Town Council voted 3 to 1 in favor of the second and final reading of the amendments to the Folly Road Overlay Zoning District last Thursday. Councilmen Blank and Mullinax joined me in voting in favor. Councilwoman Berry voted against. Councilman Kernodle was absent.
The Folly Road Overlay Zoning District is part of the Town's Zoning and Subdivision Regulation Ordinance. The newly approved version is located in Chapter 5.
During the public comment period last Thursday, Planning Commission Vice-Chairman Garrett Milliken spoke against Council approving the plan. He had a series of complaints. For example, we didn't give a power point presentation to Council and the public. (Of course, he didn't complain when Council approved all the other 11 Chapters without power point presentations.)
However, he seemed especially concerned that Council didn't approve the list of additional prohibited uses that had been recommended by the Planning Commission.
The way he described it was misleading. He claimed that Council was voting to permit a variety of uses on Folly Road. Among the uses Council was supposedly permitting were billboards and tattoo parlors.
In truth, the approved version of the Folly Road Overlay Zoning District describes the permitted uses on Folly Road. These vary depending on the location. In the Commercial Core, which runs from Ellis Drive to Prescott Street, and is centered at the Camp and Folly intersection, Community Commercial uses are permitted. Here is the map. The permitted uses in all Town zoning districts can be found in the Use Table.
In the South Village, which runs from Prescott Street to Raphael Lane, Office Residential and Neighborhood Commercial uses are permitted. The Town's jurisdiction doesn't go all the way to Raphael Lane and stops just north of Emmanuel Baptist Church.
Billboards and tattoo parlors are not permitted on any part of Folly Road in the Town of James Island.
Why did Commissioner Milliken testify that Council was about to vote to allow billboards and tattoo parlors?
I think there are two possibilities.
One is that he was mistaken. He believes that because Council did not approve a list of additional prohibited uses, all of those uses are somehow now permitted in the Overlay District.
I was at a meeting of the Planning Commission where the Town's Planner, Kristen Crane, explained to him and the other Commissioners that failing to add additional prohibitions in the Overlay District does not make everything permitted. He appeared to just ignore her. Of course, so did the rest of the Commissioners and they continued to flail around discussing this very issue. In the end, Robin Hardin read something in the draft ordinance that stated what should have been obvious and what the Town's Planner had already explained. Removing a use from the list of prohibited uses doesn't make it permitted, unless it were already permitted in the underlying zone.
This is certainly very troubling. The Vice-Chairman of the Planning Commission gave mistaken testimony to Town Council. Fortunately, Councilman Blank, the Chairman of the Town's Land Use Committee and former Chairman of the Town's Planning Commission, was there to correct Milliken's error.
However, if Commissioner Milliken is still confused on this matter, it would lead me to question his competency to make useful recommendations to Town Council.
Unfortunately, there is a second possibility, one that is even more troubling. Could it be that Commissioner Milliken gave false testimony before Town Council with the intention to mislead and deceive?
Incredibly, Commissioner Milliken is continuing his quixotic quest to ban gun shops from Folly Road. In one of the more puzzling episodes of this saga, Councilwoman Berry tried to round up votes on Council to block all of the prohibited uses. Councilman Mullinax was pleasantly surprised, telling me how remarkable it was that a liberal Democrat like Berry would vote with a conservative Republican like himself. He expected that the vote to remove gun shops from the list of prohibited uses would be unanimous.
I was skeptical. I had already heard from Councilman Blank that he was told by Councilwoman Berry that he had to support her effort to ban gun shops or she would vote to allow tattoo parlors on Folly Road. Councilman Blank refused the deal, and it seemed to me that Councilwoman Berry was carrying out her threat. Tattoo parlors were on the list of prohibited uses. Of course, I wasn't surprised when Councilwoman Berry cast the sole vote in October to include the entire list of prohibited uses that had been recommended by the Planning Commission, including both gun shops and tattoo parlors.
Does Councilwoman Berry seem like someone who would come up with such a convoluted and manipulative plan? I would hate to think so.
Would Planning Commissioner Milliken try to manipulate Town Council to use our Zoning and Subdivision Ordinance to promote his gun control agenda?
What do you think?
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