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Wayne upset at admministrator
5/10/2008 | Today's Georgetown Times Online Edition
Published on 3/27/2008
I feel like the city has screwed these people and I am one of them because I was not told what was going on."
That's what an angry member of Georgetown City Council -- Peggy Wayne -- had to say to City Administrator Steve Thomas after Tuesday night's Georgetown City Planning Commission meeting.
At the meeting, residents of the White's Creek area were told a new low income housing development is coming and there is nothing they nor the Planning Commission can do stop it.
Pin Oak Apartments, a 28-unit complex, will be built at the corner of Church Street Extension and Stevenson Road on a plot of land zoned R3, which allows such developments.
For several months, the Planning Commission has been told it would have to approve the development before construction could begin. One Planning Commission meeting, attended by many of the residents, was canceled due to a lack of a quorum. They thought that meeting was going to be held two days later but it was canceled.
The meeting was finally held last Tuesday in front of a full council chambers. At that meeting, many lifelong and other long-time residents demanded to know when the property was rezoned from R1 to R3. They said they were never notified of such a change.
The Commission agreed to postpone the vote until last night while they tried to find an answer to the question of when the rezoning occurred.
At last night's meeting, residents packed the room again. The first thing they noticed was City Planner Sabrina Morris -- who has handled the matter from the beginning -- was replaced by Thomas who did all the talking.
He said he decided to take over because he was a history major in college and found this issue intriguing.
After showing the Commission and audience a map from 1981 that showed the property was zoned R3 at that time, Thomas dropped the bombshell that drew the anger of Wayne and the residents.
He said when the original plans for the project were presented early last year, it was for 56 units, which would have required Planning Commission approval. The city's zoning ordinance was revised last year and, because of that, the number of proposed units was reduced to 48 and then down to 28.
Thomas said the plans were redrawn and now the 28 units, according to the city ordinance, are considered a townhouse development and not group housing as originally proposed. He said the ordinance allows city staff to approve townhouses.
"It is single-family housing. Because of that, it does not need Planning Commission approval," Thomas told the Commission. In other words, none of the meetings that were scheduled and canceled -- or the ones that were actually held -- were necessary, according to Thomas.
"With that in mind, I don't know what we are doing here," Commission Chairman Bill Hartis said.
The city's ordinance defines a townhouse as "buildings containing more than two dwelling units. Townhouse units located on individual lots of record shall not be considered multifamily units."
After the meeting adjourned, Wayne confronted Thomas. She said she met with Thomas a few hours before Tuesday's meeting and he did not mention anything about townhouses and that the Planning Commission was not needed.
"All we have heard all this time was this was a planned development. Then you come in here tonight with this talk about it being townhouses. I am very upset about that. You never mentioned that to me while I was in your office," Wayne said forcefully.
Thomas said he did not know the development could be classified as townhouses until about 4 p.m. Tuesday when he consulted with an attorney.
"(Council) has said we don't want any more of these apartments, we want single family homes that people can buy. These are apartments. You can call them townhouses or you can call them condos but they are apartments," Wayne said.
Thomas reiterated the designs until recently were for apartments but the developer redrew the plans making them a townhouse design.
"Do you feel it was the zoning that screwed (the residents) or the administration?" Hartis asked Wayne after the crowd had departed.
"I feel it was the administration," Wayne said. "It looked shady because he changed the wording to townhouses which can be approved by staff."
If the plans had been denied since it is in an area with proper zoning, the developers could have sued the city. Thomas told Hartis after the meeting, they would have probably won the case which would have placed a major financial strain on the city.
According to the National Association of Homebuilders, Connelly Development -- the company building the Pin Oak Apartments -- filed suit against the City of West Columbia in 2005, claiming that city violated the Fair Housing Act of 1968 by denying permits to build a multifamily project. The city settled the suit at a cost of more than $500,000.
There was no mention Tuesday night on when the construction will begin.
