Cabarrus Cheap Seats

This is in three parts, because of how important this subject is. The quality of our schools, the congestion on our roads, and our tax burden can be traced back to the rate and manner at which growth takes place.

The third of three parts is coming around the bend.

In the last post, we established the problem of providing adequate schools and protecting property owners rights while keeping a reasonable tax rate. Anyone can offer a problem, but there are solutions.

To understand what will work, it’s important to understand what didn’t work. And that would be…you guessed it - the policies of the previous majority of the Cabarrus County Commission under control of the Cabarrus Taxpayers’ Association (CTA).

UDO: A Primer

The Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) is a common development ordinance template that was adopted by Kannapolis, Concord, Mt. Pleasant, and Harrisburg in 2000. The standards for development in the areas which have adopted it are essentially the same. By offering one standard, adherence to local ordinances is easier for developers and the UDO offers common ground for planning and zoning discussions among the various municipalities and with the Cabarrus County Government.

Huh? Why was the County Government taken out? Well, they never adopted it. So, the UDO is accepted by all of the local governments except Cabarrus County (oh, and Midland)

Commission Shenanigans

One could say that is was a principled stand for the County to reject the UDO; but they never did. They just decided not to decide.

Stop and think about that for a moment. What types of decisions are regularly made by the County Government have as lasting impact and ramifications as how the County grows? Nearly all of the challenges that this county faces are directly related to growth. You would think that a common zoning ordinance that has been adopted all but one of the municipalities (and the UDO is older than Town of Midland, by the way) would get an up or down vote by the Cabarrus County Board of Commissioners.

Nope. It was initially unveiled in August 2000 and delayed repeatedly until September 2003 where it was “taken from consideration”. In the mean time, all of the municipalities (save Midland which had yet to exist at the start of this process) adopted it - the year it was introduced.

That’s right, while the municipalities got together, adopted the UDO, and worked out all of the issues with all of the stakeholders in the community starting in 2000. The Cabarrus County Board of Commissioners under CTA-control were waiting for a “perfect document” and gave up in 2003. How’s that for leadership?

Here’s what happened. The purpose of the UDO is to create a common set of standards across the County that will ease transitions in zoning during annexation and help control growth. Unfortunately for UDO supporters, it was seen by developers as mandating extravagant extras like…sidewalks. Oh, it gets crazier. The UDO required cul-de-sacs to be so large that you could drive a fire truck into it! It’s true!

C’mon, why would someone need to have a fire truck in their neighborhood? You know - besides their house being on fire!

While the CTA-controlled Board of Commissioners did what their political benefactors wanted them to - a developer could meet the lower standards of the County, make their profit when the house was sold, and once the development was fully-developed and it became necessary for the residents to receive city services and be annexed - it would be up to the taxpayers of the cities to pick up the tab to have those developments meet the standards.

In other words, the cities were subsidizing the development of millions of dollars worth housing in the County and all some of the developers had to do was make a few thousand dollars of contributions to CTA-backed candidate.

Nice work if you can get it.

The County quit considering the UDO; but had a “memorandum of understanding” that assessed a $500 fee (the initial capital impact of a single-family home is closer to $8,000) per house in areas that were considered to have a need for adequate facilities.

Thankfully, in 2002, the City of Concord caught on to this and called the County out. The City of Concord controls most of the water in the County, and they adopted a policy by which they would not supply water and sewer services to new developments that did not meet the UDO standards.

The County and the City of Concord got into a legal standoff that led to some changes in County development policy.

It’s good to stop here and think about it - instead of having a largely contiguous set of regulations based on a common template and working together on a community plan to handle growth our elected officials were suing each other. Even as recently as 2004 did they increase the per lot fee from $1,000 to $4,034 - mainly because the Cabarrus County School Board was going after them for inadequate planning and funding for schools. The only time the County under CTA control made changes in the development policy outside of the interest of low-end developers is when they were facing a lawsuit.

By 2004, the voters had enough and put the CTA in the minority. Incumbent Commissioner Richard Suggs (and real-estate developer) was defeated by a 2-to-1 margin in the 2004 Republican Primary by then-Mt. Pleasant Town Council member Joni Juba. It was an unprecedented landslide.

Transition From A Board “Of The Developers, For The Developers, and By The Developers”

The Board of Commissioners has several citizen commissions that report to it. The Board of Commissioners appoints local citizens to these citizen commissions; and in turn they help handle certain advisory aspects of government on a volunteer basis. For example, I’m the Chair of the Cabarrus Parks and Recreation Commission and that Commission acts to advise the staff and Board of Commissioners on matters of County Parks and helps shape the policies for Recreation.

The Cabarrus County Planning and Zoning Commission is the board with the greatest responsibility and visibility. During the time that the Cabarrus County Board of Commissioners was under CTA control, the Planning and Zoning Commission did not once reject a developer’s request or ask that a developer modify their request on the basis of adequate school facilities. Also, the County Board of Commissioners, under CTA control, had not once rejected a development on appeals or modifications from the Cabarrus County Planning and Zoning Commission.

That changed once the voters ousted the CTA from the majority in 2004. Once the CTA was in the minority, the Cabarrus County Board of Commissioners enacted a 6-month moratorium on new residential development in December 2004.

What followed was interesting. There were several projects that were in the works. Included in those was a request in the Northwest Cabarrus (known to some as “the Odell Community”) area from Parks & Orleans Homebuilders. This request was rejected by the Planning and Zoning Board in February 2005 and was appealed to the Cabarrus County Board of Commissioners with high visibility from the press - mainly because of the furor from those wanted to incorporate in Odell.

The County Commission stood with those in the community and unanimously rejected the subdivision request. This lead to a lawsuit between the builder and the County.

Why am I telling you all of this? Well, somehow or another CTA-backed candidates Coy Privette and Robert Freeman came out as the heroes, and the majority of the Commission as the bad guys. It was the developer-friendly polices of the CTA (which Coy Privette and Robert Freeman vehemently defended when they were in the majority) that Parks & Orleans wanted their subdivision built under…not the stricter policies that are in place now.

After the Cabarrus County Board of Commissioners settled with Parks & Orleans, a few residents from Odell filed a lawsuit that claimed that the BOC violated their own policies…policies that were adopted after the current majority took office. The saga has continued since then. I don’t want to diverge into Odell; but you can find out more

• Odell Stops that Big, Yellow Taxi and Skips on the Fare
• Odell, NC: The Toes You Step On Today Are Connected to the Butt You Must Kiss Tomorrow
• The Odell Compromise
• Kannapolis Land Grab - Facts and Rumors
• Voting With Their Feet

Current Policy

This brings us to the present. During the 6-month moratorium in 2004-2005, the County instituted stricter rules. Basically, if you’re a developer and you want to develop large-scale, high-density development - you’ll have to do it within city limits and follow UDO standards. Once the existing 10,000 or so permits leave the queue, there won’t be large-scale developments with cul-de-sacs, no sidewalks, zero amenities, and entrances that clog up already congested roads where buses will take kids to schools where more space is devoted to trailers than to recreation are a bad memory.

In the last part, I’ll cover how current policies will help with many of the challenges we’re facing now because of short-sighted policies in the past; and what can be done in the future.