The Mathews County Planning Commission voted 4-3 Tuesday night to deny a motion by member Tricia Stall to invite a controversial speaker to address the commission and board of supervisors regarding his views on private property rights.
The vote followed a lengthy discussion, which Stall began by sharing her own views on Tom DeWeese, author of numerous books, booklets, and pamphlets decrying the United Nations’ set of principles for sustainable resource management, which were outlined in a 1992 U.N. paper known as “Agenda 21.” His writings paint the environmental guidelines as a socialist attack on personal property rights and a war on free enterprise, and they provide readers with ways to challenge planning regulations in their own communities. DeWeese is on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of extremists.
Stall spoke of regulations that are “so onerous that the property owner is prevented from using the land at all” and said that, because failure to pay taxes results in eviction, “We must ask, who really owns your property? It is more like rent to the government.”
“Planning by government means the death of property rights in all its forms: personal, intellectual and landed,” said Stall, asserting that planning on the local level will eventually lead to U.N. global governance. She applied these views to recent efforts to have Gwynn’s Island included as a historic district in the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places, claiming that the historic district would take away personal property rights and that in 10 years the federal government would control Gwynn’s Island.
She said that DeWeese would come to Mathews and speak at no cost, and she told fellow planners that, as a body that regulates property rights, they should hear what he has to say.
But commissioner Doug Wilton said that, while he had read some of DeWeese’s writings and was impressed with what he had to say, a planning commission meeting was not the proper venue for such a talk. He said the planning commission, board of supervisors and school board are “governmental units with a limited time period to do their work,” and that he expected that DeWeese’s talk would be lengthy. In addition, he said, such a talk would draw a lot of people, many of whom who would end up standing outside the historic courthouse. He suggested that Stall instead have the talk at the Piankatank Ruritan Club, advertising it in advance.
“The supervisors and the planning commission are not a platform for the interpretation of the common law or constitutional law,” he said.
Chairman Billy Cook said he had read “a lot of controversial stuff” about DeWeese and that he didn’t want to vote to make people sit through such a presentation.
“We’re being paid by the taxpayers,” he said.
The matter was called for a vote, and Stall, Byron Rauch, and Donald Morgan voted for it, while Cook, Wilton, Harry Meeks and Frances Minor voted against.
Public hearings
The planning commission held three joint public hearings on zoning matters with the Mathews County Board of Supervisors. After the board of supervisors adjourned, the commission voted unanimously to send all three to the board of supervisors with recommendations for approval. The matters are expected to be taken up at the next board meeting, at 6 p.m. on May 23 in the historic courthouse.
The first was a request by Propane Property Two LLC to rezone a parcel at 2794 Buckley Hall Road in Cobbs Creek from Rural to Business in order to operate a generator sales and propane service business. The property is adjacent to the Cobbs Creek Fire Station on one side and a residence on the other side. It is across the road from the Willow Oaks Industrial Park.
The second application was a request by Allen and Cathy Farmer to rezone a parcel at 53 Twiggs Ferry Road from Rural to Business in order to construct an office building and an equipment storage facility for a septic company. The property is adjacent to a parcel that was recently rezoned from Rural to Business in order to place a Dollar General there.
The final public hearing was on a zoning text amendment proposed by the planning commission as part of ongoing efforts to clarify and correct existing regulations. It removes the words “for each principal use” from the lot size requirements for all permitted uses in the waterfront business district. The proposed verbiage is: A. Lot size. The minimum lot area permitted shall be one acre.