ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, October 29, 1996 TAG: 9610290095
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BEDFORD
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
It's looking more and more as if Bedford County will replace the controversial Land Use Guidance System with traditional zoning.
The Bedford County Board of Supervisors voted 7-0 Monday night to ask the county Planning Commission to come up with a countywide traditional zoning ordinance to replace LUGS.
Supervisor Roger Cheek, who introduced the motion, said, "As long as LUGS is in place, we will not be effective in attracting industry in Bedford County."
Cheek said he wants to see growth areas expanded in the western part of the county.
Before LUGS was enacted in 1989, Bedford County, the fastest-growing Virginia locality west of Interstate 95, had no zoning. A key complaint of most LUGS opponents ever since has been that LUGS discourages industrial development because the LUGS application process is too lengthy and costly.
Under conventional or traditional zoning, properties are divided into zoning-use categories such as agricultural, residential and commercial. If someone wants to open a business on a property that's zoned for that business, they fill out the paperwork, pay the fees and they're done. Under LUGS, which has no land-use designations, a developer must go through a process of hearings similar to rezoning every time a new business use is proposed for a property or a new structure is to be built. Public compatibility hearings must then be held to give neighboring property owners a chance to voice their opinions on the project.
The average LUGS application costs $250 or more, and sometimes, because of all the hearings, it can take two or three months or longer before a developer or business owner can get a decision on whether or not they can proceed with their project.
Supervisor Dale Wheeler said that while he thought traditional zoning would be an improvement, he wanted to do that only in designated growth areas, and leave rural areas under LUGS for now.
The board defeated his motion 4-3, with supervisors Cheek, Lucille Boggess, Bob Crouch and Calvin Updike voting against it.
Wheeler said he wasn't completely convinced that LUGS is the primary stumbling block to Bedford County's lack of industrial growth, however. It's available sewer and water, he said. "Businessmen are like rats," Wheeler joked. "They follow the sewers."
In other business, the board voted 5-2 to turn the county jail over to the Blue Ridge Regional Jail Authority.
As a condition of joining the regional jail with the cities of Lynchburg and Bedford and the counties of Campbell and Halifax, Bedford agreed to turn its jail over to the authority in exchange for $325,000, which will be used to help build a new Sheriff's Office and communications center.
Cheek and Crouch voted against joining. Crouch, in fact, made a motion that the board not turn over the jail, but it was defeated 5-2, with only Cheek and Crouch voting not to give the jail to the authority.
Several board members expressed concern and skepticism over the regional jail and said they felt pressured into it. After the supervisors voted last year not to join the authority and considered building their own jail instead, the General Assembly passed legislation that would bar Bedford from receiving state money for a new jail and county employees to staff it.
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