“Sometimes it creates a difficult situation, but that’s the

“Sometimes it creates a difficult situation, but that’s the way the ordinance reads...Mr. Chapman has merely run afoul of a strict zoning ordinance...He must find a piece of commercially zoned land or get a rezoning.”

Chairman Bird contended that the ordinance does not prohibit commercial activities in a conservation zone and maintained that the BZA has authority to authorize by special use permit in a conservation district any land use allowed elsewhere in the ordinance.

Conditions which must be satisfied before such a permit can be issued provide protection to the environmentally fragile conservation district, Mr. Monahan said.

Chairman Bird pointed out that bed and breakfast operations are not specifically listed anywhere in the zoning ordinance but that such enterprises have been likened to tourist homes by the BZA and allowed accordingly. The same principle applies to the Chapmans’ proposed retreat house, he said.

“I can hang my hat on tourist home,” agreed Mr. Kramer.

BZA members Kramer, Bird and Monahan agreed that their site visit had shown nothing that would prohibit the proposed use, and Mr. Swindler sided with the majority in rejecting Mr. Reynolds’ interpretation prohibiting the BZA from allowing a retreat house in a conservation zone.

But as to making the four findings necessary for granting a special use permit, the BZA members agreed that those couldn’t be considered without first attaching conditions to the application. And since Mr. Swindler had to leave for a doctor’s appointment in Washington, D.C., the board recessed until Tuesday, June 3.

Reconvening six days hence, Chairman Bird noted that the BZA had received a resolution from the Board of Supervisors, affirming the non-commercial character of the county’s conservation district. “We on the BZA are a quasi-judicial body...appointed by the Circuit Court judge. Our function is to interpret and apply the zoning ordinance...We are answerable not to the Board of Supervisors but to the court,” he stated, describing the communication as “somewhat unusual” and confirming that neither the Chapmans nor the BZA members had been given notice of the supervisors’ intention to consider the issue.

Polling the BZA members, the chairman determined that each still viewed commercial uses as being allowed in a conservation district. Mr. Bird also noted that under the proposed zoning ordinance (which the supervisors have said they intend to adopt in July) camps, recreation grounds, retreats, lodges and resorts are all allowed by special use permit in conservation districts.

Gregory Monahan noted that he had received several telephone calls regarding the Chapmans’ permit application the previous evening. He said that he’d told the callers he couldn’t consider information given over the telephone. “The whole concept of a public hearing is to have everything that bears on the case come out in public,” Mr. Monahan said,