John Coffelt, Editor

Coffee County Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) granted two variances and rejected three others during the July 31 meeting to subdivide properties in the A-1 agricultural district using criteria that included a hardship provision as justification.

The meeting included seven variance requests involving recent changes to county zoning resolutions that set minimum 5-acre lot size in the A-1 district and minimum side setbacks. These rulings could stand as a litmus test for how the BZA will address how farmers will be able to carve off smaller lots for their heirs.

The BZA also brought into the discussion whether work on the projects was begun prior to the passing of the unrelated 180-day moratorium resolution in March.

The variances, or an exception to a zoning rule, were granted to allow subdivisions of property smaller than five acres for minor subdivisions on Dean Shop Road and on Grosch Lane. The three requests for variances on Bains Road were denied. A request for a variance on a side setback was granted on North G Street as an exception to recent 25-foot setback resolution that made the property unbuildable.  Each vote was unanimous by the BZA.

County Mayor Dennis Hunt informed the BZA prior to his exit from the room Thursday that the county resolution limiting lot size in the A-1 agricultural district has a provision that minor subdivisions of four or fewer could be granted by variance. The BZA, however, took a narrower view on what requirements justified a variance, leaning heavily on the hardship provision.

Valarie Wilder, a local teacher and part-time realtor representing the G Street landowner, said the Hillsboro property that currently has water and septic from a previous dwelling there was made unbuildable by the recent change to the setbacks.

Under current zoning resolutions, 50-foot setbacks would create a four-foot building envelope.

“It changed to 50 all the way around, so it’s only 104 (feet) across the front, which leaves you four (feet) to put your residence,” Wilder said.

Related to the 5-acre minimum in A-1, the three surviving heirs to the Finney farm on Bains Road were denied a variance request to subdivide their 9-acre lots.  

“What all these clients have in common,” Surveyor Nickolas Northcutt said referring to five of the six requests for variances on the 5-acre minimum, “is that when they began the lengthy process of dividing their property, there was a clear set of rules by which all were treated equally.”

“It’s a lengthy process and they have remained in limbo ever since,” Northcutt said. “They began this process in April (prior or the passing of the 5-acre minimum in May).”

Yet the BZA felt that the commission’s passing of the 180-day moratorium on March 11 should have served as a warning to landowners, despite the resolution clearly stating that it only applied to major subdivisions. No major subdivision requests were presented at the meeting.

“It looks like, according to what we’re hearing, they proceeded after that in April,” BZA Member Anastasia Gonzales said.

“Because of that… I’m going to make a motion to deny the first (variance request),” BZA Member Tim Morris said.

After Northcutt then clarified that the moratorium only applied to major subdivisions, Morris then said that the variance request should be denied in part due to the moratorium “stopping any development in the whole county, in fact.”    

“I guess people should have taken pause,” Morris said. “To me when that goes into effect it’s like buying a truck that has a recall on it.”

He said too that variances would violate a prohibited use test in the resolution because they are asking to divide into smaller than 5-acres.  

According to the family present, the Finney family had farmed the property, then leased it out to be farmed for years until deciding they were too old to continue. The three separate 9-acre tracts were inherited by separate siblings. These tracts cannot be divided into any smaller tracts under the current A-1 restrictions.

Longtime Coffee County resident Colene Fultz, owner of the third of three Bain Road properties, said her family can no longer maintain the property.

“We’re all old,” Fultz said. “We’re dying off … we need to do something with the property so that it’ll go on to our kids.”

“You’re setting it up so that it’s our property, but it’s not ours … y’all are directing what we can do with our stuff. It belongs to us, we worked hard for it, and we should be able to sell it. When somebody buys nine acres – (it’s too much)…we have a hard time taking care of nine acres and keeping it mowed,” she said.

“Somebody with a job and kids, keeping nine acres … you can’t do that,” she said.

“There should not be so much control that we can’t do with our property what we want to do before we die. When we start dying off and you’ve done this to us, it’s on you.”

The BZA unanimously rejected all three of the Bains Road variance requests.

Hardship provision

The BZA approved variance requests for properties on Deans Shop Road and on Grosch Road under the variance requirement that the current situation creates a hardship on the landowner.

“I’m just trying to get somewhere to build my home,” said the Deans Shop landowner, Jack Hill.

The Hills own a 4.78-acre tract in the A-1 district east of Arnold Air Force Base. The family patriarch lives in a house at the front of the property.

“Would the conditional hardship (provision) apply to grant a variance to the single-family use,” Gonzales said.

Morris said the situation was a unique hardship, he said that that qualification also was met for a Grosch Lane division on a 5.23-acre plat just off Asbury Road.

Murfreesboro residents Benjamin and Stephanie Thorpe bought the property at auction as investment property in early January with the intent to remodel the home located there and carve off a portion to build a 2500-3000 square foot home.

Northcutt said the Thorpes have invested over half a million dollars into the project prior to county changing the zoning resolution.

“When he started this process, there was even a set of rules that said if you can show that you meet the requirements and you meet septic and you can meet all of those approvals then you are able to divide. That is the process that he started in March,” Northcutt said. 

Morris said the request meets the variance test as a unique hardship and was not self-created.

“I make the motion that we accept this under unique hardship,” Morris said. “If he’d put in for it in April, I’d be voting no. The others got cut off because they didn’t act until after, knowing that the moratorium was there.”

Morris, a county commissioner, voted on March 11 to narrowly approve Resolution 2025-03 that imposed a 180-day moratorium on major subdivisions within the A-1 agricultural-forestry district along with Commissioners Dowe Jones, Laura Nettles, Rose Anne Carden Smith, Missy DeFord, Sammy Anderson, Terry Hershman, Tina Reed, Dwight Miller and Frank Watkins.

BZA Chairman Sammy Morton said when the board makes a decision, the justification for their ruling needs to be in writing in the codes. He said the county is working towards getting the details of the A-1 changes worked out. 

“It takes time,” he said. “It doesn’t happen overnight.” 

The County Commission does not meet again until October, and Morris said there is not currently any planning resolution items on that agenda, making November the first likely time that the full commission could vote on any clarifying language regarding the issues related to variances.

The BZA is the final authority short of court action. Appeals from BZA decisions are typically made to the Chancery Court through a writ of certiorari. The court could overrule the BZA’s decision if it determines it was unconstitutional, exceeded its authority, unlawful, arbitrary, capricious or unsupported by material evidence.

John has been with the Manchester Times since May 2011. John has won Tennessee Press Association awards for Best News Photo and placed in numerous other categories. John is a 1994 graduate of Tullahoma High School, a graduate of Motlow State Community College and earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Middle Tennessee State University. He lives in Tullahoma, enjoys painting, dancing and exploring the outdoors.