From the Caroline Rural Alliance: CAROLINE RURAL ALERT: Planning Commission to consider banning barns!:
Dear Caroline County Resident,
With the Planning Commission considering 81 pages of NEW land use regulation this Monday night, we have to pick our battles carefully (you commercial property owners are on your own, sorry). Just focusing on what will affect us rural agricultural (AP&RP) folks, I find three new disasters in the making. They are:
1. Restricting the construction of agricultural buildings (barns, coops, silos, etc.) to “real estate devoted to the bona fide production for sale of plants and animals” only. If you’re not in the business of selling plants or animals, NO MORE BARNS FOR YOU!
2. Banning the outdoor storage of goods for farm supply stores. Mom and pop farm stores like G+G Hardware could have to erect costly fully-enclosed buildings to store lumber and other materials that are normally stored out in the open or under a canopy. Could be a fatal blow to some locally owned small businesses.
3. The establishment of Minimum Road Frontages for the RP and AP districts. If you don’t have at least 175 FT (RP) or 250 FT (AP) of road frontage, you may be in danger of becoming a “non-conforming use,” and just like those houses that are too close to the road, you may be denied a building permit the next time you want to repair or add on to your house.
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The full text of the new zoning text amendments (all 81 pages) and a more detailed analysis of the three issues mentioned above, are available at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Caroline_Rural_Alliance/files.
To object to these new regulations (and keep your chicken coop), you can either attend the Planning Commission Worksession at 7PM this Monday in the Emergency Operations Center of the Community Services Center, or attend the Planning Commission Public Hearing in the Auditorium of the Community Services Center on Wednesday, January 16th at 7PM.
Thanks for caring!
Sonny
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.” – Thomas Jefferson, 1791
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