left in the PowerPoint
presentation, he felt that
ADJOURN
Commissioner McGrady made the motion to adjourn the meeting
at 7:50 p.m. All voted in favor and the motion carried.
Attest:
Elizabeth W. Corn, Clerk
to the Board
William L. Moyer, Chairman