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4 <br /> 16--- <br /> point, I know it's well known in Orange County, but it's not <br /> well known among all the other jurisdictions. Mello Teer has <br /> owned this property since 1984 purchased the property for <br /> $440,000.00 roughly give or take $5 or $10. At the time we <br /> purchased the property it was to operate a crushed stone <br /> quarry on the property. Mining was a permitted use on the <br /> property at this time, with a Special Use permit. This of <br /> course is all pre-rural buffer. Nello Teer went out and <br /> spent a lot of money and a lot of time drilling on the <br /> property, doing other exploratory research, and getting to <br /> the point where we could file an application with the Orange <br /> County Government for a special use permit. Unknown to Nello <br /> Teer, however, when it became known that it was seeking to <br /> mine on the property a moratorium on mining permits was <br /> passed in February of 1985. Hello Teer didn't know about the <br /> moratorium and we were going along developing our mining <br /> permit. During February and March, Mello Teer spoke with the <br /> Orange County Planning Department to develop its mining <br /> permit and never heard about the moratoria. In the latter <br /> part of March, 1985, we called to set up an appointment with <br /> the Planning Department to go over our Special Use <br /> application and hopefully to submit our Special Use <br /> application for consideration. We were told we couldn't get <br /> an appointment in the latter part of March but we could have <br /> one April 2. April 1 was a meeting of the Orange County <br /> Board of Commissioners. At the meeting of the Board of <br /> Commissioners on April 1, mining as a permitted use on the <br /> Mello Teer property was deleted. The next day when we came <br /> in to meet with the Planning Department, we were met with the <br /> news that we could not mine on the property because the night <br /> before mining had been deleted as a permitted use. We were <br /> also told that the Joint Planning process was underway and <br /> that the site had been designated as a Rural Industrial - <br /> activity note. Any of you who follow the planning process <br /> know that eventually a Comprehensive Plan was produced that <br /> showed this area as a Rural Industrial activity note. A lot <br /> of people apparently opposed it. I suspect some people in <br /> this room here opposed that Rural Industrial activity note. <br /> It was deleted from the plan then and the property which had <br /> been classified, I might note, by the professional planning <br /> staffs, who had recommended Rural Industrial activity node, <br /> became not Rural Industrial activity note but rural buffer. <br /> It went from one of the more permissive categories in. the <br /> plan to the most restricted category in the plan. We are not <br /> here without some history behind us, and I would hope that <br /> each of you who opposes our effort in this area at least <br /> recognizes that if you had the investment in this property <br /> that we have, if you had the history on this property that we <br /> have, your views might be tempered somewhat about that. What <br /> we have done as part of the larger group of landowners here <br /> is to try to develop what we thought was an innovative way to <br /> cure that problem we're faced with. Any of you who read the <br /> newspaper know that we have been in litigation with Orange <br /> County over this particular matter and we are still in <br />