With Jefferson County’s new planning and zoning ordinances now open for public comment through December 17, The Observer’s Thomas Harding sat down with the county’s zoning chief, Tony Redman.
Redman grew up in Chester Maryland. He went to Salsbury State University, majoring in English. He spent five years as a carpenter in Ocean City, Md. In 1976 he was a zoning inspector in Kent County, Md.. From 1977 to 1984 he was planning director from for Talbot County, Md. Redman has a Masters degree in urban and regional planning from the University of Virginia. From 1984 to 2007 he was a principal and planner in Redman/Johnston Associates.
OBSERVER: Where did you grow up?
REDMAN: I was born and raised five miles outside of Chestertown in Maryland. We lived on a farm with 350 acres—corn, beans; I milked the cows.
OBSERVER: Did you like faming?
REDMAN: [Laughs] No, I ran away to college at 18! My father would say, “If you are going to farm you need to know what it is about.” After being well informed, I made a conscious decision—this is not what I wanted to do.
OBSERVER: Why was that?
REDMAN: Probably I was a bit lazy. You had to work hard, the hours were brutal. I had no social life at high school; I was stuck on the farm while other kids were doing their thing.
OBSERVER: What happened to the farm?
REDMAN: The farm is still there. I am really pleased my brother has taken over the operation. My 88-year-old father still works on the farm, and I’m very sure he will continue to do so till the day he leaves.
OBSERVER: Do you go back to your family’s farm?
REDMAN: Thanksgiving, Christmas and Wood Walk Day— the first Sunday in November. My dad has 60 acres of woodland. Each year he sponsors a walk for family and friends. Each gathering is between 60 and 120 people. Everyone brings a covered dish, spreads it out on farm wagons. Chicken is cooked right there on the grill. Everybody takes a walk in the woods and collects berries, crow’s foot, and moss. They fill buckets and bags, and they build their winter gardens, which they bring inside so they have greenery through the winter.
OBSERVER: Do you think growing up on a farm has motivated you to protect farm land?
REDMAN: Yes, it motivates me to protect farmland and to have a keen interest in the farmer. A lot of people who move to a county like this buy a lot in a subdivision next to a farm, and they borrow the space for their enjoyment. Often they forget farming is an industry. When a farmer works the land, dust blows up, and if neighbors are hanging laundry on the line, it may get dirty. If they grow tomatoes on the edge of the farm, and there is a chemical drift [from the farm], it may kill the tomatoes. Too often the new neighbors become unhappy with the farming activity.
OBSERVER: Do you have much sympathy for people like this?
REDMAN: No. (Laughs.) But I can’t be brutal about this; those people are stakeholders in the community as well. They bought a home; they have invested in the community. They have a right to care. So while I said “no” from my gut, I can hold my gut in abeyance, and try and put everybody on equal footing. The issue is how to prevent, rather than fix—you can’t fix the problem.
What this county has suffered from is a sprawl development pattern. It is evident from the new zoning map where you see so many existing subdivisions scattered along roadsides and away from the town centers. They are intruders into the agricultural strongholds. And the reason they are there is the LESA-zoning framework that the county has had for years. It allowed you to up-zone a parcel from “rural” to “development” land anywhere in the county. That is not zoning. How it came to be called zoning is still not clear in my mind, except that I am now in West Virginia, not in Maryland. And the political will to manage land use is different here.
OBSERVER: Why have people been against strong zoning in West Virginia?
REDMAN: Quite frankly, I don’t want to say it has been the developers, because they haven’t had that much power. I think it has been a property rights movement, with people saying that you can’t stop development [because] otherwise you would be “taking” their land.
OBSERVER: And in Jefferson County?
REDMAN: This has been a very rural county. There were only 20,000 people in the 1970s. Back then the psyche of people was that the land was limitless. They used it as inefficiently as they wanted to—as if it would never run out.
OBSERVER: What has changed?
REDMAN: The political will has shifted because of the newcomers who have arrived from places with zoning like Baltimore County, New York, and the Washington, D.C., suburbs.
OBSERVER: Let’s talk about the new ordinance and the zoning map for Jefferson County that you have been working on. It is 288 pages long, with maybe 100 decisions per page, totaling perhaps over 30,000 changes to the current ordinance. What are the three most important changes?
REDMAN: The most important change is we that the new ordinance and zoning map will deliver predictability. No longer can people drop a subdivision in the middle of the countryside as they did with the LESA system. In the future, if land is zoned residential, it will stay residential. If it is zoned agriculture, it will stay agriculture. If it is zoned estate, it will stay estate.
OBSERVER: Why is this such a good thing?
REDMAN: Now the level of land speculation may decline. People will be less likely to buy a farm and hope that they will be able to make something happen other than what the ordinance says will happen.
OBSERVER: What is second main point?
REDMAN: The new ordinance will foster better character in new developments. It will encourage the mix of housing types. This will be more akin to traditional neighborhoods, not like cul-de-sac subdivisions. There will also be a greater opportunity to connect subdivisions, and not let them be their own fiefdoms.
OBSERVER: And the third?
REDMAN: The third is that it will encourage affordable housing.
OBSERVER: It looks like the “minor-subdivision” option has been dropped from the new ordinance. Why?
REDMAN: Look at the existing zoning map. There is nothing but farm land and white spaces. But this is bullshit. This map lied to the community. This is a reality check. The map doesn’t show the LESA project here, the LESA project there, the minor subdivision here, a minor subdivision there. After landowners did a minor subdivision [under the old system] they could do another one in five years. This is not planning; this is “have at it folks!”
OBSERVER: And if for landowner who own less than 18 acres in the agriculture zone, they will not be able to subdivide their land.
REDMAN: Yes, in the agricultural district—that’s only 55 percent of the county.
OBSERVER: And the new ordinance drops parent-to-child subdivisions.
REDMAN: This will no longer be a freebie. If you do a parent -to-child [subdivision], you will lose development rights as you do this. This needed to happen a lot sooner, frankly.
OBSERVER: Will people still be able to do a parent-to-child subdivisions if they own less than 18 acres in the agricultural zone?
REDMAN: I think you can’t.
OBSERVER: Lane Kedig, from Kendig Keast, who drafted the ordinance by the county commission, said that once the new zoning map was drafted, it would be possible to calculate how many houses could be built in Jefferson County. What is that number?
REDMAN: I’m working on that as we speak. This is still in progress.
OBSERVER: Former chair of the planning commission Paul Burke says there will be as many as 300,000 people living in Jefferson County once it is built out.
REDMAN: Not close. I’ll give you the answer but not in one number. Outside of the urban growth boundaries, there may be as many as 20,000 to 25,000 new people living in the county once fully built out. I’m assuming we are not going to develop every acre in the county. I’m assuming 20 percent will not be developed.
I think there may be 75,000 to 90,0000 new people inside the growth boundary. I’m assuming a density of four units per acre, and 20 percent of this land would be commercial or industrial—not residential units. Then you add the existing population of 12,000 in the towns and 38,000 in the county.
OBSERVER: So once Jefferson County is fully built out the population of the county would be a minimum of 145,000 and a maximum 165,000 people. Is that right?
REDMAN: That’s probably true, but it doesn’t approach 300,000.
OBSERVER: A tripling of the population?
REDMAN: Yes, at build-out. But that’s not in twenty years.
OBSERVER: And how long would this take?
REDMAN: Historically growth in Jefferson County has been around 2.5 percent a year, except for the 70s when it was as much as 3.5 percent a year.
OBSERVER: What about Transferable Development Rights, or TDRs, in which development rights are sold from an owner with low-density land to and owner with high density land. They are not currently in the draft ordinance. Are you in favor of these?
REDMAN: I’ve written TDRs before. I’m for it. But it depends on whether they are workable or not. I’m almost an authority on this. There are 200 programs around the country, but only three have been successful. TDRs have a great appeal because it is a private-sector solution. However, in Article 7 of the West Virginia code, you can have a TDR only within “growth counties”—which we are—and only if approved at a general election.
OBSERVER: To have TDRs in Jefferson County we need a referendum?
REDMAN: Yes.
OBSERVER: So are you planning to have a TDR election in the future?
REDMAN: Yes, some sort of density-exchange option . . . maybe for isolated locations and for isolated purposes. Maybe for the mountain. Maybe to protect historic resources.
OBSERVER: Over the next few weeks, you will be holding six public meetings about the new ordinance and zoning map. Some people say by presenting 288 pages in each location each time, there will be no opportunity to go into the detail of the document.
REDMAN: I have heard that, and they are wrong (laughs). The reason for six events is based on the assumption that people will not make it to six nights at six different locations. The notion is that we want an opportunity for some orientation for everybody in the community. We assume some nights they have PTA meetings, some nights other commitments. We are scattering the meetings through the week. The details are on the internet and available to buy.
OBSERVER: Is it too late for somebody to make a meaningful comment, to make a difference to the ordinance?
REDMAN: I am going to listen, the county commissioners are going to be there, listening. In the end it is they who have to wrestle with this thing. I will take some time after the public meetings to compile legitimate concerns and present these with possible solutions to the county commission.
OBSERVER: The public comment period ends December 17. What is the earliest possible time the new ordinance and map could become effective?
REDMAN: The earliest? Perhaps the end of January or the first part of February. I want to tell you Redman’s Law: Murphy was an optimist!
OBSERVER: Are you anti-growth?
REDMAN: No. No. But I believe in managing its form, its design qualities, its location, and distribution and its costs. Being anti growth does not lead to effective planning, and I’m a planner first. The market is bigger than any of us. If I said I’m going to stop growth, it would be like laying in front of equipment being used to build the next road. I don’t intend to sacrifice myself; it’s a useless cause because that road is going to occur whether I’m anti- or not. I’m planning for growth.
Sidebar
Changes in brief:
In the agricultural zone, landowners will be able to create one lot per 40 acres, but if clustered, 1 lot per 9 acres if the homes leave 85 percent of the land being open space.
There are seven new zones in the county, each with different development rights.
The new ordinance works in conjunction with a zoning map.
The “LESA” system is dropped.
Transferable Development Rights are not included in the ordinance.
The ordinance will probably become effect in spring 2008.
