Minutes 11-25-2013 - Laserfiche WebLink

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development is limited. He said the 50,000 new employees would mean doubling the employment base of the County. He said the board is working through the 2045 Metropolitan Transportation Plan to do a ground up analysis of what would be the County's share. He said Chapel Hill and Carrboro are being asked to share what could happen in those municipalities, and then the rural piece will be added in. Lisa Stuckey said she has heard many discussions over the years about shutting down development and maintaining the village quality of life, but this did not work because people have property rights. Tony Blake said he has been watching the Chatham Park plans, and that is bound to impact density as well, especially in the southern part of the County. Commissioner Price said this will affect not only the rural buffer but other rural areas as well. She said the water situation needs to be looked at. She said if the County can't get new farmers, the older retired farmers will eventually sell out to developers. She said there is nothing in place to prevent this. She said there is a way to determine the groundwater capacity, but there is not an affordable way to tell the effect down the road. She said there are counties where zoning is based on water but there is no way to do this here, and there is no way to put a moratorium on homes. Commissioner Pelissier said this could be done. She said when she was on the Commission for the Environment, there was a study done on re-charge rates in different parts of the County. She said there have been counties that zone based on these re-charge rates, to avoid running into the problem of a lack of sufficient water. She assumes there is some study of this going on in the County. Craig Benedict said the US Geological Survey did this. He said it has been studied, but it is generalized by zones. He said there is a wide variance of depths within a zone. He said if zoning could be done by lot, it might work, but much of this is done by generalization. He said there have also been two droughts since the last plan, and this would manipulate the numbers. He said the bottom line is determining how growth can be accommodated based on the urban or rural environment. He said the rural village idea used to be a hot topic but more recently, the focus has been on creating those rural activity nodes, such as the Cedar Grove and White Cross areas. He said the focus is on efficient rural intensity development. Chair Jacobs said much of this conversation happened in abbreviated form at the AOG meeting. He said, even when the rural buffer zone was established, people talked about zoning based on carrying capacity. He said it would be so complex to do every parcel that no one has ever seriously undertaken it. Craig Benedict said many of the topics have been touched on, and he is going to run through some of the other items. Craig Benedict said in the next stage of the UDO it is time to look at the Economic Development District (EDD) zones to determine if the areas are more prime for light industrial, retail or mixed use. He said people who come to put businesses here want to have some idea of what is happening. He said the EDD zones, like the Efland Buckhorn area, can be looked at to determine where high power lines and railroad tracks may lend itself to a light industrial manufacturing area for example. He said these districts could be fine tuned by having a permitted by right process for the things the County wants to encourage. Craig Benedict said the County could come up with a research development applied manufacturing category. He said Mebane would have the same category whether they annexed or not, so the same permitted use table would be used. He said this is a structured zoning system that is targeted toward certain uses. Commissioner Gordon arrived at 6:22 pm. 4