I understand that tensions are borderline out of control in the neighborhood surrounding Mimosa Farm in Waynesboro, which played host to another wedding event last month, as the owner, Jill Wallace, awaits approval for a permit from the city to allow her to host large-scale events on the property.
The blame for this needs to go directly to our city government, which seems to be going out of its way to pit neighbor against neighbor in the dispute – which involves the interests of Wallace to continue hosting weddings, support group meetings and festivals on her property in a residentially zoned neighborhood, and neighbors who have raised concerns about noise, traffic congestion on the narrow street feeding into the Mimosa Farm property, and public safety, related to the issue with the narrow street.
Waynesboro City Council should have heard those concerns detailed by dozens of Wallace’s neighbors at a public hearing on the permit request last month, but it appears that the words expressing the concerns fell on deaf ears.
ICYMI
- Waynesboro: City siding with venue that has been violating zoning laws for years
- Waynesboro: Is the city review of the Mimosa Farm permit request just a formality?
- Waynesboro: Mayor tips city’s hand on where things are going on Mimosa Farm request
- Waynesboro: Mimosa Farm neighbors note ‘hardship’ caused by residential business
- Waynesboro City Council takes step toward approving Mimosa Farm permit
- Waynesboro citizens group prepared for fight with city over Mimosa Farm
The smart money has City Council leaning in the direction of eventually siding here with Wallace, as the Planning Commission did in July, with the mayor, Kenny Lee, voting with the 4-2 majority, citing the recommendation of the planning staff as the key factor in his decision.
I’ve been highlighting that as the obvious flaw in the review process since before the Planning Commission got together to consider the matter of the permit request – that the process for considering these kinds of residential permits at the staff level doesn’t include any opportunity for input from neighbors.
The answer that I’ve gotten back on that from city government officials – that the proper place for input from neighbors is at the Planning Commission and City Council hearing level – is undermined by the comment from Lee as to the primary motivation for his July vote.
The precedent being set here is a focal point of some of the Mimosa Farm neighbors, who are trying to raise awareness among residents in other neighborhoods across the city that the pending move to rubberstamp Wallace’s business in a residentially zoned area will open this kind of activity up all over.
The point they’re raising is valid – the city zoning ordinance will practically be rendered null and void when the City Council votes at its Sept. 14 meeting to just let Wallace do what she’s been doing for the past couple of years in violation of the city code going forward, and now with official sanction.
Thereafter, people with money and influence will be able to cite the Mimosa Farm precedent if they want to just declare their residential property to be an event venue, a bed-and-breakfast, some combination of the two, without even bothering to get a conditional use permit from the city.
Because, really, what is the city going to do – other than make folks go through the bells and whistles of filing the paperwork?
Once Mimosa Farm is the precedent for how city government handles events and bed-and-breakfast businesses in residential districts, it’s not like the City Council can decide to vote no on a future permit request – without inviting a costly lawsuit that it will be destined to lose.
This all could have been avoided by having the city planner simply reach out to Mimosa Farm’s neighbors to get their input ahead of finalizing the report on the permit request.
I say that because, after talking with Wallace’s neighbors, I think there was some middle ground that could have been found and worked into a final resolution of this case.
That’s not what we’re going to get out of this, because the people who we pay a lot of money to run the city for us don’t seem to have any interest in applying basic common sense to how it goes about its review and decision-making process, on this or anything else.
The other problem that we have here is that the tail quite clearly wags the dog, as evidenced by the comment on the Mimosa Farm matter from the mayor, who felt beholden to the paid staff’s recommendation as he cast his vote at the Planning Commission level a few weeks back.
It seems that our mayor isn’t aware that he doesn’t, in fact, work for the city manager, that, rather, the city manager, and the staff under the management level, work for the City Council, which, ultimately, works for us – the residents, the taxpayers.
Perhaps Mr. Lee, and the other four members on our City Council, need to be gently reminded who works for whom.
There are ways – the ballot box, the recall process – to get that particular point across.
That button gets pushed sometime in the early evening hours of Monday, Sept. 14.
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Chris Graham
