Madison planning board votes to nix 50-foot setback requirement; forms ridge focus group
MARSHALL - For 13 years, Madison County was the only county in North Carolina to have an ordinance regulating against building on mountain ridges.
But on Dec. 19, despite roughly 20 residents expressing their opposition to an application to remove the county's 50-foot setback requirement for building on ridge tops, the Madison County Planning Board voted to recommend to scrap the setback requirement in a meeting continued from Nov. 21 to allow the board to hear from all the residents who signed up for public comment.
In the next step, on Jan. 9, the Madison County Board of Commissioners will vote on whether to approve the planning board's recommendation.
The application was submitted by Russell Blevins.
Blevins told The News-Record & Sentinel in November that he and Parker applied to have the Mountain Ridge Protection Ordinance's 50-foot ridge top setback requirement removed because he wanted to build a cabin for his family, adding that he felt his children would want to potentially build cabins as well.
The North Carolina Mountain Ridge Protection Act of 1983 established protections in the form of building height restrictions for ridgelines at or above 3,000 feet and came into legislation in response to an Avery County condominium complex, Sugar Mountain.
In 2010, Madison County established the Mountain Ridge Protection Ordinance, which "regulates the height of tall buildings or structures on mountain ridges, providing for the method of administration and enforcement, defining certain terms used herein, and providing for the imposition of penalties for violation of provisions of the ordinance."
Blevins and Clif Parker purchased Mountain Park, a gated neighborhood in the Mars Hill headwaters of Gabriels Creek, in April.
Parker is managing partner of Mountain Partners, the company that owns Mountain Park. Blevins and Parker own the undeveloped portions of Mountain Park.
Blevins owns roughly 400 acres at the head of Paint Fork, near Metcalf Creek Loop Road.
Blevins told The News-Record the 50-foot setback requirement makes building his potential residence more difficult, which he reiterated in the Nov. 21 meeting.
Neither Blevins nor Parker presented to the board Dec. 19, as their presentation was completed in the previous meeting, in which Blevins said he felt the 50-foot setback requirement not only forced him off the soil most stable on which to build, but resulted in more environmental damage.
Prior to starting the hearing, Board Chair Jered Silver said he felt the county Mountain Ridge Protection Ordinance's 50-foot setback requirement was environmentally harmful.
"I can't find anything that is more destructive than this ordinance, and that's partially why I think a lot of the other counties in North Carolina don't have it, because it is so destructive to the environment," Silver said.
"I've looked this ordinance over for the last month. I've been in construction my whole life. It's really all I know. I can't find anything in this book that is worse for the environment than this ordinance, and the reason being, first of all, you're building a house so you can have to build it off the side of the mountain. We see it all the time. When you go to Woodfin, and you see it around here some. There's houses that's not on the top of the ridges, they're on the side of the mountain, and the ground's completely destroyed from putting just the driveway, much less the house."
The board chair said he felt building on the top of a mountain at 3,100 feet, "They're going to cause a lot less damage putting a house at top than at the side."
The statement drew exclamations of disagreement from the crowd, causing Silver to start the hearing.
Setback vote postponed Madison County Planning Board's vote on 50-foot ridge top setback continued to December
Developer: Scrap Madison setbacks Developer: Scrap Madison ridge top setback building requirement. Residents want to keep it
Residents' disapproval
The board heard first from the holdover residents who signed up for public comment Nov. 21 but did not get to comment due to time constraints, nearly all of whom said they disapproved the proposed amendment to scrap the setback requirement.
Bill Kazer lives on East Fork Road in Mars Hill.
Kazer raised the issue of the tax implications involved with potentially approving the application and said the property he owns has tripled since 2015.
"In 1999 is when I first started looking for property here, and the locals would not sign easements for me because I was from D.C.," Kazer said. "Now, it seems like locals are trying to just sign away these rights and these opportunities to these people to build these multimillion dollar homes that are going to price each and everyone of the people who love this area for what it is."
A number of residents who spoke during public comment spoke to the aesthetic, referencing Madison's "Jewel of the Blue Ridge" label, as well as the environmental impacts of removing the setback requirement, including Gwen McTaggart, who moved to the county with her parents in 1968 at the age of 5.
"Something we haven't really talked about is lights on the mountaintop obscuring the stars," McTaggart said. "The dark is what's beautiful about this place. The other thing I'd like to mention is Russell Blevins mentioning the dangers to the environment of steep slop buildings. He's right. He's a soil conservation person. It's dangerous to build on the steep slopes, so I would like to recommend that we have a steep slope ordinance, as well as a setback requirement."
Laura Boggess suggested the board speak with local firefighters about the implications of the proposed amendment's impact on local fires, referencing Mars Hill's miscanthus, or pampas grass, problem.
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Boggess works for Mars Hill University, where she coordinates the environmental studies program.
Boggess said she thinks some residents may feel as if the ridge top setback issue is "us versus them, people from here, people not from here," but that she feels that feeling is a misperception.
"I actually don't think that's what's goin on. I work for Bailey Mountain. That land, we earned and raised money for it," Boggess said, alluding to numerous fundraisers in which people from throughout the county banded together to raise money for the preserve.
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Board comments
Silver said the board had received "more than 1,000 emails" about the proposed amendment to the Mountain Ridge Protection Ordinance, adding that for all the residents speaking out against the amendment during the public comment portion, many locals had approached him in person and said they wanted to do away with the ordinance as a whole.
Board member Lee Wilds reiterated a point raised by another resident, who said the county would be taxing residents who own land but cannot develop it if the county maintained the setback requirement.
"That's acres and acres and acres of our Madison County land that are in the tax that we're saying, that you can't do anything with it," Wilds said.
The board unanimously approved Clayton Honeycutt's motion to scrap the setback requirement.
Honeycutt also introduced the idea for the county commissioners and Planning Board to form a focus group, similar to the county's courthouse funding, biomass and noise ordinance focus groups.
"I don't like the premise that we don't want to protect these ridges," Honeycutt said. "We've been entrusted to protect them since the Civil War. We will continue to do so."
Like Silver, Honeycutt said he didn't like the Mountain Ridge Protection Ordinance, which he called "a Flintstone vitamin."
"It's only worked because we haven't challenged it yet," Honeycutt said. "It doesn't give us the protection we want, and yet it inhibits longstanding families that have held this land."
Honeycutt said the 50-foot setback requirement was not the only regulation in the ordinance with which he disagreed.
"We also have a 2-acre lot size minimum," Honeycutt said. "But we don't designate how that 2-acre lot is constructed. If you want to see a ridge that looks terrible, keep this ordinance here."
Honeycutt said he felt the ordinance "restricted property owners that have lived and paid taxes and been a part of this community for generations."
"I don't have a problem with putting what may seem onerous regulations on subdivisions," Honeycutt said. "But not working families that have had a dream to one day put a house up on this ridge, only to see it generation after generation be unfulfilled, and then have them finally have somebody with enough money to build that house."
Honeycutt advocated for the Planning Board or county planning team to reassess the Madison County Subdivision Control Ordinance in the area above 3,000 feet.
"If it's left as it is now, even if we keep the setback requirement, people are coming," Honeycutt said. "People are going to continue to grow the county, and it's not going to be in the way that we'd like to see. If we're worried about overdevelopment of the ridges, by all means, let's work on that.
"This 50-foot setback is not the savior you think it is."
Johnny Casey has covered Madison County for The Citizen Times and The News-Record & Sentinel for nearly three years, including earning a first-place award in beat reporting in the 2023 North Carolina Press Association awards. He can be reached at 828-210-6071 or jcasey@citizentimes.com.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Board scraps 50-foot ridge setback requirement; will form focus group
