Council's reversals need better reasoning

In voting on a recent conditional-use application that allows a property owner to convert land approved as a manufactured home park to a park for seasonal RVs, Councilman Vance Phillips said the issue is simple.

“The question is,” Phillips said, “will this help the property owners and help the economy, and it does that.”

Those might be good questions if the county planning and zoning commission had not voted unanimously against the application, saying the use is not compatible with the existing manufactured home park. The new RV park will be adjacent to an existing manufactured home park where hundreds of people have already placed their homes.

Council certainly has the right to reject the planners’ recommendation. When it does so, council should, at the very least, state clear reasons for overruling the planners’ decision.

In this case, council’s decision certainly helps one property owner, but what about the hundreds of manufactured homeowners, whose homes, as the planners stated, will diminish in value as a result of the RV park next door?

The council’s decision might be defensible had council imposed conditions requiring enlarged and improved facilities that would benefit those who already live in the park as well as the seasonal RV-park users.

But to ask 400 manufactured homeowners to share the same amenities – pool, marina and community building – with as many as 260 more weekend RV users is unreasonable and unfair.

For the economy to grow, people of all kinds and all incomes must invest in our community. Making such investments requires trusting in orderly, reliable land-use planning and decisions.

Sussex County Council was recently taken to task over another case, in part because a federal judge found council’s decision arbitrary and capricious. Siding with one property owner on grounds the decision will help the economy appears to be more of the same.