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Approved 11/14/2011 OC Board of Adjustment – 6/13/2011 Page 8 of 44 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 53 54 compliant about me using an irrigation pump. It is a five horsepower Honda. There isn’t a time when I turn that on, I try to turn it on so it is not on at dinner. I try not to start at 6:00 AM. I try to put it on at the right time of day, it runs two hours. It pumps up to field. It goes to a headline. It goes down drip irrigation and puts out about four and one half gallons a minute every 1,000 foot a drip. It is a pretty efficient way to water. It is a place you can hear a lot. I was out there Sunday morning, I work every day and a lot of people ask me if they can learn about farming and they come help me for free. I said to this girl yesterday, Trish bikes down the road… don’t say a word for a minute cause you can hear everything they are saying when they ride down the road. Sound really travels there. It is a big open field. I love it there. Everybody that works there is really nice to me. It is an efficient farm. I grow about 70 different vegetables, flowers, we grow sugar snaps, sweet potatoes, about nine varieties of potatoes, lettuce, radishes, turnips, I could name them forever... sunflowers, zinnias. The kids can see how this stuff is grown. I think it is a great idea. Mr. Nutter has been so nice to me. He came to my house to ask me if I wanted to farm there so the kids could see it. I could think of worse things than that place to live next to. Let’s keep it positive. I think it is a great place and hope I can continue farming there. It has been a real pleasure being there. Tom Brown: Is there anyone else to speak on behalf of the applicant? For those opposed, please come forward. David Rooks: Mr. Chairman, I am David Rooks. I represent the Maple View2 HOA, the next door neighbor directly adjacent to the center and we will have three witnesses who will summarize the neighborhood’s objection to parts of this application and we will be clear that the neighbors do not object to the ag center, they do not object to the Nutters. There are very specific things they object to and that is why they are here tonight. In order, we will have Meredith Berry, David Pearsall and Scott Oglesby. Meredith Berry: I have been sworn in. In a packet we prepared for you, you do have this map. I wanted to add a few things about the neighborhood with a couple of markings we have and just talk a little bit about what makes what we feel makes our situation here in our neighborhood. It starts down here on Dairy Land, comes all the way up here. What we feel like makes this a little bit different than other party barns that have been talked about. I live right here and this is the ag center here and I live approximately about 470 yards from the ag center. Our whole neighborhood, Green Rise neighborhood, is in a fairly unique situation. We are on a hill and it slopes down. This is the crest here. Everything is sloping down to the pond and then towards the farm and especially the ag center. When there have been outdoor parties with large speakers for amplifiers, those are usually set up in the field. The amplifiers are set up and they conduct sound because we can hear them back here and here. There is no one in our neighborhood that has not been able to hear them. It conducts a sound and it comes straight up this way. I have literally been inside my house with doors closed and I can hear amplified bands. I am not talking about the folk singers sitting out on the steps singing. I am talking about when there was a fundraiser or a larger party, there was amplified music. So our problems are our proximity. The sound carries straight up this way. It comes across and it comes up. That is a big huge part of our concern. We have no intention of wanting the ag center to shut down. We love the farming. We supported it from the very get go. We never attended the first hearing for you to approve them to build the ag center because we supported that then and we support it now for their original purpose. We just don’t support the party part of it. I would say from the closest house here, the closest house in our neighborhood is only approximately 175 yards away. The farthest house in our Green Rise neighborhood is right here and that is 530 yards. They can hear, they can hear it, we can hear it, we can all hear it. Part of the problem is, for example, the great dane fundraiser sounds wonderful. I happen to be an animal lover and rescuer. I give much money to animal foundations. Love animals as much as anybody in this room but the issue with an event like that is that those event organizers are there for one day, one afternoon. We are here all the time, every weekend so if we have fundraiser A this weekend and fundraiser B next weekend and fundraiser C and party D next weekend. We are there every weekend. We don’t go away… those are our homes and we bought our homes out on the countryside with no other businesses except for the farm. We love the farm. We are not complaining about the farm. We are complaining about and concerned about this agricultural educational building being turning into a party center that could feasibly be used every weekend for outdoor parties. I believe in the applications, weddings, family reunions, corporate events, holiday parties, that sounds like a lot to me and I think it would sound like to a lot to any of us who live here who would be very much affected. Scott Oglesby: I am the president of the Maple View2 HOA and I have been sworn in. I live with my wife and three children. As Meredith explained, the meek geography of this area because it rises above and the affect of the ponds where sound reflects off the pond through that particular area, puts us in a very unique position. We don’t have any objection to farm noise. That is part of the reason we moved out here. The smell of manure in the morning, the sound of traffic in the distance. We accept that and some of us did grow up on farms so we were not totally naive to it. It is a matter of degree. I think that is part