COUNTY PLANNING, ZONING VOTE APRIL 4

JACKSON -- Cape Girardeau County voters will decide April 4 whether to establish countywide planning and zoning.

The Cape Girardeau County Commission voted unanimously Monday to put the issue on the next ballot, culminating three years of work by the county Planning and Zoning Commission to develop a master plan.

The county has operated without countywide planning since 1992, when voters rejected a proposal to impose countywide zoning and tossed out planning as well.

This zoning proposal is much less restrictive than the one offered to voters in 1992, said P&Z Commission Chairman John Dudley. "We have tried to be very considerate and use the least restrictions possible," he said.

The master plan consists of three parts: a plan of how the county is expected to develop; a zoning order; and mobile-home and subdivision requirements. The master plan is being developed by the Southeast Missouri Regional Planning and Economic Development Commission in Perryville.

The zoning order establishes five districts within the county: residential, commercial, agricultural, industrial, and parks and recreation. Those districts conform to current development, said Roger Arnzen, director of the county mapping office and the liaison between the county and P&Z Commission

The approach, modeled on that of Boone County, is to view the county as an agricultural county, officials said.

"Most everything would be zoned agricultural as it is right now," Arnzen said. "What's commercial is commercial. It's grandfathered in. We can't go back in and change things."

A proposed land use outside the designated district would require a hearing before the Planning and Zoning Commission.

The plan would regulate such things as street widths within residential developments but would not become more specific, Arnzen said. "These are not BOCA codes or building codes."

In developing the plan, Dudley said the 10-member commission received input from citizens along with interests such as mobile home park developers and the swine industry. One concern about having no planning and zoning is that an aesthetically undesirable operation like a swine farm could be established without the input of neighbors.

But Dudley said Department of Natural Resources regulations already address swine operations.

County Presiding Commissioner Gerald Jones said the vote is a response to requests from citizens for a master plan. "We have had complaints of neighboring problems and nothing can be done," he said.

The plan is reasonable and necessary to the orderly development of the county, Jones said.

"This is certainly a minimum-type thing. It's not designed to over-regulate. It is designed for the protection of the property owner."

The specific proposal will be presented at a series of public hearings to be conducted throughout the county prior to the election. Those hearings are expected to begin at the end of February.

"We will probably gain some input and knowledge about things we hadn't thought of, and we will weigh those things," Dudley said.

A well-organized opposition defeated the zoning proposal in 1992 and also succeeded in abolishing all planning in the county. At the end of 1996, the County Commission established a temporary Planning and Zoning Commission under a new state law allowing them to formulate master plans.

The County Commission has expected to place a planning and zoning proposal on the ballot the past three elections but each time did not do so. Dudley, a Jackson architect, said the delay wasn't purposeful. "When we got into it we had to actually read, discuss and analyze virtually every sentence in the entire zoning ordinance. If it was too restrictive we changed it. If it was not right for the area we changed it." he said.

Cape Girardeau County is one of two first-class counties in the state without either planning or zoning. The other county is Jasper County, where Joplin is the largest city. Missouri has a total of 15 first-class counties.