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Proposed zoning ordinances ineffective in preserving community’s way of life

 My family has called Coffee County home for six generations. Like so many others, we have attended local churches and schools, built businesses and farmed the land. We have raised our families and done all we can to remain active and engaged in our community’s growth and development.

I’ve been fortunate to have worked alongside wonderful people from many different walks of life, and while each one of us has his or her own perspective, we all want what is best for our families and our neighbors.

In the past few months, our community has begun to address the question of who we want to be and how our home will take shape for generations to come. We have debated, and at times argued, over what restrictions and limitations should be put into place that will ensure the preservation of our identity while positioning ourselves to attract more people, more business, and more opportunity to Coffee County.

Oftentimes, the desire to build and to grow and to look toward the future has been characterized as an attack on our rural heritage and our farming communities. It is not. 

Our commitment to safe and sensible development has been derided as a poorly planned scheme that is detrimental to farmers and property owners. It is not.

Ideas, proposals, and restrictions have been presented in public forums that have been promoted as defenses against an onslaught of urbanization and unchecked growth. They are not.

The restrictions that have been most recently considered by our local planning commission are not solutions. The problems they claim to address only create more hindrances and more hurdles for landowners in Coffee County, and I believe that they have been misrepresented as cure-alls for an illness that doesn’t exist.

For example, under the guise of being a good neighbor, the idea of inadequate water flow and fire protection has been cited as a primary factor in proposing certain new restrictions. Social media scare tactics have led members of our community to believe that new developments will be comprised of shoddily constructed, tightly huddled tinderboxes.

This is simply not true.

There are already specific and effective safeguards in place — through our county zoning ordinances, state requirements, and utility-district reviews — to ensure high-quality housing options for Coffee County can be built safely and sensibly.

Similarly, larger lot minimums have been presented as a way to preserve farms and prevent overcrowding. The rallying cry has centered on how these larger, five-acre lots will allow homeowners in the rural parts of our county to continue spending quiet evenings on the porch watching deer graze at sunset.

Again, this is simply not true.

Five acre lots will not stop growth or protect farmland. In fact, they will devour more land for fewer people and create housing options that will simply cater to super-rich transplants at the expense of current Coffee County residents and future generations.

Luckily, reasonable restrictions are already in place, and we are committed to following those guidelines for all current and future developments. These restrictions require developers to shoulder the financial responsibility of necessary utility upgrades for proposed developments. These restrictions ensure quality home construction and meticulous planning, and these restrictions are in place for the betterment of our entire community.

It is our desire to continue to use those existing ordinances and regulations as they have functioned as our safeguards to prevent shoddy or haphazard developments for decades. If we are truly concerned with preserving the community characteristics we cherish the most, why not leave in place the rules and regulations that have helped us shape Coffee County into what it is today? Adding additional and unreasonable red tape only serves to kill development, while addressing none of the underlying infrastructure issues that they are intended to remedy.

Ultimately, if changes are to be made, let them be made for Coffee County — not in reaction to becoming something, or somewhere, we are not.

Our farmers and landowners deserve more options and more opportunities for what they can do with their land. They deserve to be fairly compensated in the event they decide it is in their family’s best interest to sell their personal property. By creating more hurdles and more regulations, those property owners are put at a marked disadvantage. We ask that the County Commission reject these misguided proposed restrictions and allow our community farmers and developers to decide our own identity.