Subdivision

Subdivision

ordinance

challenged

By DAPHNE HUTCHINSON

Rappahannock Newi Staff Writer

Amend the zoning ordinance’s provision governing family transfers or face a lawsuit.

That’s the message Joan Brown Doares gave the Rappahannock Planning Commission last Wednesday. And in response, the Planning Commission authorized Zoning Administrator John McCarthy to advertise for public hearing an amendment that would limit the number of family transfers to one per qualifying parcel in any calendar year and require that all affected property owners be given notice that such a division has taken place.

But it’s unclear as to whether those changes will remove impediments to Mrs. Doares’ intent to give her son five acres from her 16-acre lot near Amissville and thereby head off a challenge to the county’s land use regulations.

“That will address the perception that there’s a race to my door and an unfairness in how family transfers are handed out,” said Mr. McCarthy. But the proposed amendment “doesn’t address Mrs. Doares’ problem,” he said. He added, however, that the Commonwealth's Attorney will be asked to determine if the amendment “may conceivably” give her “standing under the grandfather clause because her application (for a special exception permit) is on my desk while this is going on.”

Thwarted by “five-cut” rule

Rappahannock’s zoning ordinance provides for the transfer of land to immediate family members, in accordance with the dictates of state law, and exempts such transfers from density restrictions, allowing subdivisions as small as two acres contingent upon issuance of a Health Department permit for a septic field. But there’s a limitation: a maximum of five divisions of any kind may be made from lots of record as of 1962, the year the county’s first land use ordinances were enacted.

Mrs. Doares’ father gave her 16 acres and her sister Olivia 25 acres in 1973. “These lots were approved as legal lots. They were not what your zoning law calls family transfers,” Mrs. Doares told the planning commissioners.

In 1982, the sister sold her 26 acres to the Kellersons who in April 1988 had three two-acre divisions approved under the family exemption for transfer to their three children. At that point, unbeknownst to Mrs. Doares, the five-cut ceiling was reached.

“A few weeks later, I came to Mr. McCarthy’s office and asked for one five-acre lot to give to my son, so that he, too, can live here in the land of his roots,” Mrs. Doares said. She was told the division could be allowed only with a special exception.

At Wednesday’s public hearing on her application for the exception, Mr. McCarthy noted five divisions already have been made from the original lot of record and recommended denial because the county’s density regulations of one dwelling unit per 25 acres on agriculturally-zoned land couldn’t be met.

“Mr. Kellerson beat Mrs. Doares to Mr. McCarthy’s office to get his three lots before she got her one,” said Douglas Baumgardner, the attorney representing Mrs. Doares. Except for the “five-cut” rule, “she would be entitled to the family transfer,” he added. Ordinance amendment offered

In expectation that the Planning Commission would recommend denial of her application for a special excepSee

SUBDIVISION, p. 15

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