County to enact policy setting penalties for those who do not follow zoning procedures

LAURINBURG — One company’s failure to follow the proper procedures to operate a storage yard prompted the Scotland County Board of Commissioners to direct the creation of a policy with penalties for future violators.

Commissioners this week during the regular scheduled meeting ultimately accepted the recommendation of the Planning and Zoning Board to approve a request to grant Clayton Mobile Homes a special-use permit to operate the storage yard on a Highway Business District even though the company had already stored houses on the 32-acre tract. The vote was 4-3 with commissioners Darrell BJ Gibson, Tim Ivey, Whit Gibson and Bo Frizzell voting in favor.

In the special-use permit application, Clayton Mobile Homes sought the permit to store mobile homes for Rebuild NC, an organization focused on housing homeowners displaced due to natural disasters. The property is located on the corner of Elmore Road and Highway 74, East.

“In speaking with a representative from Clayton, they had that project already in the works,” said Jim McMillan, chair of the Scotland Planning and Zoning Board. “They had no area on their property to store the floors they already had built.”

“They basically were forced to go ahead and move them onto that lot before the zoning board and the county commissioners had the opportunity to approve this,” McMillan added.

McMillan said the board expressed their displeasure with the company’s actions.

“We were kind of caught in a tough situation with this and I’m not happy with the way it has progressed,” McMillan said.

Despite their feelings, McMillan said the zoning board’s recommendation was to approve the request, following a discussion with a Clayton representative.

“At that time, we did discuss and we said it may be that you have to move these off the property. In our opinion that would have been basically the only correct thing to do,” McMillan said.

However, with the number of floors that had already been placed on the property and space full at Clayton’s manufacturing facility, that would pose a problem, McMillan said.

“I’ll be honest, in my almost 12 years on the board, I’ve never run across a situation like this and it pretty much put us between a rock and a hard place,” McMillan said.

Commissioner Bo Frizzell said that the matter is a case of misassumption.

“I think that because there was a trailer there before he thought that he could do that,” Frizzell said. “Oakwood used it there before and they would bring trailers in there to work on … for several years.”

Commissioner Darwin Williams asked if they should make Clayton move the homes.

“We don’t need to do that but we need to address it. It opens the door for anyone else,” Commission John Alford said.

Alford said the situation demonstrates the need to “put something in place.”

“There has to be some type of penalty for anyone that are going ahead without the public having a say so … This is a violation of something in our book. The public needs to know that you’re going to do something in the community before you do it. That’s why we have our Planning and Zoning Board,” Alford said. “I’m glad to see the folks there but this is not the way you do it … You can’t just bypass statutes and ordinances.”

With a motion made by Commissioner Darrell B.J. Gibson, the board voted unanimously to direct the Policy Procedure Committee to work to create a policy setting penalties for those who do not follow the set zoning procedures.

“We don’t want to set a precedent, that the next guy who does this says “You let them get away with it. Don’t beat us up,” Whit Gibson said.