Orange County NC Website
Approved 8.7.24 <br /> <br />region. We hope you, the Planning Board, will keep these considerations in mind as you 603 <br />deliberate. Thank you. 604 <br /> 605 <br />Ralph Warren: Good evening and thank you for this opportunity. My name is Ralph Warren. My spouse 606 <br />and I own land on the eastern boundary of the application, and we've lived on our land for 607 <br />50 years. We're in a neighborhood of four households within one hundred and nine acres 608 <br />of land. I have lived in Orange County since 1954, with the exception of 7 years of 609 <br />Raleigh residency. My spouse moved to Chapel Hill in 1944. These speakers are here to 610 <br />address incompatibility of this application with existing County ordinance and planning. I 611 <br />want to offer a view of the affected surrounding community as a need to understanding 612 <br />our community and its land use. I have used GIS information to identify the landowners 613 <br />and the acreage of properties that form a continuous land area bounded by Six Mile 614 <br />Road, NC 54, Morrow Mill Road and Goldmine Loop Road. Each of these properties has 615 <br />frontage on one of the listed roadways. The land area within this Bingham Township 616 <br />segment is six hundred and sixty acres, and there are 18 households currently occupying 617 <br />those adjoining lands. That total includes the 90 acres under discussion tonight. If the 618 <br />requested classifications were to be granted, one hundred and fifty residences would be 619 <br />added within 30 acres of those six hundred and sixty acres. The incompatibility of the 620 <br />proposed high-density urban housing development is obvious on paper as well as my 621 <br />drive through this area. Part of our community population is made up of families who 622 <br />have lived a rural lifestyle on their land for multiple generations. Those of us newcomers, 623 <br />whether 50-year or 30-year or recent residents, chose to locate here in order to join and 624 <br />continue the existing lifestyle. We do not fit the conventional description of a 625 <br />neighborhood, but we do form a strong community. Our members have come together on 626 <br />many occasions to successfully protect our rural character as prescribed by consecutive 627 <br />land use plans and successive boards of Orange County commissioners. This application 628 <br />plan would attract residents drawn to an inward focus as opposed to those wishing to 629 <br />meld with the longstanding lifestyles and values of the surrounding community. Dense 630 <br />placement of the 200 or more residents together in an area with more expanded services 631 <br />will be an open invitation to rapid commercial development. Granting the changes 632 <br />requested by the current application would ease the path for such incompatible growth 633 <br />both here and across the county. Our community residents are not opposed to 634 <br />development that maintains the rural nature of our area. A long succession of Orange 635 <br />County Boards of Commissioners and their land use plans have specified and maintained 636 <br />rural agricultural zones in Orange County, including our area. So, we, as residents, ask 637 <br />that you reject this current application, and thank you very much for the opportunity to 638 <br />speak. Thank you for your time. 639 <br /> 640 <br />Dan Eddleman: My name is Dan Eddleman, adjacent landowner, senior citizen, aging in place in Bingham 641 <br />Township, agricultural and multi-generation community for the past 45 years. My past 642 <br />service to the county was as a member of the Bingham Township Advisory Council, 643 <br />Planning Board, Board of Adjustment, and was a strong advocate for the extension of 644 <br />zoning into all of Orange County. The above experience was during this era commented 645 <br />on in the first meeting of the County to our planning agreements with Chapel Hill, 646 <br />Hillsborough for water supply planning protection, for municipal throughfare planning, and 647 <br />for development of best management practices for growth, where it should and should not 648 <br />occur. The rural buffer zone serves as a bit of a demarcation of the types of development 649 <br />that good land use planning would dictate be close to, or within the municipalities, and of 650 <br />what is permissible and not permissible in the areas outside of the rural buffer. Rural land 651 <br />node classification and zoning is an integral part of this question. In the June 5th meeting, 652