Agenda - 07-19-1982 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Request to the Board of Planning Of Orange County By Friends Community, Incorporated July, 19, 1982 To the Board We are ten families, a community of neighbors and friends. Because of an unfortunate oversight several years ago, we now find I 'Id ourselves in difficulty, and we need your help. We have been to I that we cannot, under new regulations, file our community's plat. What we asklis that you make it possible for us to do so. I When our community was formed, some ten years ago, its designers made every effort to meet and even to exceed county standards. By July, 1973,1when we filed in Durham to make Friends Community a non- profit corppration, we had already written into our legal documents the intent and organization of the community. Our restrictive covenants and bylaws formally discouraged land speculation and set forth strict rules providing for the safety of the residents and the environmental quality of the entire property. I On ourJ110-acre tract, we laid out ten, five-acre lots, and sold them to people who wanted to live in harmony with one another, and with the natural resources around them. With the sale of each lot went a comm pity membership and a share of the remaining 60 acres. This common�y held property we devoted to parkland, gardening and recreation. Because of this shared property, we have always felt that, in a I very real sense, each of our households has ten acres of land. That I acreage is not all contiguous, however, and cannot be made so without badly disrupting the organization of our community. We enjoy having UP the shared property, and feel it effectively prevents the community from ever b4ing overdeveloped or too densely populated. It seems to us ironic that, had we chosen ten years ago to carve our land up into tea-acre lots, we would not now have trouble filing our plat. It wasin6t until several months ago, when we tried to find a copy of our platlin the courthouse, that we realized a mistake had been made. The 1979 survey of our property had been completed, but the plat had never been filed. An older plat had been filed. Five of our lots were on it; five were not. Before that discovery, nothing in our dealings with county officials ever led us to imagine that we might somehow be in variance with county regulations. In fact, some of us have even been issued building permits since the subdivision ordinance was enacted, and for the very lots now in question. But because the completed plat was not filed, several of our families can- not now sec re the permits necessary to build or improve their homes. We hav read the text of the subdivision ordinance, and, thanks to helpful explanations from the planning staff, feel we understand