Greensboro City Council preview

I. West Friendly Apartments

Bob Kirnard of Greensboro’s Hillside Homes neighborhood and another reader who responded to my recent story on development tipped me off to a North Carolina statute that provides owners of property adjoining an area proposed for rezoning with the right to file protest petitions. If 5 percent of the owners of a 100-foot-wide buffer extending around the subject property sign petitions, then a “supermajority” of three quarters of a city council is required to approve the rezoning.

Kirnard and his neighbors presented a sheaf of petitions on Jan. 15 containing what they said were more 221 signatures of those opposing the rezoning of property south of West Friendly Avenue near the new Urban Loop from general business to residential to allow Mega Builders to put up three-story apartment buildings. At the Jan. 15 meeting, the council voted 4-3 to approve the rezoning, with Councilman Mike Barber abstaining because of a direct or indirect financial interest in the property. On the advice of the legal department, the council postponed consideration of the matter to its meeting today. Assuming he supports the rezoning, the vote of Councilman Robbie Perkins, who was absent on Jan. 15 due to an injury, will break the impasse.

The city’s legal department received a request from Scott Brogan, who owns property adjacent to area proposed for rezoning, asking for an opinion on whether Perkins, who is the president of real estate development company NAI Piedmont Triad, should abstain from the vote today. Brogan has said he and his wife learned through their real estate agent that an agent of Perkins’ company expressed interest in buying their property at a significantly lower price than that which they had initially asked.

In a letter today to a Ms. Willie L. Taylor of Carriage Crossing Lane, Deputy City Attorney Becky Jo Peterson-Buie rendered the opinion that “there is no direct or indirect conflict of interest that would require that Mr. Perkins not vote on the rezoning matter in question.”

Now Kirnard is questioning whether the neighbors’ protest petition should require the council to approve the rezoning with a supermajority. Three-fourths of the nine-member council translates into seven votes, compared to the five votes required for a simple majority.

The statute seems clear enough in its qualifications (“To qualify as a protest under this section, the petition must be signed by the owners of… five percent (5%) of a 100-foot-wide buffer extending along the entire boundary of each discrete or separate area proposed to be rezoned.”) and ramifications (“In case… of a qualified protest against a zoning map amendment, that amendment shall not become effective except by favorable vote of three-fourths of all the members of the city council.”)

If that weren’t enough to settle the matter, David Owens, a professor with expertise in zoning and in city and county planning at the Institute of Government in Chapel Hill, provided the following analysis in 2006: “The provision in North Carolina zoning law for a protest petition, GS 160A-385(a), is mandatory for cities. The protest petition is available in all cities, whether or not an individual zoning ordinance includes provisions for it. A city many not reduce the required supermajority vote required by local ordinance.”

And yet the city of Greensboro is exempt, says Peterson-Buie, citing 1971 session law passed by the NC General Assembly.

The particulars of this strange exception are discussed on Ed Cone’s blog.

Owens himself chimed in, providing this explanation: “The General Assembly can amend the rules for a particular jurisdiction. In the case of the protest petition in Greensboro, the General Assembly in 1971 chose to exempt the city from the usual rule on protests. This is usually done by the legislature at the request of the city, and I would guess that was the case here as this provision was included in a bill making a number of relatively technical changes to the city charter.”

Retired Councilmember Tom Phillips, also commenting on Cone’s blog, said he tried unsuccessfully to get the council to lobby the Guilford County legislative delegation to repeal the amendment. “Until last year I had not heard of this and I can’t believe our citizens don’t have this tool to protect themselves,” he wrote. “As I mentioned before I couldn’t get support to even discuss changing the law. If we can’t get a champion on the council, this is a petition that could definitely get enough signatures.”

Whatever the outcome tomorrow at city council today, it appears that a movement for legislative reform is in the offing. Because of a separate development dispute, Rep. Pricey Harrison (D-Guilford) told me in a recent e-mail that she was looking into the legislation requiring the same kind of ethics laws for local government that were passed in 2006 for state legislators. “I have seen members of these governing boards vote on issues that they would have had to recuse themselves from if bound by the same laws,” Harrison said. “[The Heart of the Triad proposal] seems to be a prime example, conceived of by and for development interests with very little citizen input.”

Harrison added that she has “witnessed an increasing interest in local elections by development interests (they have conquered the NC [General Assembly], now local governments are prime for targeting.” Commensurately, “concerned citizens are pushing for clean elections at the local level,” and legislation to allow a few municipalities to experiment with public financing has either been passed or is pending.

Harrison said she had not previously been aware that Greensboro was exempt from the protest petition, “but I see no merit in it if the rest of the state has similar relief,” adding that she agreed with Phillips that a good infill proposal should win the approval of the necessary majority.

“I am tired of big money prevailing in these battles,” Harrison said. “I was ashamed of the asphalt plant decision, but encouraged that good sense prevailed in the Haw River State Park controversy.”

II. Immington Village

Another rezoning and annexation request near the new Urban Loop, approval of which would allow developer Roy Carroll to build as many as 310 apartments in a gated complex near McLeansville, is off the table for the time being. The council received a request by lawyer Henry Isaacson to continue the decisions at its Feb. 19 meeting. The requests call for the annexation of 38 acres on McConnell Road, amendment of the Generalized Future Land Map to rezone property from a mixed-use corporate park to high-residential land classification and rezoning of property from a county agricultural to a city residential multifamily land classification.

III. West Wendover Avenue condominium project by SRJ Properties

A request to rezone a six-acre parcel on West Wendover Avenue allowing builder SRJ Properties to increase condominiums under construction from three to four stories was continued from the Jan. 15 meeting at the request of lawyer Marc Isaacson, whose father is Henry Isaacson. Both planning staff and the zoning commission have recommended denial of the request.

IV. Garden Lake Drive

Also on the agenda is a request to rezone property at the intersection of Garden Lake Drive and New Garden Road from residential single family to general business with conditions and to multifamily residential.

The request made on behalf of a handful of property owners would allow developer Mark P. Reynolds to build condominiums in a mixed-use retail and office complex that includes a drive-thru bank and drive-thru pharmacy along an increasingly busy stretch of roadway connecting the Guilford College area to bustling Battleground Avenue.

Requests to rezone the property have been in process since at least 2006, and one of them was denied in May 2007. The following month, the request was withdrawn, only to be slightly modified and re-submitted. The planning department has recommended approval, but the zoning commission failed to muster the six votes required for final approval at its meeting in January. The 5-4 decision by the zoning commission puts the matter before city council.

The proposed rezoning request remains unpopular in the neighborhood. Minutes reflect that 15-20 people in the audience stood to express their opposition to the rezoning at the January zoning commission meeting.

Staff comments suggest the plan differs little from the one defeated by the last city council — some of whose members have retired or been voted out of office — last May. For instance, nonresidential square footage for the entire development would decrease from 65,000 to 60,000.

“The current proposal is a three part, three zoning district proposal covering the same area that was proposed in April 2007. The intent is to create a horizontal mixed-use (commercial, multifamily & office) project in a suburban location,” the document states. “One of the main differences between this proposal and the [defeated conditional district-planned unit development infill] proposal is that an approved sketch plan is not required prior to rezoning. The applicant has removed some conditions and modified others, but they are essentially the same due to ordinance requirements negating the need for some of the previously offered conditions.”

V. Incentives for Ozark Automotive Distributors

Missouri-based Ozark Automotive Distributors is requesting tax incentives valued at $187,696 to locate a new distribution center in Greensboro that would service its southeastern retail stores. The request pits Greensboro against the Raleigh area, although the agenda item, which is signed by Assistant City Manager Ben Brown, notes that a site in eastern Greensboro is already under construction.

Ozark Automotive Distributors promises to invest $13.8 million in new machinery and equipment, $10.9 million in the purchase of a new building, and $16.3 million in inventory. The company commits to create 360 new jobs with an average salary of $29,999, including benefits worth an additional $10,220.

VI. Minimum wage proponents back to fight again

Organizers of a citizen initiative to raise the minimum wage in Greensboro to $9.36 an hour — equal to its purchasing power at its height in 1968 — are urging supporters to pack chambers to ask council members to reverse their Jan. 15 decision to deny the measure on the basis that it lacked sufficient signatures.

Greensboro Minimum Wage Committee organizers said they have collected the required number of signatures to make up for those found invalid by the city’s legal department. If true, the number of signatures would equal 25 percent of those who voted in Greensboro’s 2005 municipal election. Council members who voted down the initiative have said the signatures should instead be counted against turnout in the 2007 election, when participation surged.

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