An ordinance targeting junkyards and auto repair shops that don’t conform with Henderson’s zoning ordinance is in the hands of the City Council now, despite an acknowledged need for changes in the draft.
The Henderson Planning Board unanimously passed the draft amortization ordinance to the City Council after nearly an hour of discussion Monday afternoon. Board members said they expect and welcome changes by the council, but they didn’t want to stop the momentum for the ordinance.
“If they want to change it, they will,” Planning Director Grace Smith said of the council members.
The proposed ordinance that the Planning Board approved is essentially the same as the one that drew strong business opposition at a public hearing April 20. It’s a draft created at the request of the City Council after the Clean Up Henderson Committee pressed for an ordinance to clear out the junk cars piling up at facilities that predate the city’s zoning ordinance.
“The No. 1 issue is cleanup?” board member Douglas Lumford asked.
“That’s the No. 1 issue,” Smith agreed.
The ordinance would force auto repair shops and junkyards in residential areas, where such facilities are not allowed, to close down within three years (two if a house is on the same lot). Such facilities in allowed business areas would have to meet the standards set for new facilities, including privacy fencing, paving where vehicles are stored outside, and a ban on storing vehicles that aren’t operable and aren’t under repair.
Smith has estimated that 12 businesses, five in the city and seven in the Extra-Territorial Jurisdiction, would have to close under the draft ordinance, and roughly 20 others would have to make changes to come into compliance.
But Smith and City Attorney John Zollicoffer acknowledged that the response to the proposal has revealed several problems.
Zollicoffer received the Planning Board’s approval to make three changes in the ordinance that goes to the City Council:
* In one section that discusses bringing a facility of 2 or more acres into compliance with the zoning ordinance, Zollicoffer said he made a math error. The various setbacks over time would consume the property. He will change the ordinance to apply to sites that are a minimum of 4 or 5 acres.
* Regarding limits on how long an auto repair facility may store a vehicle, Zollicoffer will add an exception for vehicles that are under litigation. Smith cited the example of a semi-trailer that the Highway Patrol has ordered a facility to store during litigation that could last months or years.
* At least one facility in the ETJ received a special-use permit from the county before the city took over zoning jurisdiction of all land within 1.5 miles of the city limits. Zollicoffer will add an exception to cover any such business that received county zoning authority for its particular use.
But the Planning Board discussed many other issues with the proposal.
Among the businesses that are in allowed zones but must change to conform to the zoning standards, the biggest issue might be paving.
Paving is expensive, and the area to pave would be based on how much land a facility uses to store vehicles.
Some facilities in the ETJ would run into a problem with septic systems because paving is not allowed above a septic drainage field, Smith said. And Planning Board Vice Chairman Mike Inscoe noted the problem of limits on impervious surfaces — only 70 percent of an industrial lot may be paved, and the amortization ordinance as written might require more.
Inside the city, a few sites could be forced to add a runoff collection system with the paving to avoid contamination of ground water in the Tar-Pamlico River Basin.
Board member Phil Walters, however, said paving is important as a way to control spills. Oil or other fluids that leak out of cars could be contained on a paved surface but would seep into the ground on gravel or dirt.
Board member Roberta Douglas asked what would stop a business from cleaning a spill on pavement by spraying it with a hose, thus spreading the mess into the soil anyway.
“I think it’s called ethics,” Walters said.
Paving isn’t necessarily a pressing issue, however.
“Paving doesn’t kick in for two years” in the draft ordinance, Zollicoffer said. That gives the City Council the option of passing the ordinance with the paving requirement, then addressing the entire issue of paving in the zoning ordinance.
The new ordinance’s efforts to prevent the storage of junk vehicles — the problem that turns an auto repair shop into an unwanted junkyard — create a range of problems, Smith said.
The ordinance as drafted would not allow any vehicles without registration and inspection stickers to be brought into one of the repair facilities, but that would force someone trying to fix up an old car to pass inspection to take it outside the city and the ETJ for work. The Planning Board discussed allowing undriveable vehicles to be towed onto such lots on the condition that they be under repair, not used for parts, and perhaps that they have a time limit of 120 days or so to be fixed or towed away.
That leads to enforcement issues, however. Smith said she and zoning administrator Brownell Wright aren’t car experts, so judging the condition and work orders for repairs would be difficult. She also noted that if a repair facility complies with the requirement for a 6-foot privacy fence, it will be tough to know what’s going on inside. The Planning Department staff would have to make site visits to inspect things and would have to develop a way to track how long vehicles remain.
Douglas said such detailed enforcement wouldn’t be necessary. If a business generally followed the rules, one or two long-term vehicles wouldn’t pose a problem or draw enforcement attention.
Smith agreed. If the ordinance sets some kind of time limit on vehicle storage, facilities with towing services either will comply or their violations will be obvious because the damaged cars will pile up.
The technical aspects of the ordinance, however, don’t address what some critics see as the biggest problem: forcing small businesses, many of them in existence for three or more decades, to close or make prohibitively expensive additional investments.
Board member Linda Allen said she’s concerned about businesses that have mortgages on their property. What happens if they are forced to close?
Businesses that shut down would leave buildings that could add to the city’s problem with abandoned structures. Zollicoffer said those buildings theoretically could be used in other ways, but he said decades of use by an auto repair facility could lead to environmental concerns.
Another issue is what happens when a business that leases wants to comply with the ordinance, but the landlord won’t allow the changes. Would the business still be liable for the lease if it had to close?
As for the auto shops in residential areas, Douglas said there are good reasons to close them down. She said she doubts some homeowners can sell their property because of the appearance and hazard of junkyards next to them.
Lumford proposed allowing the current owners to operate such sites indefinitely, as long as they bring them into compliance with whatever standards are applied to auto shops elsewhere. But when ownership changed, whether through sale or inheritance, the auto facility would have to close down.
Zollicoffer said that could be done by defining the amortization period as lasting until a change in ownership.
But that was another issue left to the City Council. The Planning Board agreed that regardless of the flaws, the proposed ordinance has enough good to keep it moving forward.
The City Council will be asked at its meeting May 9 to schedule its own public hearing on the ordinance, likely to be May 23. The council then can reject the ordinance, pass it as is, change it and pass it, or send it back to the Planning Board for further work.
Looking at council member Mary Emma Evans, the only nonreporter observing the meeting, Planning Board Chairman Gray Faulkner said: “We put it on you now.”
The board also took two noncontroversial actions:
* It approved amendments to the zoning ordinance related to the amortization proposal. The amendments would make an enclosed vehicle repair facility an allowed use in the I-2, B-2 and B-2A zone by special-use permit. Under the current ordinance, vehicle repair is allowed by right in those zones.
No one spoke during a public hearing on the amendments.
* It approved a subdivision request from Faye Stewardson for a 1-acre tract on Red Oak Road in the ETJ.