By DAVE HAMRICK
Staff Writer

Paul Rivers won't have to tear down his new pole barn, nor will he have to pay the costs of having four-generation farm land rezoned in order to keep it.

That was the choice he faced until County Commissioners last week voted to pay the cost of rezoning 188 acres owned by Rivers' grandmother, Sarah, and to do the same for anyone else facing the same circumstances.

Rivers said he was surprised recently when a county marshal stopped by to inform him that the pole barn he had just finished building wasn't allowed under new county zoning ordinances.

“I had called [the county zoning ordinance] around January to ask if it was allowed,” Rivers said, “and they told me that it was.”

It was a few months before Rivers had time to build the new structure to replace an old one that had fallen into disrepair. In the meantime, the county had passed a new set of rules prohibiting farm outbuildings on land zoned R-70, a category that allows subdivisions with lots as small as two acres.

Further complicating the issue, the Rivers family never asked to have the zoning category of its farm land changed from its original A-R (agricultural-residential), a category that would have allowed all manner of farm outbuildings. The county rezoned about 6,000 acres, including the Rivers property, in 1973 in a move designed to encourage growth of subdivisions with two-acre lots and discourage one-acre neighborhoods.

The marshal told Rivers he would have to tear down the barn, but then relented and suggested he talk to the county zoning office about a rezoning, Rivers said. “Then he asked me if he could fish in our lake,” he added. “I didn't let him.”

Rivers decided to put his problem in the lap of the commissioners when he found out how much the rezoning would cost — $350 for the application fee, plus several hundred more for surveying and advertising.

“I just want it to be zoned correctly for what it's used for now,” Rivers told the commissioners during an earlier meeting. “Under R-70 our whole farming operation is illegal. I feel like we were wrongly done.”

Commissioners agreed, but during the earlier meeting expressed concern about setting a precedent. They tabled the matter at that time.

But during last week's meeting the majority decided to go ahead and allow Rivers to apply for rezoning at the county's expense, precedent notwithstanding.

Other residents who are using their land for farming, but who were affected by the 1973 blanket rezoning, will be allowed the same privilege, as long as they owned the land before 1973. If they bought their property after it was rezoned, they're on their own.

Only Commissioner Herb Frady voted against the motion. He suggested asking the Planning Commission to study the idea of changing the R-70 category so that farm outbuildings are allowed on five acres or more. “It seems a lot simpler than rezoning it back to five acres,” Frady said. But Chairman Harold Bost argued that the commission just got through doing away with farm outbuildings in R-70.

“Those changes were made after much, much thought,” he said. Changing back now, he said, “would have ramifications throughout other regulations and ordinances.”