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Mills River residents press council over UDO map as consultant outlines protections
Summary
Residents of the Woodscape neighborhood told the town council the draft UDO zoning map would label their half‑acre lots as rural and effectively render them nonconforming. Consultants said the draft includes protections — including a 'keep what you got' guarantee, a renamed Rural Preservation district, and a family‑subdivision pathway — and confirmed a June 2026 adoption timeline.
Charlene Tibido, a Woodscape resident, told the Mills River Town Council she and her neighbors were alarmed to find their half‑acre lots placed in a one‑and‑a‑half‑acre rural district under the draft unified development ordinance map and urged council to reconsider the mapping for Woodscape.
“We are a friendly neighborhood … It feels like this plan was well underway before we ever had a seat at the table,” Tibido said, asking council to slow the process and either map Woodscape to an appropriate residential label or create a new designation that reflects existing half‑acre lots.
Consultant Chad Meadows, leading the UDO project presentation, said the draft contains several safeguards intended to protect existing property owners. “The UDO will not create non‑conforming development. Everything that exists now is allowed to stay as it is,” Meadows told the council, outlining a methodology used to translate current zoning into the new districts and promising transparent documentation and office‑hour meetings to resolve translation errors.
Meadows described four major themes of revisions after public engagement: changes to perceptions of development potential, stronger agricultural protections, measures to protect the Mills River way of life, and preserving rural character. Among changes he highlighted were renaming the lowest‑density district from AGR to “Rural Preservation (RPV)” to reduce confusion, clarifying that bona fide farms remain exempt from zoning, expanding explicit allowances for homestead agricultural uses, and proposing a new residential‑mix district to accommodate people living and working on the same parcel.
To address concerns about lot sizes, Meadows pointed to the family‑subdivision procedure in the draft that would allow certain one‑acre transfers between direct family members even when the zoning district minimum is larger. He also said the draft includes an average density cap of four dwelling units per acre and removes any incentives that could raise density above that limit.
Meadows said the consultant team is mid‑project and intends to post a public draft for review and to hold a large public open house on March 10 to review the third draft of the zoning map and consolidated UDO. He said the consultants anticipate the town’s planning board will make a recommendation in May and that adoption would be scheduled before the end of June 2026 if council chooses to proceed.
Council members and staff urged residents who see mapping errors to use the posted office‑hour process or request an office‑hours meeting so the steering committee and consultants can examine parcel‑level concerns. Town staff also emphasized an omnibus map amendment process after adoption to handle grouped, technical corrections without charge.
Next steps: the consultant team will post methodology documentation, deliver additional draft chapters, meet with residents in office hours to resolve apparent errors (including the Woodscape parcels), and present the public draft on March 10. The council’s planning board is expected to weigh in by May, with potential adoption in June 2026.
