The Jefferson County Planning Commission has proposed a new comprehensive plan for our county. It should be changed considerably or be rejected by the Jefferson County Commission.

Of 55 counties in West Virginia, only five have countywide zoning (four others have partial zoning). Jefferson was the third West Virginia county to adopt countywide zoning.

Counties with zoning are required to have comprehensive plans prior to adopting zoning ordinances. Comprehensive plans must be reviewed every 10 years, prior to reviews of zoning ordinances.

The Planning Commission held some public meetings over the past year, to which large crowds came. The consensus at those meetings was that our county needs a stricter and clearer zoning law. Folks attending the meetings emphasized historic preservation, support for agriculture and farmland protection, schools, parks, the availability of water and tighter controls on industrial solar and new residential development.

This comprehensive plan ignores all of that.

One serious flaw is the use of the phrase “by right” to permit various types of development in all zoning districts. This phrase is a poison pill, and essentially destroys zoning.

If you have the ability to do something “by right,” nobody can stop you. The idea of zoning is that certain locations are suitable for certain types of development. If the plan says anybody has a “right” to do something anywhere, zones are irrelevant.

Some say that the phrase “by right” doesn’t mean what it says. Good luck defending that point of view in court. To camouflage the meaning, some commissioners have suggested the phrase “principal permitted use,” which has the same effect if permitted in all zoning districts.

The purpose of zoning is to protect the property rights of the people who live in a given political jurisdiction (in this case Jefferson County). In return for some restriction on your ability to do what you will with your property, you are protected from any move by someone nearby to do something with their property that might damage your property’s value. If your neighbors can transform “by right” their property in such a way that damages yours, the zoning law that supposedly protected you is meaningless.

Another failure of the plan is that it ignores Jefferson County being in the headwaters of the Chesapeake Bay. This burns me, because a number of years ago I supported a bill in the Legislature that made West Virginia the first jurisdiction to meet the federal standards for public water and sewer systems in the Chesapeake Bay region. Of the other jurisdictions affecting the Bay (Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York State, Delaware and the District of Columbia), only the District of Columbia has since met those standards. I fear the current language of the comprehensive plan endangers our conformance with those standards.

The plan also has other defects, but space here is limited.

I think most Jefferson Countians want an effective zoning law. The comprehensive plan trotted out by the Planning Commission looks eerily like a stealth attempt to eliminate zoning in our county. I urge its rejection by the Jefferson County Commission.

John Doyle is a 26-year former member of the West Virginia House of Delegates, who is currently running for a seat in the state senate. He can be reached at rjohndoyle@comcast.net.