MORGANTOWN — Decades in the making, a final draft copy of subdivision regulations for Monongalia County are now available for public review.
The regulations went up at monongaliacounty.gov on March 20, as scheduled. Like most plans, however, the proposed timeline will be impacted due to restrictions tied to COVID-19.
Two April workshops — one with engineers and one with developers — will need to be rescheduled, likely pushing back the anticipated May 27 public hearing and vote by the Monongalia County Commission.
“We’re ready to go, but I think the biggest thing going on with our timeline is educating the people inclined to do subdivisions – developers, engineering firms, etc,” County Planning Director Andrew Gast-Bray said. “We want to walk them through exactly what’s in there because some of the things they’re saying don’t make sense.”
Gast-Bray said that the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 makes it impossible to lay out any sort of schedule going forward.
Monongalia County has been kicking around the idea of subdivision regulations to some degree for more than 50 years. Gast-Bray picked up the effort when he took over the county planning office, about a year ago.
Such regulations, he explained, can’t really be copied from one community to another, particularly when dealing with West Virginia’s topography.
“What I got when I arrived here was a very traditional subdivision ordinance … but it wasn’t adapted to this area as much as it should have been,” he said. “Well, once you go down that road, you’re in for a dime, you’re in for a dollar.”
The end result of that effort is a document that some developers feel goes too far.
Steve Solomon has been developing real estate in Monongalia County for 40 years.
“I’m not against subdivision regulations that are reasonable, but this 120-page document that they’re touting as subdivision regulations is ridiculous,” he said. “This is not subdivision regulations, guys. This is county-wide zoning.”
Solomon said the regulations will make it prohibitively expensive to develop land.
“Once you get through everything in these regulations, you’ve got no place left to build. You’re using up 40% of your property or more with roads, sidewalks, setbacks,” he said. “All we’re going to do is slam the brakes on development.”
Gast-Bray admits that the regulations will put another hurdle in front of developers. He also said he believes a lot of the pushback comes from the fact that the overwhelming majority of Monongalia County has been without any type of regulation up to this point.
“I really feel that once these developers get to understand it, they’re going to say, “I’m doing that stuff anyway,’ Yeah, you are,” Gast-Bray said. “We worked with them through this process and we’ll continue to work with them. This isn’t to penalize. This is to protect the county and good developers from bad developers and bad development.”
