Committee reviews major county-side zoning text changes: in-family conveyance replaced with capped exceptions, accessory units and a right-to-farm statement

The Woodford County Ordinance Committee reviewed proposed zoning-text amendments to articles 2 and 7 that would reshape several county-side land-use rules. The Planning Commission recommended the changes (vote reported as 6–0) and the committee discussed the proposal at length; the committee did not adopt the text at committee level but the judge indicated a public hearing will likely be scheduled for the fiscal court’s first meeting in February.

Key changes under consideration include: - Replacing the ordinance’s current “in-family conveyance” sliding-scale regime with a much narrower set of exceptions: under the Planning Commission proposal, parcels of 50–99.9 acres could yield one exception lot, and parcels of 100 acres or more could yield two exception lots. All exception lots would be required to have legal frontage; staff and advisory bodies said the change would substantially reduce the theoretical number of new lots that could be created under the county’s prior in-family rules. - Adding a clear “purpose and intent” statement and an explicit right-to-farm policy at the top of the agricultural (A1) chapter to state that agricultural uses and established farming practices (including noise, odors and farm traffic) have priority within agricultural zones. - Allowing accessory dwelling units in the A1 agricultural zone (limited to 50% of the principal dwelling’s floor area) as an alternative to subdividing land to place a relative or family member near the farm; tenant-house and accessory-dwelling rules were clarified in the A1 chapter rather than being defined elsewhere in the ordinance. - Replacing older terminology (for example, “tourist destination expanded”) with current agritourism provisions and adding or clarifying conditional-use categories such as small-scale plant nurseries, sod/tree farms, borrow pits/earth works, and agriculture-related research facilities. The committee also discussed size caps for some conditional uses to avoid industrial-scale developments in the agricultural zone. - Adding accessory-use and lot-configuration standards intended to discourage “flagpole” lots and stacked lots (lots that meet frontage by a narrow strip and place multiple homes in depth) by defining lot width at the required building setback line rather than at a developer-proposed building line. - Adding a provision to allow modest ground-mounted solar accessory to a principal farm residence but limiting standalone solar arrays on parcels without other principal uses (thresholds proposed at 10 acres to distinguish accessory vs. utility-scale installations).

The Agricultural Advisory Review Board (AARB) members who attended — Laurie Garkovich and Skip Phillips — urged the court to consider the proposal as advancing farmland protection. They described trends in parcel division since the 1990s that they say have reduced farm viability and stressed infrastructure concerns such as water pressure and emergency access as parcelization increases. Planning staff presented GIS-based parcel analysis showing a significant number of smaller parcels and that a change to the exception rules would reduce the theoretical number of additional lots that could be created under the older sliding-scale approach.

Planning staff and the county attorney advised the committee about process options: the fiscal court could accept the Planning Commission record, hold its own hearings, or return the text to the Planning Commission for additional revisions. The committee did not enact the text at committee level; the judge indicated a public hearing would likely occur at the fiscal court in early February to solicit broader public comment before any final vote.