Chatham commissioners discuss UDO, Moncure megasite updates

By VICTORIA JOHNSON

PITTSBORO — The Chatham County Board of Commissioners received an update about the county’s Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) project during its Monday work session and provided input on several key topics to jumpstart the drafting process.

At the center of Monday’s talks? Agricultural preservation, and how the UDO should balance development and population increase with the county’s rural character, productive soils and agricultural economy, particularly in western Chatham.

To introduce the topic to commissioners, Tyson Smith of White & Smith LLC, a land-use planning and law group, began by quoting a paragraph in the county’s most recent land-use code audit that recommended the UDO project — known as “Recode Chatham” — consider whether to reduce residential density in agricultural areas to protect farmland and the agricultural economy, or maintain or increase allowable density “to protect farm owners’ future rights to develop or sell their land.”

“That really sets you up on that spectrum of making sure that folks in the western part of the county have sufficient use of their land, economic use of the land, but also protecting what is really the jewel of Chatham County,” Smith said.

Launched last year, “Recode Chatham” seeks to develop a UDO for Chatham County to modernize and simplify the county’s existing zoning, subdivision and other development-related regulations.

In creating a UDO, the county hopes to lay out clear, user-friendly development standards, establish a predictable review process and provide a roadmap for implementing its 25-year Comprehensive Plan — which prioritizes preservation of agricultural lands, responsible economic development and investment in sustainable infrastructure and affordable housing, among other goals.

The county brought in White & Smith LLC and others last year to help its planning department develop the UDO in a four-stage, two-year process. Based on input from county staff, advisory boards and commissioners, the White & Smith-led consultant team began drawing up a county land-use code audit intended to guide the UDO drafting process.

The team presented the initial draft to the board in early April and finalized it soon after in late May. Now, as Smith told the board, the project is just about ready to advance to the third stage — drafting the UDO — which the project’s website, www.recodechathamnc.org/home, estimates may take six to 23 months.

“We are embarking on the drafting piece of the first module of this project, and having some feedback from you, even in very general terms is really, really helpful,” Smith told commissioners. “… Just hearing as the leaders of this community how you view particularly Western Chatham County in the future and how we implement the comprehensive plan objectives there is super helpful for us as we started to draft.”

The team also created a draft outline of the UDO, bringing together various components of land-use regulations, including zoning, planning, as well as watershed and flood protection.

In asking for board direction for the UDO drafting process, Smith asked commissioners to review agricultural areas in Western Chatham through the lens of three “high-level aspects” of a rural planning project — area character, capacity and economy — as well as three tools UDO drafters could use to achieve commissioners’ visions for all three aspects. These include density, subdivision and land use.

“The question you’re grappling with is that you got a comp plan that says low density in agriculture, etc., and you’ve got a zoning map that says one to one, which is pretty low density if you were in an urban environment, but it might be kind of a high density for an ag environment,” Smith told the board, referring to Plan Chatham’s future land-use map and zoning map. “So that’s what we’ll try to reconcile as we go through the UDO process and start that conversation today.”

Commissioners by and large hesitated to impose a cap on the maximum number of units on county lands or specify subdivision requirements, owing to water and sewer limitations, as well as potential growth, in western extraterritorial jurisdictions and unincorporated areas.

“If we address the number of units per acre … we have to consider the infrastructure,” Commissioner Robert Logan said. “We’re a rural county with a history of agribusiness in our county — a very long-lived history of that. I think all of us want to preserve that. Still, it’s just not wise to allow growth to outrun your infrastructure.”

Beyond infrastructure limitations, Chairperson Karen Howard said she’d like to see the UDO incorporate land-use policies encouraging responsible, environmentally friendly development rather than a “Wild West concept of you can do whatever you want, wherever you want.”

“I think it would be irresponsible to say, ‘Let’s approve a Briar Chapel or, you know, Amberly in the West,’ knowing that it’s not really feasible, but I also don’t know that I would want to develop policies that prevented it should there be some major industrial growth in the West,” Howard said. “That would, I would rather see higher density with intentionally preserved greenspace than vast, you know, four- and five- and one- (and) two-acre tracts — I think that will pockmark the land more to me. I think that will diminish the jewel-like quality of the west.”

The UDO must take into account everything that comes with development, she said, including roads, traffic, schools and even development-related pollution. Though uninterested in capping residential units in the east or west or creating tight, inflexible limitations on all future land use, Howard advocated for developing ordinances controlling, prescribing or incentivizing responsible development.

“It’s more than ‘what do I do with my piece of land?’” she said. “It’s ‘How do we responsibly develop policies that allow for the value of your land to be retained, but the value of the community to be preserved?’”

VinFast and the Moncure Area Plan

After receiving board input on the UDO, Smith also provided an update about the TIP East Moncure megasite assessment and area plan, a planning effort the county chose to embark upon following the VinFast announcement in March to assess the project’s countywide impacts and prepare a plan to address them.

This effort also seeks to create an area plan for county-owned lands that staff expect the megasite development project will likely impact. To achieve all this, Smith said, White & Smith, plus other consultants, have put together a two-phase process encompassing planning and execution.

“What we have found is in the last 60 days is that this development, the announcement of VinFast, has really taken our attention from the UDO, so we feel like we need to free up some time to really think about what the county’s response to this announcement will be, its official planning process,” he said. “A lot of things that kind of come to mind quickly — we need to think about roads, we need to think about schools, but we need to now really drill down on that, and you know, what’s been decided already, what will be open for decision and that sort of thing.”

Smith told the board he expects the first phase of the project — planning and project assessment — to last through the summer, they’d then nail down the proposed scope of work for the county-wide assessment and Moncure area plan. The team has already kickstarted the first phase of the project, gathering information and opening communication with the N.C. Dept. of Transportation and Dept. of Environmental Quality, VinFast, and the Chatham Economic Development Corporation.

“We’ve identified some of the obvious things that we think are (of) county interest, so to speak,” Smith said. “We will come back to you with our first meeting on this and talk to you about these things and have some ideas for you to consider. We can say that we know this will impact housing, it’s going to increase demand, but what does that really mean for you is the county and what can you do about it?”

According to County Manager Dan LaMontagne, VinFast hopes to “turn the first soil on July 1” and hold an official groundbreaking ceremony on Sept. 22.

“I had a meeting last week — or week before, can’t remember — with DEQ, all of DEQ. They have air quality permits; they have 401/404 permits with DOT and the site, erosion control permits that are going through the state,” he said. “Of course, stormwater will come through the county. The rezoning is in play for a public hearing at our next meeting for the two properties they’re adding.”

Once Smith finished his presentation, Commissioner Diana Hales requested that the project incorporate a hydrologic examination, a state-completed Chatham County Geological Survey, and outreach to Moncure’s older minority community.

“The older minority community in Moncure is very reticent about change that may be perceived as detrimental to their health, and I think there needs to be outreach within the Moncure area, and there’s low-income areas, as well as, you know, not low-income areas,” she said. “… I think that’s important. They should not be forgotten, and they should be involved.”

The Board of Commissioners will next meet on 2 p.m. Tuesday, June 21, at inside the Historic Courthouse Courtroom.