The Lincoln County Commission has received a possible land use plan for the county as they work toward a growth plan amendment that will be part of the county’s overall comprehensive plan.

During the May Commission meeting, District 5 Commissioner Daniel Eldridge said Croy Engineering and Houston Matthews were retained and helped with the Lincoln County comprehensive plan and growth plan. He said the firm outlined the process. “We conducted a strength, weaknesses, opportunities threats (SWOT) analysis and started forming this plan and how we were going to approach it,” he said, adding it’s not an easy process to start from nothing, but there has been “a lot of great input.”

“I think we’re getting really close on this,” Eldridge said, adding several months ago the Commission determined they wanted to do a comprehensive plan for Lincoln County because of the “growth pressure coming from Nashville and the growth pressure from Huntsville.”

Eldridge said commissioners believed they need to be “thinking more strategically” and thinking about how they are going to manage growth and development. “We decided to look at this comprehensive plan and it will deal with things like infrastructure needs, roads and utilities, schools, law enforcement, residential development, even commercial and in some cases industrial development,” he said. “All of these things we know ultimately affect Lincoln County taxpayers. We are trying to get ahead of this and be smart about it.”

Eldridge said a steering committee (26 individuals) was established that included members from different aspects of community and stakeholders with an interest in the process. He said people from utilities, roads, schools, law enforcement, industrial development, the Fayetteville-Lincoln County Chamber of Commerce & Tourism Bureau, Fayetteville Main Street and all three municipalities including Fayetteville, Ardmore and Petersburg were represented. Others represented included the agricultural industry, forestry, real estate, banking, the Lincoln County Commission and the budget committee as well as many others.

Eldridge said nine public meetings were held in each of the eight districts across the county and one was held countywide. “We had a lot of great public input,” he said, adding Croy Engineering also produced an online survey. “We got enough (information) that … the findings were considered statistically significant and that’s a big deal. That doesn’t always happen.”

He said in the middle of the comprehensive plan, they got stopped because of the growth plan and they found out the Lincoln County growth plan needed to be amended. “This was something that was not really on most of our radars,” he said. “Some folks were familiar with it, but the growth plan is separate from the comprehensive plan. The growth plan is mandated by statute, state law. The comprehensive plan is encouraged but it’s not a requirement.”

He said they were going down the trail of developing the comprehensive plan, which he called a “good thing,” but the original growth plan for Lincoln County was approved in 2000. “The state passed the law in 1998 that each community had to have these growth plans,” he said. “We did ours and submitted it. It was approved in 2000, but it had not been updated in 25 years.”

Eldridge said the law does not allow counties to rezone “contrary to the growth plan.” He said in some cases that was done and needs to be corrected because they didn’t reflect current requirements. “So, it became a priority,” he said. “We needed to update that.”

Eldridge said the comprehensive plan and the growth plan are complimentary with the most noticeable being the land use plan which was developed under the growth amendment. “The growth plan amendment is one that eventually will be rolled into the comprehensive plan,” Eldridge said.

During the May meeting, Eldridge said commissioners received a copy of the land use plan under the growth plan amendment. He said the land use plan sets aside planned growth areas and the areas in the communities can be zoned or used for light commercial or light industrial.

“The purpose of our land use plan is to protect property owners,” he said. “Basically, it allows the areas along major roadways … If it’s in a planned growth area, it will allow a person who owns property in these planned growth areas — whether it’s along a major road or in a community — to come through the normal process, petition the planning commission, and then ultimately the County Commission, to get approval to have a business in these areas. Right now, you can’t do that in some of these communities, and this will allow that to happen. Conversely, it will also protect the agricultural areas so we won’t have high density residential in some of our farmland and rural areas out there.

“It’s really to protect the property owner. It doesn’t mandate anything, but allows property owners the option to come and request rezoning if they want to do that.”

Eldridge didn’t ask for any action during the meeting. He said some issues need to be corrected. “The map is the biggest one …,” he said, adding Croy Engineering is working to get a better resolution on the map so viewers can see road names and things like that. He said there’s been some “software issues, compatibility issues” and the firm is working on it.

Eldridge said he would like to get commissioners feedback over the next month. He said they could possibly come back with the updated version at the next commission meeting.

“I realize there’s going to be a lot of opinions on this and we certainly welcome them if there are substantive changes that need to be made, we want to hear that and want to make sure that gets incorporated,” Eldridge said.

He said once the growth amendment is adopted, elements of it will be rolled in the comprehensive plan and it will come back before the commission to be adopted.

The “Lincoln County Growth Plan Final Draft” and the “Growth Plan Map” can be found at https://www.lincolncountytn. gov/document_ hub under “Growth Plan.”