Up until last week, the zoning advisory committee remained shrouded in mystery for everyone except those who could find the time to attend in person. No minutes have been published, and the meetings were not streamed to the public like advisory committees have been under previous commissioners. (See Commissioner Beerbower’s explanation of his view of the Zoning Advisory Committee as a democracy vs. the need for transparency.)

The veil was ripped last Wednesday when FortScott.biz streamed the meeting. Looking through the hole that had been torn in the opaqueness, those of us who couldn’t physically attend the meetings got our first look at the workings of that committee and the things being discussed that had formerly been obscured from the public view. So maybe that is a bit dramatic, but the point remains, the public was now able to see what was happening with the same level of transparency as city and previous county advisory committees.

For me, the statements made by two people named Brian on the Zoning Advisory Committee (Brian Ashworth and Brian Wade) provide the best illustration of the fundamental disagreement between members of the committee (and possibly the public and commissioners) when it comes to zoning. Understanding these two views of people who support zoning is key in any thoughtful discussion of the benefits and drawbacks of implementing zoning, as Beerbower says, the commission has already established they will do.

Brian Ashworth stated that the goal of zoning is not to prevent anyone from doing what they want to with their land. He said the purpose of zoning is to make sure a landowner wanting to put in something commercial or industrial would need to follow some guidelines to be a good neighbor, but it wouldn’t stop them from using their land as they see fit.

This sounds completely reasonable and could mean things like, if a landowner is going to put in a field of solar panels, they might be asked to put a row of trees between the panels and their neighbor’s house. Or maybe it would mean asking the solar company to locate battery arrays 500 feet or more from neighboring property and make sure the fire department is comfortable with understanding what to do in the rare, but still possible, event of a fire from the electrical systems or the situation most of us have experience where a neighbor’s field being burned that gets out of control if it happens to threaten the solar field. Those types of suggestions probably fall into the common-sense type of things that would happen on their own among neighbors who are actually looking for reasonable accommodation. Maybe zoning helps make those conversations more likely. Sounds reasonable, right?

However, Brian Wade offered a different view of the purpose of the zoning committee. He talked with admiration about how Lynn County’s zoning was able to prevent landowners from renting their land out to solar companies. He didn’t talk about how the zoning laws allowed the county to guide installations with some best practices for fire preparedness. He didn’t talk about how zoning allowed some reasonable setbacks that gave neighbors some nice trees to look at. No, he talked about how great it was that zoning had been used as a tool to prevent the landowners from leasing their land.

Mr. Wade’s goals as presented in the meeting were completely different from Mr. Ashworth’s stated goals.

If you want zoning to be a tool to prohibit landowners from using their land in legal ways that you don’t want, then Mr. Wade’s goals probably match yours. If you want zoning to be a process that helps guarantee good communication and reasonable accommodations between neighbors, then Mr. Ashworth’s goals probably align with what you want.

However, the bigger question is this: If zoning is implemented, what will we actually get?

(Note: Commission Mika Milburn says she will have the meeting streamed on May 13th, so hopefully the process will be more transparent going forward & kudos to her for trying to bring the transparency of these meetings back to the same level of previous commissioners.)