Washington County Enterprise-Leader
In Rehearing, Council Approves Rezoning Request
OWNER FILES SUIT AGAINST FARMINGTON
— With a civil lawsuit filed against the city on the table, Farmington City Council last week voted to rezone 2.61 acres on Highway 170 from single family residential to a multifamily designation.
The vote was 6- 0, with one abstention, in the rehearing of an ordinance to rezone land at 325 and 357 S. Hunter from R-1 to MF-2, which allows developments such as tri-plexes and townhouses. Cox Development submitted the rezoning request.
Council member Keith Lipford was advised by city Attorney Steve Tennant to abstain on commenting or voting on the request because he lives across the street from the land and, therefore, had a “material interest in the outcome.”
Farmington Planning Commission unanimously approved rezoning the land from R-1 to MF-2, at its Feb. 22 meeting. The request next went to the city council for final approval.
After a lot of discussion about
the rezoning request from council members and the public at the council’s March 8 meeting, a motion to suspend the rules and read the ordinance one time by title only failed 3-4, with one abstention.
Residents opposed to the rezoning request said they did not think more multi-family housing would be a good idea for the neighborhoods nearby. Several council members also said they thought the city should be concentrating on single-family housing.
In an April 12 memo to the council, Mayor Ernie Penn said the council’s failure to place the ordinance on an official reading denied the owner the right to proceed with an appeal to Washington County Circuit Court.
Penn said his recommendation, after discussing the matter with legal staff at Arkansas Municipal League, was that the ordinance be read and the council make an official decision on the rezoning request, to either deny it or approve it.
In the meantime, between the council’s March 8 and April 12 meetings, Cox Development and company owners Kent and Carla Cox filed a complaint April 6 in Washington County Circuit Court against the city of Farmington, city council, planning commission, Penn as mayor and Kelly Penn as city clerk, alleging that the defendants were “capricious and arbitrary against the city’s own zoning ordinances, land use, maps and plans, prior rezoning decisions.”
The complaint takes issue with two rezoning decisions made by the city and planning commission: the rezoning on South Hunter and a second request to rezone 10.5 acres on the other side of South Hunter Street at the South Hunter/Wolfdale intersection.
Cox Development asked to rezone the 10.5 acres from R-1 to R-2/MF-2. The planning commission turned down this request on Feb. 22. Cox appealed it to the city council but amended its request, asking to rezone all the land from R-1 to R-2. The rezoning ordinance failed on a motion to pass, 2-5, with one abstention (Lipford).
Tennant addressed council members last week and said he took some of the blame for the council not taking a vote on the rezoning ordinance at its March 8 meeting.
“We didn’t take a vote. I’ve been doing this for 22 years, and it’s never happened,” Tennant said, noting that meetings conducted through Zoom can be confusing with noise in the background, people talking over each other and comments made through the chat option.
Tennant said he brought his concerns to the mayor, who then talked to the municipal league.
“We’re going to discuss the 2.6 acres and you will vote on it,” Tennant forcefully told the council.
He pointed out the planning commission approved it. In addition, he said the request meets the city’s 2016 land use plan which shows that area as medium to high density, and the land is adjacent to multifamily units on two sides, single-family on one side and undeveloped land zoned multifamily on the fourth side.
“We have to vote as to whether or not this man can rezone his property,” Tennant said.
Ernie Penn added, “There shouldn’t be any reason you would not put something up for a vote… Everyone who brings something on the agenda, they have a right for a vote on it.”
Penn later said, “I’m not a proponent where it’s for or against. I’m not saying you should vote for it or against it. But what you have to do is make a decision so we have it registered, so that if it is denied, this gentleman has the recourse to court, which he already has filed that motion.”
Tennant mentioned the lawsuit already filed in circuit court and compared it to a similar one from Rogers that was won by the plaintiff. In that case, Tennant said, the council refused to rezone despite a unanimous decision by the planning commission to approve the rezoning request, a recommendation from city staff to rezone and that the rezoning met the Rogers’ land use plan.
If the city has rules in place, it has to follow them, Tennant told council members.
Lipford said 95% of the comments made to him by people are that when they look at the future of Farmington, they want it to have less high density and more single dwellings. He wondered if the city needs to review its land use plan because it doesn’t fit what most people are telling him they want for the city of Farmington.
Melissa McCarville, city business manager, said the planning commission has already started the process to review the land use plan but has been hampered because of covid-19 concerns.
Ernie Penn opened up the floor for public comment, and Chris Bryson, referring to the land use plan approved in 2016, pointed out Farmington is getting a lot of growth and 2016 is not 2021.
Bryson said the city council is not supposed to just be a “rubber stamp” of the planning commission.
“I urge you to consider the concerns of the citizens,” Bryson said.
Another resident, Sheila Andrews, said it appeared to her that the contractor has more rights than the citizens.
“The land use plan, my understanding is that it is a suggestion of what the future should look like,” Andrews said.
When discussion came back to the council, the council unanimously voted to suspend the requirement that the ordinance be read in full on three different dates and to read the ordinance by title one time only.
Council members Linda Bell, Sherry Mathews, Diane Bryant, Brenda Cunningham, Bobby Morgan and Shelley Parsley then voted for the ordinance to pass. Lipford abstained. Hunter Carnahan was absent.
The complaint filed by Cox said it was an appeal of the decisions made by the planning commission and the city council for the two rezoning requests off South Hunter or Highway 170.
It says plaintiffs’ interest in developing both properties could be “extinguished due to market and other conditions beyond its control and (the company) will lose this opportunity that no monetary damages will be able to make whole.”
The complaint asked the court to order the defendants to rezone the property as requested and asked for a declaratory judgment.