After cutting public comment short due to reaching the time limit and telling roughly a dozen attendees that they could voice their thoughts on proposed changes to the Soil and Erosion Sediment Control plan at next month’s meeting, the Macon County Board of Commissioners voted 4-1 to loosen those restrictions on Tuesday, Aug. 13. Commissioner Danny Antoine cast the opposing vote.
The change increases the minimum requirement for a Soil and Erosion Sediment Control study from disturbing half an acre to a full acre. This amendment aligns with state and neighboring county requirements.
The vote is another chapter in an ordinance revision process in which members of the public have cited a lack of transparency and say that the commissioners actively avoided listening to experts, ramming through one of three proposed changes in four months despite scores of public comments in opposition and very few in favor.
Critics of the changes charge that relaxing the requirements would lead to more fill in local waterways and irreparable damage in the local watersheds. Commissioner Josh Young, who has spearheaded these changes, says this will ease the regulatory burden on locals.
In July, the county held three public hearings for the three proposed ordinance changes – the erosion control study requirement, whether to allow RV parks in the floodplain and changing the amount of fill allowed in the floodplain. Those public hearings lasted around three hours in total.
Before the public hearings in July, board Chair Gary Shields said he needed more time to digest the proposed changes and rescheduled all three votes for meetings in August, September and October, respectively.
Some audience members thought this meant there would be a new public hearing at each meeting for these ordinance items. Shields said in July he wanted to hear the public comments at all these meetings.
Only the first 11 people signed up got to speak until the 45-minute time limit expired. The remaining 14 people, nine of whom signed up to speak on erosion (three did not indicate a topic on the sign-up sheet), would be first on the speaker list next month.
During public hearings, there is no overall time limit, and each speaker is limited to three minutes. For regular public comment, the rules are each speaker has five minutes and a time limit to not exceed 45 minutes total. In 2023, when Commissioner Paul Higdon was chair, public comments resulted in back-and-forths between board members and public speakers that sometimes took hours.
When Shields took over as board chair in December 2023, he pledged to keep public comment more civil and instilled a 45-minute overall time limit. This overall time limit is not publicized on the county commissioners’ webpage, but the five-minute individual one is.
After the 45-minute time limit, Shields noted those 14 people who didn’t speak, but there was no effort to let those people speak later in the meeting.
The agenda said there would be a “follow-up discussion” on the Soil Erosion and Sedimentation Ordinance at the Aug. 13 meeting but did not indicate a vote would take place. That does not bar commissioners from voting on what they please but possibly indicated to the audience, many of whom left after public comment, that there would not be a vote.
During his motion to approve, Commissioner John Shearl said the Soil and Erosion Sediment Control plan was recommended by the Planning Board. The Planning Board held its last meeting on May 2, listening to more than two dozen public comments (all but one were either against the soil, erosion and floodplain changes or wanted to look at the issue more closely). At that May 2 meeting, the Planning Board voted to table the proposed floodplain changes for further review. That included the Soil and Erosion Sediment Control plan changes, allowing RV parking in the floodplain and allowing outside fill dirt on up to 25% of an acre in a floodplain.
After that Planning Board meeting and the May 14 county commissioners meeting, a committee of Young, Commissioner Danny Antoine, Planning Board Members Larry Lackey and Barry Breeden and Macon County Planning Office’s Joe Allen (who has since resigned) met once where, according to Allen, they talked to the state office to make sure their proposed changes would fall within state guidelines.
The public speakers on Aug. 13 voicing their opinions against the proposed changes were Kenneth McCaskill from the Macon County Farm Bureau, Bill McLarney, Susan Ervin, Carolyn Porter, Alex Haiss and Hazel Norris. Other public speakers spoke about issues that will be covered in subsequent stories from the nearly six-hour-long meeting.
During the agenda item three and a half hours into the Aug. 13 meeting, Young said he feels the current ordinance entices contractors to write down their property is less than half an acre to avoid the Soil and Erosion Control Sediment study and feels the county needs better enforcement. Young also said most mountain homes are more than an acre, so the effect will be minimal.
Shearl said they need to look at a stop-work order mechanism for the county to use for violators, adding he feels this change won’t create any more silt with proper enforcement.
Whether RV parks should be allowed in the floodplain is set to be discussed at the Sept. 10 meeting. Then on Oct. 8, an ordinance amendment allowing up to 25% fill per floodplain acre. Since the county has held a mandated public hearing on both those topics, commissioners can vote on either of those topics.