Woodfin – The Woodfin Board of Commissioners moved to fill the seat left vacant by longtime Commissioner Don Honeycutt just days before the election of three new members. The move was just one of the actions taken by the commissioners at their October meeting on Tuesday night (Oct. 19th). Honeycutt retired about a month ago due to some health issues, said Woodfin Mayor Jerry Vehaun during the session. He said only one person had shown interest in the seat and that was Teresa Stoker from the town’s planning and zoning (p/z) board (see Clint’s Corner commentary).
In other business for the meeting, the board adopted the Buncombe/Madison Regional Hazard Mitigation Plan. A seven-page summary of the plan accompanied the nearly 500-page document.
The board then undertook the first of three public hearings held during the meeting. The first rezoning was for property located at 198 Elk Mountain Road from R-10 to R-7 for subdivision of the property to allow the owner to sell his home and build a smaller one on the subdivided piece. The rezoning came with a favorable recommendation from the p/z board and the board passed it.
The second hearing did not go as smoothly as the first. The owner was asking for the rezoning of the property located at 99999 Blueberry Hill Road from Community Shopping to Light Industrial and did not receive a positive recommendation from the planning and zoning board. The landowners, the Weimers, want to build a climate-controlled storage building three stories tall behind the oil change business at the corner of Weaverville Highway and New Stock Road. The Blueberry Hill neighborhood above the site is against it even though there is a 100-foot tree buffer and the top of the building can not be seen from the housing development.
After some discussion, Vice Mayor Debbie Giezentanner said the storage unit sounded like the least intrusive for the site but did not want to vote against the planning and zoning board. The developer’s engineer said he may not have presented the best presentation to the p/z board and a member of p/z, who was present at the meeting, agreed. Giezentanner wanted to wait for 30-days to get a response as why p/z turned it down. Commissioner Ronnie Lunsford did not agree and wanted to vote then in favor of the plan. In the end, the board voted to wait until p/z could respond to the commissioners’ request for more information.
The next hearing was for a Master plan for a cottage cluster development dubbed as “Harry Potter Village,” but the owner said his lawyer said they had to stop using that name. The property is zoned Mountain Village and is located at 99999 Old Home Road. The rezoning came with a favorable recommendation from the p/z board and the board passed it.
The board also received a report of employee health insurance benefits from Gina Powers, the town’s finance officer, which they approved.
The board then heard departmental and administrator’s reports before adjourning into an executive Session before dismissing.