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Approved 12/12/16 OC Board of Adjustment – 10/10/16 Page 96 of 113 will assist the trier of fact in reaching their determinations. And then, finally, with respect to the extent that it 1 becomes applicable we would ask this Board not to issue a stay. It is North Carolina law that a property 2 owner that proceeds during an appeal is proceeding at their own risk. Mr. Bryan mentioned that at the last 3 hearing and there are no immediate harms to the adjacent property owners, should they choose to appeal, 4 this would be heard in Superior Court before any of these activities begin. Possibly in late spring. But also 5 we’re talking about a building permit again. That’s what you would be staying, is a building permit. Which is 6 completely separate. That is not the issue that we’re dealing with here. We’re dealing with the use. So we 7 would request that, if that aspect should become relevant, be denied. But, based on all the other arguments 8 I think we’ve shown by a substantial margin that jurisdictionally you’re very limited in terms of what you’re 9 reviewing here and the estoppel argument must fail because that issue has not been raised before and 10 decided, and finally that this absolutely is a bona fide farm purpose, the agritourism, the farm purpose, all of 11 it fits within the exemption. And so we would ask that you affirm Mr. Harvey’s decision and allow them to 12 proceed and allow the staff in the future to reassess the activities that are going on on their property. Thank 13 you. 14 15 LeAnne Brown: Ok, I will try to be brief. Let me start with the public policy of the state of North Carolina. 16 The reason that we have a farm exemption is to protect farms. It protects not only this applicant’s operation 17 or whatever she may be doing there but it protects every other farm in the state. It is not the public policy of 18 the state of North Carolina that the farm exemption be used to allow commercial use masquerade as a farm 19 use to detriment to the farmers that live around it. That is not now nor has that ever been the policy of the 20 state of North Carolina. If you look at the Balkum case and the Steadman case, which Mr. Petesch 21 referenced, they talk about the public policy of the state of North Carolina and the public policy is to protect 22 farmers. My clients live on farms as well. They have someone pretending to be a farm dropping a wedding 23 event center in the middle of their farming community. To the detriment to their poultry, to the detriment of 24 their horses, and that is not the public policy of the state. That was not what the statute was designed to 25 protect. It makes a mockery of the statute that exists. The creativity in Balkum and in Steadman deals with 26 producing plants. Steadman is described as operations involving large-scale production and sale of 27 ornamental and flowering plants. There’s no wedding here. There’s no wedding venue. There’s no 28 agritourism in these cases. These are cases involving the production of plants. Balkum is the same. The 29 tract was used for raising agricultural products, which included the facility to sell those products. Not exactly 30 what we are talking about here. Mr. Petesch said something very interesting when he started. He said this 31 wasn’t about a building, or a parking lot, or why you built it for 250 people to use it. Oh, yes it is. That’s 32 exactly what it’s about. What does land use control? It controls the use of property, including the use of 33 buildings. If you look in your ordinance you would see that we distinguish between single-family and multi-34 family dwellings. That’s a use. It’s whether a single family lives in it or a multi-family lives in it. Is the use an 35 event center, or is it something else? It’s all about what the building and the property is going to be used 36 for. What the statute says is that the statute does not limit regulations with respect to the use of farm 37 property for non-farm purposes. So absolutely, the decision that the County has to make is whether the 38 farm property is going to be used for non-farm purposes. Mr. Petesch provided a case to you from 1950. I’ll 39 point out that that’s 66 years old. I don’t usually see cases cited that are old than I am. It’s a case that 40 predates the actual statute we’re talking about, by 9 years. It predates the grant of the zoning authority to 41 the counties, by 9 years. It’s a case that talks about the fact that what was in place was a building permit 42 process and nothing else. The building permit requirements had been met and the County thought that the 43 landowner was going to build one thing and then he used it for something else. That has nothing to do with 44 the current modern context of how we apply zoning. The other thing about this case that’s interesting, if we 45 want to talk about it and cite it as authority, it says that the court found that there’s no competent evidence 46 to support such a conclusion. The conclusion that he was going to build a hotel and use it for a nursing 47 home. And there’s no basis in fact to show. And that the conclusion is arbitrary and unreasonable. That’s 48 not your facts either. If you look at the citations from the Minutes of your meeting on the SUP where Ms. 49