Boone County residents will have the chance at an upcoming meeting to tell the Planning and Zoning Committee what they would like to see.
On Wednesday, May 25, the Planning and Zoning Committee is hosting an open house to solicit feedback from the community. Information gathered from the meeting will supplement the official zoning update for the county.
The update comes every five years in conjunction with the county’s five-year comprehensive plan, both of which lay the framework for future development in the county.
As Boone County grows, the area’s once-rural properties are seeing their country homes turn into the backdrop of traffic jams. That was the complaint of two residents, a husband and wife, who said they “moved to the country to live in the country.”
Dennis Kelley lives at Richwood Road, and in a recent Boone County Fiscal Court meeting he said a three-minute drive can turn into a 30-minute ordeal during high traffic times. For that reason, Kelley said he was against the zoning change that would allow a nearby 33-acre farm to turn into an assisted living complex.
His complaint came at the second reading of the ordinance by the court, which comes at end of the zoning change process. The Planning and Zoning Committee first heard the suggestion for the assisted living facility from Provision Living back in March. The back-and-forth discussion resulted in a zoning change with a dozen conditions attached two months later.
Residents impacted by planning and zoning changes are notified directly by the county via a certified letter. The county also advertises public hearings for zoning changes online and in print publications. In this case, the public hearings held for the assisted living facility saw little to no engagement from its future neighbors until the last leg of the process, according to a report given to the Fiscal Court.
For that reason, County Administrator Jeff Earlywine said this open forum is an opportunity for residents to be heard and understand the role they play in the development process.
“We had some residents tonight that were here to talk about zoning and the zoning map,” Earlywine said at the last Fiscal Court meeting. “Judge (Gary Moore), I’m thinking in the last day or two, we had two or three email threads around the office on issues involving zoning issues that are very important. They touch a lot of people and sometimes we don’t hear about anything until after the fact, and it’s too late to do anything then. But there will be an opportunity on the 25th of May to be informed, to help influence and shape the regulation we will build.”
The forum will offer two and a half hours of open public comment between 5 and 7:30 p.m. The open house will be hosted in the Boone County Fiscal Court room, which is located in the administration building in Burlington at 2950 Washington St.