County's Increase In Lot Size Issue At Planning Commission

All four of the applicants who appeared before the Oconee County Planning Commission last week had a similar request.

Each had begun the rezone application to convert land now zoned for agriculture to residential use before the county changed its regulations on minimum residential lot sizes, and each wanted to follow the old regulations rather than the new ones.

The new regulations more than double the minimum lot size in the commonly used R-1 Single-Family Residential District that does not have county sewer service from 30,000 square feet to 65,340 square feet, or from .69 acres to 1.5 acres.

The county planning staff recommended denial of two of the applications and conditional approval of two.

Developers of the two larger projects said the new county requirements simply make their subdivisions financially unfeasible.

In the end, the Planning Commission recommended approval of all four of the requests, mostly using the old standards.

The four rezone requests will be before the Board of Commissioners for final action at its meeting on Sept. 3.

For more on the four rezones and a video of the meeting, please go to Oconee County Observations.