News

'We can't stop the growth but we can manage it,' board chair declares

Commissioners discuss the 2045 comp plan before adopting it on Wednesday.

By Bill Moss, Published: March 23, 2024

The chair of the Henderson County Board of Commissioners sought to ensure residents angry over the adoption of what they regard as a weak 20-year comprehensive plan that land-use classifications and zoning plus "some tweaks" are still to come.

"We know that growth is inevitable, but we need to have a way to manage that growth," Rebecca McCall in a videotaped Q&A sent out by the county's communications office soon after commissioners adjourned their Wednesday meeting. "We can't stop the growth as some people seem to want to do but we can manage it.”

Commissioners adopted the plan despite objections from more than 20 people who condemned it as a "recipe for urban sprawl" that ignored public input the county received when it began drafting the document.

“There are some tweaks that we need to make obviously as we move forward,” she said. “It's not the perfect plan. As the weather changes and things progress forward in the next 20 years, there's going to be things that come up that will affect the plan and it can be revised and is encouraged to be revised every five years or at least reviewed every five years.”

Among the parallel efforts that will part of long-range plans are a broadband task force that is looking at ways to make sure all households have internet access and the newly formed farmland preservation task force.

As for land preservation, “I think our county has always done a very good job of that,” she said. “And we have the help of the federal government as far as our national forests and the state government as far as our state forests to help us with that effort. land that is owned by citizens. We need to encourage them to keep it as natural as possible but that's their decision. If they want to sell their land to the state and let it become part of a state park and maybe that's one of the solutions.”

She ensured the homeowners and others who dressed down commissioners for 90 minutes Wednesday on the plan’s deficiencies that there’s more work to come.

“I would like to highlight the fact that a comprehensive plan is just that — it's a plan,” she said. “It's an outline for moving forward in the next 20 years. It doesn't have zoning ordinances in it. It's not a land-use plan. It's a plan as far as how we want to grow. And we have to look at growth because we've grown so much in the past. 50 years."