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Approved 11/8/2010 OC Board of Adjustment – 10/11/2010 Page 17 of 35 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 receptions, sweet sixteen parties, special event parties, family reunions. That’s not educating school children in Orange County about farming and agriculture. It just isn’t. The intent of this Special Use Permit that was granted to them was to educate school children about farming in our county. I guess I don’t know any other way to say it but that’s how I read it. When I hear the music and then I hear the music again, and then I hear the music again I know there is some good things going on, I love animals, I love the Great Dane rescue. Wonderful people, ok, I just don’t’ want it where it’s not supposed to be; where we never assumed it was going to happen. You’ve heard some information about our ponds, the fish kill was pretty bad. I know that can happen to a lot of agricultural ponds. We have spent a good bit of money cleaning up the ponds from our homeowners association. We’ve spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars putting the grass carp in. The ponds were lime green prior to that filled with duckweed and algae. We’re trying to take care of the environment as well. A lot of the brush has been cut. I’m sure it has allowed a lot of runoff. There was a gigantic shrub border between the upper pond which you have on your map and the farm. I understand that’s on their property. They left the cedar trees and a lot of the trees trunks but all of the brush in between that totally shielded us from that area which is now the agricultural center with the playground and with the bands and the stages that’s all now open. You can see it and doubly we can hear it. It has increased the noise back where we are. I can understand that some houses in the neighborhood are totally not affected; they are much further back. They are far away but we’re not. We’re right there, we’re front and center, we are right on the front line. We did not know that those would be cut. We did not know an irrigation pump was going to run like it has been and I have to tell you, we have tried meeting, our neighborhood, has tried meeting with folks from the ag center and we did not want to come to a meeting like this and speak out, had no intention of doing this but we feel like our backs are up against the wall right now. Our talks broke down we couldn’t come to an agreement of what would work for both of us. We would have loved to have had that happen. We would love to continue those conversations. We couldn’t get anywhere. There is a, I believe in the original, and I am going from memory, I believe in the original minutes, I don’t know what you call them, there were a couple of statements that this agricultural center would not have a negative impact on the surrounding neighbors. I know that is probably something very hard to prove fiscally but I can’t imagine that it hasn’t hurt my property values. People move out to the country for quiet. You move next door to a farm, well it’s a farm, it’s quiet, a rural Orange County is a quiet place. It would be hard for me to say to someone, if I sell my property to sell my home, to say its quiet, it’s very rural, it’s very pastoral. Well it is except when there is a party. We never know when a party is going to happen. Friday night, Saturday afternoon, Saturday night, Sunday we don’t know and that’s part of our anxiety levels. Is this going to increase? We feel like it’s untenable as it is. Is it going to increase is it going to get worse. I hear people saying we want more and more and more. I understand that the building is there for agricultural purposes. It’s great it’s wonderful it’s a community meeting place to talk about the county, talk about the agricultural issues, the farming issues. I just don’t think it’s a party center. That is what I’d like to leave you with. Tom Brown: Thank you. Michael Harvey: Judy Mitchell. Judy Mitchell: I am Judy Mitchell and I would like to first comment on the fish kill. If you look back on WRAL’s news, Charlotte’s big lake had a gigantic fish kill and it was not because of agricultural runoff. It was because of the drought and if you will research that you will find out that is what it was. So of course these small little ponds would have that too because water supply is down. Not just because of the pumping but because of the drought. All that rain that went east, we didn’t get that much of. Another thing I would like to comment on is some of these people did not buy their places until after the ag center was built. As for the noise level, I live right at the end of Green Rice. Granted there were two bands in the last year, two bands, different occasions, and yes they were loud. I could hear them when I went outside. I could not hear them inside. I went down to join them because it sounded like fun. Two times a year? You can’t put up with two times a year. And the kids birthday singing, I mean if you have kids, you know kids are gonna holler and scream and inside you