Warren County residents express concerns over potential development on Dillard Road
WARREN COUNTY, Ky. – Over the past few years, Warren County has experienced tremendous growth and developers have looked to expand and build.
On Thursday, in fiscal court, a group of concerned residents made their voices heard in opposition to a potential development. A property on Dillard Road was rezoned for single family homes.
However, residents in the surrounding communities say that the density of the potential community is too high for the area to handle.
“What’s a reasonable density if you’re going to develop a subdivision in between a 1.01 and a 2.02, I think that’s important to think about. I’m not very good at math, but my thoughts would be a starting point would be about 1.5 to transition these three subdivisions make it flow, make it look decent. That’s just my thoughts. That 1.5 would be a starting point there. The proposal that they have is 2.67 density,” said Justin Lohden, who spoke for the concerned citizens who showed to fiscal court.
Fiscal court passed the proposal to a four to one vote with Magistrate Ron Cummings, who represents that area, voting against it, and Magistrate Rex McWhorter not voting due to his absence from court.
While Cummings acknowledges the concerns for density and traffic, he also says that there could be issues within the Planning and Zoning Commission itself, as one of the commissioners is a part of that development process.
“People are making decisions on zoning, are not elected, they’re people that are appointed” Cummings said. “And in this particular case, it’s actually one member of the of the planning Zoning Commission was one of the applicants. He was part of the deal application. And although he recused himself, what influences he had with the other members of the board? My issue was and why I laid out the questions I asked and what I presented was the fact they had turned down zoning that was lower density than what, the one that was approved today.”
The Planning and Zoning Commission, however, maintains that each request for rezoning follows the same rules and regulations provided to them by the governing bodies.
“Every zoning change is evaluated against the comprehensive plan and a future land use map, and then a set of policies and goals and objectives found in that comprehensive plan. So whenever we submit a staff report, we look at all of those items and say it either mostly complies or it doesn’t and provide a recommendation. But ultimately the Planning Commission is the deciding body,” said Ben Peterson, the executive director of the City/County Planning Commission.
The potential development of the new community would be located between The Summit and Lexington Station communities and next to a future school which is still being built.
This is a developing story and News 40 will have the latest as it becomes available.
