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APPROVED 6/12/17 1 venue is incidental. And I understand that it includes the term related. So I'm not inclined to support 2 it's, the present plan that's been approved. And I don't know what our motion should be but I still 3 have lots of questions about this. 4 5 Matt Hughes: Well I understand some peoples belief, primarily based on the plan regarding parking 6 and planning for, you know, significant number of people on this property, and the cost. And 1 7 believe that if they, if the Brewers' had decided to build a barn that conceivably the cost to build a 8 barn, rather than move a barn, would still be much more than the cost to plant the flowers, plant the 9 chestnuts, that expense would still be greater that the cost to build a new barn would still be 10 greater than than the planting. But I can also see why they would plan for a facility that even if you 11 wanted, say was incidental to their, that the event space was incidental to the flower business, we 12 don't build highways for traffic at 2am, right? We don't build a four -lane highway because it's not 13 going to get, based on a usage at 2am where you're going to have very few, if any, cars. What 1 14 think they were doing was planning for the times where they would have a lot of volume, and I think 15 that's perfectly understandable. What, what I do believe is that when we did this order back in 16 October having the line of acknowledgment that this issue in one way shape or form was probably 17 going to come back to us. It was just a matter of if and when, and here we are in March about six 18 months, five six months later, and it's before us again. As I believed then as I do now, I do believe 19 that having this event space is part of a farming operation. And I can see folks in the audience 20 disagree with me, but I believe that what the Statute says and I believe what the North Carolina 21 Department of Agriculture has promoted as agro- tourism is under those definitions a farm use, and 22 until the courts, as Ms. Brown said earlier, until they weigh in and are very specific or the General 23 Assembly clears up their language then I believe this is a perfectly acceptable farm use. And 1 24 understand why people would not support this in this community. It's not a large community; it's a 25 community that if you visit it you have to purposefully go there. I wound up in the community by 26 accident driving through rural Orange County, I took a wrong turn thinking I remembered the roads 27 a little bit better than I did, and so this this could be a big disturbance, or would be a big 28 disturbance, but I believe that the issue before us is whether or not I think staff erred in making its 29 determination; I don't believe they erred. And you know the thing is though, I feel as though we're 30 ' in an age where we're not trusting professionals to use their professional judgment in making 31 decisions and so, you know, I believe that Mr. Harvey made the right decision when we remanded 32 it back to him or remanded it back to the planning director, who then in turn designated him to 33 weigh in on this, and he has the working professional knowledge as our entire planning staff does 34 to make these determinations with the information that's out there with the school of government 35 and the Department of Agriculture. And so, I come from the education field where we have to trust 36 our teachers to be the professionals in the classroom and so I understand that and I trust the 37 professionals in our planning department. 38 39 Susan Halkiotis: I just, I need to, I appreciate. 40 41 Matt Hughes: I don't appreciate the hisses by the way. 42 43 Susan Halkiotis: I appreciate and respect what Matt had to say, and I want to follow up on that just 44 to make sure that I state that I have great respect for Mr. Harvey and in no way would I want any of 45 my comments to be taken to indicate anything other than my respect and appreciation for what he 46 does. 47 44