Proposed Monongalia County ordinance aims to better regulate large developers like Eastern Panhandle

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — When a newly proposed county ordinance involving the regulation of land subdivision is opened to public comment next month, County Planner Rich Wood said he simply hopes that all the pertinent facts are part of the debate.

“That’s a common used term — subdivision,” he said Wednesday on Morgantown AM. “But, legally, the subdivision of land is when you divide any parcel. If you’ve got an acre of land and you want to half acre parcels, that’s a subdivision.”

The new ordinance, which is designed to regulate large growth properties in Monongalia County, has been met with some early controversy over what it will actually do — particularly to smaller landowners. Wood said regulations are designed primarily for those who split their land into subdivisions of a larger number, making fewer subdivisions more likely to be exempt from regulation.

“More than 12 is a major development, and that’s where you start getting into more the requirements for how that land is developed,” he said.

Wood said there are a number of areas in the county where lack of subdivision regulation is clearly evident — particularly as new housing developments are built to meet student and professional demand.

“That was really kind of the driving factor,” Wood said. “We have developments where you can’t have two vehicles pass one another because the road isn’t even wide enough for two vehicles to run. You have roads that don’t have the base and the asphalt sufficient enough to last a single winter.”

Wood said the ordinance does not require property owners to conform their land use in a particular manner.

“The difference between zoning and subdivision ordinances are, zoning divides a planning district or the county into specific zoning districts and assigns types of land use to those districts,” Wood said.

Similar ordinances are in place in Kanawha, Greenbrier, Putnam, Morgan, Mineral, Berkely, and Jefferson counties already — setting minimum standards for big developers.

“We’re growing at a tad over one percent per year,” Wood said. “And it’s projected to be that way for the next 20 years.”

That’s why Wood said this ordinance could prove vital in making sure growth in Monongalia County isn’t out of control.

“It’s only when you get 12 or more that you start saying, ‘Yeah if you’re going to make that many subdivision lots, you need to abide by these kind of guidelines,” Wood said. “You can’t have a road that’s 12 foot wide.”

Two public hearings on the proposed ordinance are scheduled for November 29.





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