The battle over whether Signal Mountain should revert to some pre-1979 zoning standards – allowing affected property owners to subdivide their land into lots as small as a quarter of an acre – is almost over.
Monday evening, town council members will hold a public hearing on a proposal to amend Signal’s zoning ordinance to reduce the minimum lot size allowed in minor subdivisions to a quarter acre.
Following Monday’s hearing the council will hold its second and final vote on the issue.
The first vote – 4-1 in favor of the ordinance – was taken during the group’s sparsely attended July work session.
Opponents of the measure – many of whom believe the change is being made simply to help one property owner with money problems – are spreading the word, hoping the hearing will be well attended.
“Wake up, Signal Mountain citizens!” Dun Monroe urged in a recent letter to the editor. “The next town council meeting is Monday, when you can verbally sound off. If you want this stopped, please voice your opinions via email, by phone calls or in person to any of the council members.”
That’s mild compared to the efforts of more vicious opponents, including an anonymous letter writer’s personal attack on a woman who wants to subdivide the lot on which she lives so she can sell the unused half.
“The town should not have to bail her out,” it argued.
Attached to the letter were 25 pages from US Bankruptcy Court in Chattanooga detailing the woman’s troubled financial past.
Officials said those documents had no effect on their support for the measure, particularly since the writer did not have the courage to sign the enclosed cover letter.
“Once I see that a letter is anonymous, I quit reading,” Councilman Bill Wallace explained.
The lone vote against the amended zoning proposal during the July work session came from Councilman Bill Lusk, who said this week he’s worried about the precedent it will set.
Signal Mountain’s traditional half-acre minimum lot size – instituted in 1979 – has served the town well, the former mayor noted, “ensuring that higher density does not negatively impact our quality of life and infrastructure.” Two years ago, the minimum lot size was changed to one acre.
The strategy paid off, he said: In 2013, the town beat out competitors such as Brentwood and Farragut to be named the No. 1 best place to live in Tennessee by the widely respected Movovo national real estate blog.
But Signal also has problems, Councilman Lusk noted, including:
· Aging infrastructure
· A highway that has “neither the capacity for long-term growth nor the stability to ensure our safety”
· Schools at or near capacity
· Inadequate recreation facilities
Given those realities, he wondered, “Why do we want to create a bunch of extra lots where they don’t exist today?”
For Councilman Wallace, however, the whole issue “just isn’t that big a deal.”
Both the council and the town planning commission have done extensive work aimed at ensuring that the change will not have any unforeseen consequences, he said, and that any affected lots will fit in with the neighborhoods where they are located.
“Have you seen the plat showing (a Texas Avenue property slated for subdivision if the change is approved)?” he asked. “Once that land is divided, it will look pretty much like all the other properties around it . . . This is not spot zoning.”
Town attorney Phil Noblett also indicated he does not believe the change would set a precedent which could back to haunt the town.
“All property owners could take advantage of zoning changes,” he explained, “but no precedent is set other than on infill lots which are large enough, or were previously platted as separate lots for development.”
Any affected lots, the town attorney said, would have to be “of a similar size and road access as adjoining or touching lots.”
Nobody knows just how many lots would qualify for subdivision, although Councilman Lusk asked the question more than a month ago. Southeast Tennessee Development District advisor Jordan Clark, either unable or unwilling to provide an answer, never responded, the councilman said.
Official reassurances have done little to quiet the concerns of critics of the proposal, who worry that reverting to zoning standards more than 35 years old will have a negative effect on their neighborhoods and the town as a whole.
Further aggravating the issue, many critics have been told that sole reason for the change is town officials’ desire to help a property owner who is in deep financial hot water.
“Purportedly this is to satisfy one person’s desire to split property to sell a piece of it,” Dun Monroe wrote. “How absurd is it to change the identification of a whole mountain to satisfy a single resident’s request?”
More strident appeals were made directly to council members and other town officials.
On July 18, for example, an anonymous opponent mailed 26-page packets to council members and other town officials, charging that they have been “duped” by one resident seeking permission reestablish the original lot line that divided her current two-thirds-acre property. The woman wants to continue to live on the lot where she now resides, and sell off the other one.
“(T)he situation (the property owner) is in has been caused by her own financial mismanagement over the years,” the vitriolic letter charged. “The town should not have to bail her out, as her situation has been caused by her own decisions . . . We feel the council has been duped by this individual and will look foolish to the rest of the citizens, as people are already becoming aware of (her) history that started this zoning change.”
Whoever wrote that letter based it on a number of false assumptions, town officials said.
Regardless of how the rumor got started that the change is being made to meet the needs of a single resident, town manager Boyd Veal said, it is just plain wrong.
“Every zoning change that has taken place has been initiated by some individual, be it a citizen, staff member, planning commission member, or council member . . . Any resulting change to zoning regulations is not undertaken for the benefit of that particular individual but because it is believed to be in the best interest of the town. ” he said.
In this case, the town manager added, “Unfortunately, one individual is getting all the attention. The nature of some of that attention is truly shameful.”
The truth is, he said, the town’s planning commission has been contacted during recent months about a variety of problems caused by originally platted lot lines that later were abandoned.
For example, he said, a problem with one property arose following the death of its owner.
The individual had purchased two adjacent lots, Mr. Veal recalled, and later abandoned the line between them so that the two properties became one.
The problem – which did not become evident until the individual had died and the estate was being settled – was that two different banks held liens on that one piece of property.
“One bank held a lien on one (of the original two lots) and a different bank held a lien on the other,” the city manager explained.
“Even though reestablishing the original lot line was the obvious solution, the lots created would be less than an acre,” he said. “I think ultimately they found someone to buy the property as a whole and worked it out.”