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Approved 11/8/2010 OC Board of Adjustment – 10/11/2010 Page 9 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 Mark Micol: So the use of the facility, the original approval was for educational purposes, it had to have an educational component to it? Michael Harvey: If I can call your attention to attachment A of this document and quite honestly I will agree with Mr. Parker on certain elements of his presentation and respectfully disagree on others, beginning on page 59 of your abstract which is the original Special Use Permit application proposing the development of the Ag Center, and I also refer in general to a copy of the minutes which is attachment B of your packet. The purpose of this facility was an educational ag center that would provide seminars, meetings, and educational opportunities for people to learn about farming. I certainly would agree with Mr. Parker that they could hold a special seminar for members of the general public to come out and learn about farming activities, I think that’s consistent with the Special Use Permit. I also believe that there can be field trips. That was a big component of their testimony that evening and it’s listed quite literally within their application. Where, unfortunately, Mr. Parker and I are going to respectfully disagree is the use of this facility for non-farm related activities. I think that they have an argument, which they are presenting, staff has articulated why we don’t believe that argument in this packet. When you look at the application, and you look at the testimony offered during the public hearing it is our considered opinion that the use of this facility for non-farm related purposes was not going to be the primary focus and was not going to be a major component of this facility. We believe it has become one and as such, as we go through the rest of our presentation this evening, we believe it represents a modification of the Special Use Permit as defined by Article 8.7 which is why we asked the applicant to come back before the Board of Adjustment to modify this Special Use Permit. Tom Brown: Any additional questions at this time? James Carter: Yes I have, in mentioning about being the education component and if there are some aspects involved in the North Carolina standard course of study, could you tell me what component of the standard course of study is offered at that facility? You just mentioned the North Carolina Standard of Course of Study, what activity relates to the North Carolina Standard of Course of Study are you talking about? Mike Parker: I will defer to someone else to answer that question, some of the folks that operate the facility. I would rather for them to get the answer correct than for me to even come close. Allison Nichols: The activities that we do are aligned with the North Carolina Standard Course of Study. My mother and I are both teachers, and what we do is we take the Standard Course of Study and we teach the goals and objectives that are laid out by the Department of Education and we find lessons that are age appropriate for children preschool all the way up to middle school or sometimes we have very few high school groups that come out. We teach a lesson that connects those goals and objectives and find hands-on applications to test the children’s knowledge to see if they understand the concepts. For example, a kindergarten curriculum goal would be animal movements and sounds and characteristics of how they walk around. When I taught public school in Durham, I couldn’t teach how a cow walks around unless I had a cow to bring into school for them to make that connection. At the learning center we are able to talk and do our animal lessons and then take the kids outside so they see an actual cow and how cows move and how they interact with their environment. Does that make sense? James Carter: It is sort of vague because I am quite familiar with the Standard Course of Study, I am a curriculum specialist. That’s why I asked that question. Allison Nichols: What we do is when taking lesson plans and you tie in how you are going to meet your objections, that is how we do it. Like in the school science room we try to find as many hands on applications as we can to convey what we are trying teach the kids. James Carter: Ok, thank you very much.