Washington City Council denies rezoning request | Eastern North Carolina Now

    The Washington City Council, after an hour of discussion, rejected the proposal to rezone 3.7 acres at 233 East 7th St. from residential (R6) to office and institutional (O&I) Monday (4-12-10) night. This is the second time the Council has rejected the proposed rezoning.

    You can review the application, maps and report of the staff, including action by the Planning Board in voting to recommend denial, beginning on Page 65 of the meeting material. What follows is a dual version of the issue. First the shorter, "conventional" story and then the details and the implications they raise. Today is part one.

    This parcel of land was the old Ed Tech Center the school system ran on the site for years. (That fact will be important in Part II). The Ed Tech program was an alternative school for at-risk youngsters. After John Small School moved to the new campus on Market, the Ed Tech program was moved to the old Small facility. The school system then put the site up for sale. Negotiations between the school system and city fell through and the current owner, Michael Lowe, d.b.a. HealthPlus Therapeutic Services bought it, reportedly to continue to operate it as a rehabilitation program for at risk teens. (Note: Lowe says he bought the building to essentially continue to use it as it had been being used for years.)

    But apparently some nearby residents heard that they were going to put more severely "at risk" students on the property than the Ed Tech Center had enrolled and objected. We also learned that at least one of the neighbors was opposed to the Ed Tech Program being there. The Observer has corroborated from multiples sources that the real issue was what Health Plus planned to put in the facility. But we have been unable to garner any empirical evidence that there would actually be much difference between the population Health Plus planned to service and some of the population the Ed Tech Center had been servicing. When we tried to get solid information on that issue, the fog rolled in. Understandably, it is actually impossible to know the precise difference in the population having been served and the population to be served simply because the program never got a chance to exist. Suffice it to say that several neighbors just didn't want "those kinds of youngsters" in the neighborhood.

    So the Board of Adjustment and Planning Board came under considerable pressure to deny the request. The purported rationale was that the area is residential.

    But this parcel is not adjacent to a residential area. There is substantial distance between the residences that are nearby and the parcel in question. In fact, it was determined that Washington's Land Use Plan classified the parcel, along with surrounding parcels, as designated for long-range use as O&I--what Health Plus was seeking. The City's Master Parks and Recreation Plan called for the area to be used to meet future parks and recreation use, not residential.

    So Health Plus argued that it wanted the zoning classification to reflect the past use of the property plus the nature of the surrounding property, which would make it O&I compatible. The Planning Board and the City Council (both by split votes) decided it should be zoned residential.

    That means that Health Plus can't use the property for what it had been being used for over the last few years and for what its services need to operate their business model. The rationale of the city leaders was that using the facility as Health Plus intended was "out of character" of the neighborhood, a legitimate standard to deny rezoning...if indeed it was correct.

    What we will present in the second of this series is information you may use to determine whether you agree or not with the contention that the parcel and area around it is "residential" and whether operating a facility for high risk youngsters would be "out of character" for the neighborhood.

    For his part, in a brief interview after the meeting, Mr. Lowe was rather emotional. His contention was that the parcel of land is not residential now nor was its prior permitted use. He argues that classifying the parcel as O&I would in fact make the parcel's classification fit the actual use of the property in recent years. Moreover, he said, the surrounding parcels are not residential and in fact their current and past use is more compatible with O&I, or even commercial. He seemed to have summed it up when he said: "if I'd applied for reclassification to use it as a 'school' I have to wonder what they would have done." But our research indicates that the issue is much more than semantics.

    His position is that he bought the property assuming that if it had been used for a school (special or not) and that it could therefore continue to be used for a school. That raises the question of whether the city's refusal is based on the nature of the youngsters that would be enrolled in the program. He states that he believes there were many untrue rumors circulated about what the program would entail and that it was on the basis of those rumors that the decision was made to deny his zoning change. If that is actually the case, two legal experts in land use planning tell us the decision would probably not be legal.

    We'll go more into those issues in Part two of this series.

    But if you want to hear the "formal" arguments the videos below present both sides: that of Health Plus attorney Keith Hackney and that of the planning board by John Tate, who is likewise an attorney.

    In the order in which they made their presentations, the first is Mr. Hackney:



    John Tate representing the Planning Board



    Please pardon the fact that we did not have the facility to use a tripod.

    Delma Blinson writes the "Teacher's Desk" column for our friend in the local publishing business: The Beaufort Observer. His concentration is in the area of his expertise - the education of our youth. He is a former teacher, principal, superintendent and university professor.