What’s Wrong with Sliding Scale Zoning?

Every few years Shenandoah County looks at its zoning laws, realizes that they have done little to stem the growth of housing in the county, and drafts a new set of more restrictive rules.

Now is a good time to ask whether the rules need changing again, or whether another approach might be warranted.

The real problem is that the zoning laws don’t apply to the land where the growth is occurring. The growth in our county isn’t happening in Forestville, or Jerome, or Mt. Olive. It’s in Strasburg and Woodstock and the other towns that are not bound by the county’s zoning laws.

Changing the zoning that applies to farmland in Forestville, Jerome and Mt. Olive isn’t going to solve the problem. The change has to be made in and around Strasburg and Woodstock.

The county’s records show that, over each of the past eight years, an average of less than thirty residential lots have been created within agricultural A-1 and C-1 zoning. So where has all the growth come from? It happens when land in the towns is rezoned. Those decisions get made by the town councils, not the county Board of Supervisors.

It’s not fair to a property owner when the county changes zoning laws and removes some of the development rights to his or her land. It’s equally unfair to the rest of us when a town changes its zoning and allows a land owner to bring county land into the town and rezone it for much denser development than would be allowed in the county. That decision leaves the rest of us to pay twice – once for the additional school rooms and other services that growth requires, and again when the county takes more of our development rights away from us in a fruitless attempt to control growth.

We’ll only get a handle on growth when we get the towns to cooperate.

There are things the county can do. One is to work with the towns to create joint development agencies like the one that reviews all plans in and around Berryville in Clarke County. That body, more than Clarke’s sliding scale zoning rules, is responsible for the control of growth in that county.

Another thing the county can do is to encourage the transfer of development rights as a part of the process for rezoning within those development areas. If someone wants to build 50 more homes than the current zoning allows, let them first buy 50 development rights from farmers out in the county. This will let the farmers earn some extra money without selling their land, and preserve farmland forever. If we had such a plan over the past five years, we would have preserved thousands of acres of farmland at no cost to the taxpayer. The transfer of development rights was recently enabled by state law. Let’s put it to use here in the county and its towns.

The county is allowing some incorrect information to come forward from its sliding scale zoning studies. It reports that the proposed scale would, if every lot were developed, add “only” 25,875 new houses in the county, compared to 43,023 new houses under the present zoning. This is based on the fallacy that every square foot of existing A-1 and C-1 land not in the flood plain can be built up. It doesn’t count on the fact that much of the land has no road access or won’t meet septic approvals. In truth, the actual potential “buildout” under existing zoning is probably no more than it would be under sliding scale. Because of the greatly reduced potential of sliding scale zoning, and the greater flexibility it might afford in lot size, access, and timing, we could see as much growth under sliding scale, faster, than we would see under the existing zoning.

But that’s not the main point. The main point is that sliding scale zoning, or ANY new zoning rules that the county adopts, won’t do a single thing to stop the towns from annexing county land, granting major subdivisions, and sticking county taxpayers with the bill.

The solution is in working with the towns, and instituting the transfer of development rights, not pushing more stringent zoning rules on the farmers out in the rural areas of the county.

If we want to preserve farming, we need to make it more profitable, not less profitable. And we need to realize that some of that profit lies in the value of the farmland.