Agenda - 02-04-2025; 5-a - Applications for Zoning Atlas Amendment, Comprehensive Plan Amendments, & UDO Text Amendments to Realize “Fiddlehead Corner”, a Master Plan Development – Conditional District

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258 Approved 8.7.24 453 current AR zoning, however, already permits family care centers without rezoning. The 454 claim that these centers should be a permitted use that family care homes should be a 455 permitted use in MPD-CDs to align with state law raises several unanswered questions. 456 While North Carolina law defines family care homes as a permissible use in all residential 457 districts, an MPD-CD district provides for nonresidential and mixed-use developments as 458 well as large scale subdivisions and allows quote "flexibility to accommodate land use 459 adjustments in response to evolving market trends." It appears from communications 460 over the past year and a half the planning staff and the developer have been discussing 461 who staff or developer would request this change to permit family care homes in MPD-CD 462 zoning. This proposal is part of a wholesale attempt by the developer to re-write County 463 ordinances and comprehensive planning to benefit a single developer. Please do not 464 approve this proposed amendment, given that the motivation for it and beneficiaries of the 465 proposed changes remain unclear. Please note that the analysis and staff 466 recommendation in the agenda packet referring to healthcare include inaccuracies. The 467 statement of consistency claims that the development would provide outpatient medical 468 care and I heard earlier a discussion about a group medical center. This is unfounded 469 because according to definitions in state law and the health and human services 470 department, a family care facility does not require skilled nursing or physicians for 471 licensing and would not provide medical care, outpatient, or inpatient. It's simply a facility 472 providing personal care for daily living. There would be zero harm in not recommending 473 the proposed LIDO amendments from Item 8. Not recommending this change would not 474 harm people seeking to establish a family care home in a residential district because 475 family care homes are permitted in residential zones, including agricultural residential. 476 Item 9, rezoning from agricultural residential to master plan conditional would streamline 477 the application process but only benefiting the developer to the detriment of the 478 surrounding community. According to the UDO, MPD-CD districts shall be limited to 479 transition land use categories within the Orange County planning jurisdiction and rural 480 community nodes. By design, our low-density agricultural residential zone without water 481 or sewer lines, public transit, or sidewalks, is not slated to support the massive 482 infrastructure needs of high-density development without depleting limited water 483 resources and irrevocably transforming farmland, waterways, and woodlands. The 484 proposed rezoning is wildly incompatible with the surrounding multi-generational 485 community. Recommending the proposed rezoning and a decade or more of construction 486 would likely displace existing community members, heritage farms, and young farmers 487 currently thriving and supporting older relatives who are truly aging in place. The 488 developer proposes changes that threaten not only this rural community but all of Orange 489 County's current and future farmers, food economy, consumers of local products, and 490 open space. The Morrow Mill and Goldmine Loop residents are a model of successful 491 rural community. We're thriving despite a series of problematic proposals for the area that 492 have put farms, public health, and the environment at risk. We firmly reject this project 493 because it threatens an existing community. I want to clarify some key information about 494 diabase dikes. In 1991, an attempt to site a landfill was defeated because it would have 495 leached contaminants into ground water based on a rock formation called a diabase dike 496 on Orange Chapel Clover Garden Road,just up the road from this facility. In 2008, 497 commissioners learned of the presence of the same diabase dike in the same area 498 proposed for developing the UNC Airport at the time that was defeated. More recently, 499 neighbors at the corner of Morrow Mill and Highway 54 have had their wells contaminated 500 by leakage from a previous gas station. This developer's proposal for massive water 501 draws and disposal of liquid sewage would further threaten these wells, surrounding 502 neighbors with a cluster of polluting infrastructure co-located next to them and raising