The Mimosa Farm permit is on the Waynesboro City Council docket for a possible yay-or-nay vote on Monday night.
I say possible, because I’m hearing rumblings that there may be sentiment among city leaders to push for a delay – either to just buy time toward improving the flawed staff recommendations that we’ve been criticizing since they were first made public two months ago, or to more basically buy time to try to get the heat off City Council ahead of the upcoming city elections.
From the archives
- Coverage of the Mimosa Farm permit request: click here.
On that second point, there is, indeed, plenty of heat on City Council right now on the issue, which involves a property owner who bought a home in a residentially-zoned neighborhood, built up a busy event business at the end of a narrow street, then continued to host big events at the home after being told by the city that she was doing so in violation of the city zoning code.
This is all happening against the backdrop of elections for two City Council seats, including one in the area in which the Mimosa Farm residential business is located.
A spirited group of residents in the neighborhood has organized organically in the weeks since the permit request was announced for the agenda of the Planning Commission meeting in July, and taken its fight city-wide, warning that a positive vote from City Council on the Mimosa Farm permit would have implications outside of its borders, setting a precedent that anyone with money and even a small amount of political influence would be able to get the city to rewrite the zoning code to their benefit.
At the very least, it would seem that Jim Wood, the former vice mayor, who won the 2022 election for the Ward D seat that represents the neighborhood at the heart of this dispute by a scant 17 votes, wouldn’t seem to want to invite any kind of voter revolt against him ahead of the Nov. 3 election.
I can see Wood at least making a motion to delay any vote on the permit request, as a way of trying to signal to the rest of the neighborhood that, welp, doggonit, he tried.
The other sitting member of the City Council whose seat is on the ballot in the upcoming elections is Kenny Lee, the mayor, who is up for re-election in Ward C.
Lee, who is unopposed, has already cast one vote in favor of the permit, at the Planning Commission level – Lee is the City Council’s liaison to the Planning Commission.
Theoretically, one could envision a write-in campaign being organized between now and Nov. 3, and Lee won his election in Ward C with 752 votes in his column, which isn’t a daunting number – but, write-in campaigns are hard to get off the ground, though in rare instances, they can be successful.
The other three members of the City Council – Lorie Jean Akanbi in Ward A, Terry Short in Ward B, and Jeremy Sloat, the at-large representative – don’t face the voters again until 2028.
I don’t know that I would count on any of those three would be influenced by electoral considerations more than two years out.
For one, you can’t even assume that all three would even want to be on the ballot again in two years.
And, two, two years is an eternity in local politics.
This is what is going on behind the curtain ahead of whatever ends up happening in front of us on Monday night.
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Chris Graham
