Orange County NC Website
APPROVED 6/12/17 <br />1 impacts that a wedding.venue would have on this neighborhood that you could not make the <br />2 requisite four findings that would have allowed you to grant a Special Use Permit and nobody <br />3 appealed your decision. So that decision stands today. This property does not meet the four <br />4 findings of a Special Use Permit and therefore could not be used for a wedding venue. So, as I <br />5 say, Mr. Harvey was right about it when he made that particular decision. He goes through his <br />6 analysis here about whether it's going back to this current analysis, it's a bona fide farm, but he <br />7 doesn't really talk about the sentence that really matters here, the sentence that he relied on <br />8 before. That the subdivision does not limit. The sub. This subsection. This. This statute. This <br />9 language in this statute is not intended to limit regulation by the County under the zoning law with <br />10 respect to the use of the farm for a non -farm purpose. I want to point that out to you because I think <br />11 it's helpful to us as we go through the next analysis. Mr. Harvey then goes through the analysis of <br />12 whether this dirt would have a farm, have the ability to be looked at for a farm exemption and he <br />13 determines that it does and he goes through a great deal there to talk about why it does. And he <br />14 concludes not that the property is bona fide farm, which is the first conclusion you need to reach: is <br />15 it a bona fide farm or not? If it's not a bona fide farm we're not even going to talk about the rest of <br />16 the statute. He then goes on and he blends, this is his first error, he blends the question of whether <br />17 it's a bona fide farm under the test that are put forth in the statute with whether it's actually being <br />18 used for farming purposes or whether the use proposed is for a non -farm purpose. And that is error <br />19 one. He ignores the non -farm purpose process there. Even if you have a farm number, and even if <br />20 you have a bona fide farm under the under the statute Orange County is obligated for the sake of <br />21 the other neighbors to look at the use proposed to see if that use is for a farm purpose or a non - <br />22 farm purpose. And Mr. Harvey did not do that in this particular analysis. He actually then concludes <br />23 not that it's a bona fide farm, which is step one, but that the use is bona fide farming. So that's his <br />24 first error. And it would be appropriate for this Board, instead of making that mistake, to say yes it <br />25 has the bona fide it has the farm number, it has the things that will make it a bona fide farm, now <br />26 let's go on and ask the follow up questions. And the follow up questions are, is it a farm use or not? <br />27 If you go on and look, Mr. Harvey then gives you an advisory opinion. I'm not sure why we have <br />28 advisory opinions in his order. It's unusual, I think, to include an advisory opinion but this particular <br />29 advisory opinion I find troublesome because what Mr. Harvey stated here, I guess an explanation <br />30 as to why he didn't consider your findings of fact, is that there's no authority to interpret or eject the <br />31 viability of a property owners claim of use. You'll recall that I asked Mr. Harvey a line of questions, <br />32 and the question I asked him was, did he consider anything that this Board had done? In listening <br />33 to all this evidence about this use did he consider any of that? And he said no, because he's he's <br />34 stuck with looking at this affidavit. Let's think about that a minute. I'm I'm not aware of any statutory <br />35 authority or case law that says he can't look. I am aware of a few cases under the farm use where <br />36 the court talks about what the evidence shows about the use so I think that's an indicia to me that <br />37 you can look. I think you must look. If you go back to your findings of fact, what you found is that if <br />38 you look at Ms. Brewer's first application for the SUP, her second application that Mr. Harvey <br />39 rejected, and her third application the Mr. Harvey now feels constrained to just take her word for <br />40 everything that's there what you will see is that that the the actual scope the building, the actual <br />41 size of things, the actual layout of things never changes through that process. And so what Mr. <br />42 Harvey's advisory opinion means is that the County has no authority to look behind what a citizen <br />43 tells them in an application to see if the facts are different. Really? Really? Let's think about that. <br />44 Orange County and any other county, and municipal government that is looking at applications has <br />45 the ability to look at whether the information in the application comports with reality. They have the <br />46 right to ask questions, they have the right to know what's going on, they have the right to go out <br />47 and look at property, they have the right to see how property's being used, and so the suggestion <br />34 <br />