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By Ena Sellers
Duplin Journal
KENANSVILLE — After much discussion about the Duplin County Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) presented by Austin Brinkley with Insight Planning, at the Board of County Commissioners meeting on March 4, the Board voted 4 to 1 to adopt the ordinance with a change to the proposed 30-feet easement to remain at 50 feet.
Brinkley presented the final draft of the UDO recommended by the planning board, which incorporates Duplin County’s seven ordinances combining subdivision zoning and regulatory language for land use into a user-friendly document to aid implementation.
“Your subdivision regulations really make up a large portion of your UDO,” Brinkley said during the public hearing, adding that it sets the requirements for the subdivision of land, installation of infrastructure as well as standards and required guarantees from beginning to end.
Brinkley also addressed easements, which had definitions added to include language specifying where structures can’t be located within the boundary of a recorded easement, putting restrictions on access easements.
“You do have a private easement exemption where lots can be created on a 30-foot easement, a maximum of three lots, be approved by the administrator, a service subdivision, which this is a special type of subdivision to create lots for utility purposes, cemeteries, well sites, communication towers, things of that nature. There’d be a lot of restrictive covenants involved in those types of divisions. You have your type A expedited minor where the track to be divided is greater than five acres. No part’s been divided within the 10 previous years. It doesn’t qualify as any of the other exemptions and then no more than three lots are being created,” said Brinkley, adding that those are statutorily required.
Another update highlighted was that home park operators will be able to sell the lots only when the entire park is being divided and all infrastructure within the park meet the standards of a subdivision. “Essentially they would have to legally be converting the whole park into a manufactured home subdivision in order to sell off any individual lots within the manufactured home park,” Brinkley said.
Commissioner Justin Edwards questioned the request to reduce the size of easements to 30 feet. The current requirement is set to 50 feet and the Department of Transportation requires 50 -60 feet to build a road and allow space for installation of utilities and other requirements.
Chris Hatcher, Duplin County Planner, shared that he believes a 50-foot easement was a bit excessive for an access easement for only three lots.
“A 30-foot easement is adequate size to support a graveled improved access for emergency services and for general access to the properties,” said Hatcher, adding that other rural counties have the 30-foot easement.
Commissioner J. Edwards disagreed.
“I’ll be honest with you, a 30 foot easement, once you ditch it on each side, if you’re required to keep your drainage ditch inside that 30-foot easement, if you have to put a ditch on each side of your access road, your access road is going to be less than 10 foot. So you’re down to a single lane road that can’t get iffy. I mean, our county has been there. It gets to the point the emergency services can’t get in, you can’t meet, and it is an issue. That is why we went from 30 foot to 50 foot to combat those issues. And that’s why I personally want to stay on 50 feet,” said Edwards.
Hatcher explained that when someone grants that access easement of 50 feet that becomes an unusable area in their property.
“If you got a 200-foot property line and it’s 50-feet wide, that’s like 50 times 200,000 square feet of area that’s not usable for your property. Plus then too, they also have to gain that additional square footage on the other side of that property to maintain that usable area of a half acre of the 21,780 some odd square feet. Those were the bigger issues that we heard coming from the public as far as when I do this access easement, I can understand what the purpose is for the 50 but if we’re just creating one or two, three lots out of this, that amount of square footage that I’m losing would actually sometimes hinder someone from being able to subdivide their piece of property,” said Hatcher. “Sometimes people can’t get the 50 foot access easement because their property doesn’t have it and they have to share it with the neighboring property to gain that 50 foot access easement. Some property owners are willing to share that, some are not. Those are the major concerns that we’ve had recently with the 50 feet and asking for the reduction to the 30 feet.”
Commissioner Jesse Dowe stated that several people had approached him requesting that it be a 30-foot easement and it’s been six months dealing with that issue.
County Manager Brian Miller recommended the board approve the UDO as presented with the amendment to a 50-foot road easement.
“I have seen what Commissioner Edwards is speaking about first hand if you want to research it’s called Raw Sakers Road number two, where emergency services vehicles were not able to provide curbside service to the residents on the road so I would recommend to the board to approve it with the amendment… to a 50-foot easement.”
After much discussion the Board of County Commissioners decided to follow the County Manager’s recommendation and the motion carried with four commissioners voting yes and one no.
In other business the board approved a $40,223,100.00 contract with Daniels and Daniels Construction Company, Inc. for the construction of a 234-bed detention center, subject to securing additional funding and the review, negotiation and approval of contract terms and conditions by the county attorney
