We spotted an osprey on Monday, Feb. 24, in the nest closest to the Soundside Park shore (above) on North Dogwood Trail. Ospreys, which are birds of prey, return to their Outer Banks nests in late February or early March every year to mate, lay eggs, and launch their chicks into the world. The male arrives ahead of the female to prepare the nest for their months-long occupancy.
As many of you know, we announced on Feb. 2 an indefinite suspension of The Beacon’s publication, effective immediately, because of a significant change in our circumstances. Because of the suspension, we did not cover the Town Council’s Feb. 4 meeting.
We are publishing today only to advise you of a retreat the Town Council will be holding in the Pitts Center on Wednesday, from 8:30 a.m. until possibly as late as 3 p.m., to discuss a wide-ranging, “ambitious” agenda of issues confronting the Town of Southern Shores—or so the Council believes—in the future, both near and distant.
According to the agenda, the retreat will start at 8:30 a.m. with a light breakfast, and business will convene at 9 a.m. The Council will work through a lunch break starting at 12:30 p.m. and take up its last list of topics at 1:30 p.m.
Unlike at previous retreats, there is no public-comment period scheduled.
Printed atop the retreat agenda posted on the Town website is the note that not every item on it may be discussed. Assigned times for agenda items “are not meant to be strict,” the note reads, and the Council may choose to rearrange both times and items.
The posted agenda is as follows:
8:30 a.m. Light breakfast
9:00 a.m. Introduction: “13 Ways to Kill a Community” by Doug Griffiths*
Comments from the Southern Shores Civic Assn., by Board member Jeff Johnson, and the Chicahauk Property Owners Assn., by Karen Kranda, president
Budget summary
9:30 a.m. SERVICE LEVEL
1. Fire study report discussion
2. Are we providing the right level of service?
a. Do we need a Public Information Officer?
b. More use of social media
c. Access to information including digitally and use of AI
10:30 a.m. INFRASTRUCTURE
1. Stormwater
a. BRIC grant for project at 13th/Sea Oats *
b. Hickory/Wax Myrtle project
2. Access
a. Sidewalks
b. Linking to commercial sites
c. Golf carts
3. Community park/pockets parks
a. Purchasing property
b. Central gathering place
12:30 p.m. WORKING LUNCH
6. Discussion of items to reconsider
a. Tree ordinance
b. Speed limit on Route 12
c. Facility master planning
1:30 PLANNING
7. Entry Corridor Committee update
8. Non-conforming lots
9. Engaging outside resources
**Doug Griffiths, 52, is a Canadian who formerly served in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta as a Progressive Conservative and founded the consulting company, 13 Ways, Inc., 10 years ago.
According to Wikipedia.org, 13 Ways began as a book, “13 Ways to Kill Your Community,” that detailed in an entertaining satirical style the various ways in which one might “kill a community,” for example, through a failure to provide clean water, reliable Internet service, and a place where young people might return to raise families and retire.
(Beacon note: Clearly, a coastal resort area is different from the usual American community.)
**BRIC stands for Building Resilient Infrastructure in Communities. It is a funding program of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
We will not be attending or reporting upon the retreat.
If you view the video after the event is over, be sure to click on the “Live” link on the menu bar.
REGULAR TOWN MEETING ON TUESDAY, MARCH 4
The Town Council will hold its regular monthly meeting the evening before the retreat, starting at 5:30 p.m., in the Pitts Center.
Besides Town staff reports, Chairperson Donna Creef will be presenting the 2024 Dare Community Housing Task Force report.
Ms. Creef, a longtime member of the Dare County Planning Dept., who served for about a dozen years as Dare Planning Director, is currently director of government affairs for the Outer Banks Assn. of Realtors. She has been personally presenting the task force report to all Dare County town governments.
It has come to our attention that the sale listing for 23 and 27 Dolphin Run, which were sold as a “single offering,” clearly notified all prospective buyers that “Anyone thinking of developing this as two separate lots should make themselves informed regarding the Southern Shores Town Development Code Section 36-132.”
There is no mistaking this notification. The shame is that both of the brokers associated with this transaction are longtime Southern Shores homeowners.
The Town Council is scheduled to hold a public hearing tomorrow at its regular meeting to consider Zoning Text Amendment (ZTA) 25-01, which would give the purchaser of the three Dolphin Run lots, Melvin Garrison III of Fredericksburg, Va., an exemption from the recombination requirement of Code Sec. 36-132(a).
The current Town Code requires Mr. Garrison, doing business as Garrison Beach, LLC, to recombine all three lots into one. ZTA 25-01 allows Mr. Garrison to build on the two lots (43 and 44) that make up 23 Dolphin Run, without recombining them, and to maintain the third lot (45) separately. (Please see The Beacon’s reports on 1/28/25 and 1/31/25 for factual background and an aerial photo of the properties.)
The Town Could must not approve this ZTA.
According to realtor.com (listing content above), the listing agent for the Dolphin Run properties was John Leatherwood, a broker with Coldwell Banker Seaside Realty who goes by the name “the Sandman.”
Surely, Mr. Leatherwood knows after decades of doing business in Southern Shores how to read its Code of Ordinances: Section 36-132(a)(2)(e) clearly required his client to recombine the three lots comprising these properties before selling them. Mr. Leatherwood could have done more than notify prospective buyers of the recombination: He could have notified the Town of an impending sale.
The buyer was represented by broker Gray Berryman, who is with Carolina Designs Realty and has often appeared at Town Council meetings, most recently in The Beacon’s recollection, to advocate for sidewalks in town.
Mr. Berryman, a former member of the Town Planning Board, was one of the investors who profited from the purchase and division of a developed 100-foot-wide lot in the oceanside area of Southern Shores into two 50-foot-wide-lots—before the Town rewrote the nonconforming lots/recombination ordinance in 2018-2019 to unambiguously prevent what he did.
In fact, Mr. Berryman and his wife currently own two nonconforming lots in Southern Shores that escaped the reach of the new Town Code sec. 36-132: 22 Porpoise Run (7,500 square feet) and 172 Wax Myrtle Trail (10,000 square feet).
Mr. Berryman is quite familiar with the nonconforming lots controversy and the process that the Town went through in order to draft and enact the current version of Town Code sec. 36-132. ZTA 25-01 proposes to amend sec. 36-132(a) to give Mr. Berryman’s former client, Mr. Garrison, an exemption from recombination that is uniquely tailored to his personal situation. This should not be allowed.
In light of this background, we strongly urge the Town Council to reject ZTA 25-01 and to defend the nonconforming lots/recombination ordinance, as it is written and has been in effect for the past five years. Mr. Garrison should not be able to buy a change in the law of which he was aware, but simply chose to disregard.
The Town should defend the ordinance and the rest of the property owners in Southern Shores. It has the winning argument, and the money expended in proving it is worth it.
By Ann G. Sjoerdsma, The Southern Shores Beacon, 2/3/25
The agenda for the Town Council’s regular meeting Tuesday ranges broadly from a special presentation by Dare County EMS Chief Jennie L. Collins and the swearing in of new Police Officer Austin Jones to an update by the Town Manager about the Juniper/Trinitie Trail Bridge Replacement Project to proposed amendments to the Town Code ordinance governing the Southern Shores Cemetery to a Town proposal to reduce the number of public-comment periods held during Council meetings from two to one.
And, of course, as we have written in reports on 1/28/25 and 1/31/25, the Town Council will hold a public hearing on Zoning Text Amendment 25-01, which gives a wealthy investor from Fredericksburg, Va., a personalized exemption to the nonconforming lots/recombination ordinance, Code sec. 36-132, in order for the Town to avoid going to court.
The meeting will be held at 5:30 p.m. in the Pitts Center and may be live-streamed on the Southern Shores You Tube website.
In addition to the above agenda items, the Town Council will be:
• Approving appropriations from the Unassigned Fund Balance of $9,975 to fund the Southern Shores Volunteer Fire Dept.-Town merger feasibility study (see The Beacon, 1/8/25) and $4,965 for unspecified commercial garbage collection as part of its consent agenda;
• Supporting a resolution by the non-profit N.C. Beach, Inlet, and Waterway Assn. (NCBIWA) to update the 2016 Beach and Inlet Management Plan, also part of the consent agenda;
• Recognizing Southern Shores Police Sgt. Eric P. Brinkley for his years of service;
• Moving forward with renting the Town-owned flat top at 13 Skyline Road to the Southern Shores Civic Assn. and the Chicahauk Property Owners Assn., which currently rent space in the Pitts Center; and
• Discussing “meeting specifics and topic ideas” for the Council’s March retreat, which is open to the public.
REDUCTION OF PUBLIC-COMMENT PERIODS
The Beacon strongly opposes the Town’s proposal to amend the Town Council’s Rules of Procedure to eliminate the requirement that two public-comment periods must be held at the Council’s regular meetings. Under the proposal, the language of Rules Section 17, which is titled “Public address to the Council,” would be changed from:
“The Council shall provide two periods for public comment at regular meetings . . . for anyone to address the Council on any matter not on the agenda for public hearing.”
To:
“The council shall provide at least one period for public comment per month at a regular meeting of the council . . . [etc., as above].”
Although Section 17 cites a section of North Carolina General Statutes Chapter 160A, which pertains to cities and towns, this action is not mandated by it.
NCGS sec. 160A-81.1, which is the public-comment section of Chapter 160A, specifies the language that the Town seeks to adopt (i.e., “shall provide at least one period for public comment”), but it does not prohibit the Town from mandating more than one public-comment period.
We do not believe the scheduling of a second public-comment period should be discretionary.
The two public-comment periods that have been held for years have not been disruptive to Town Council meetings nor have they consumed an undue amount of time. Speakers are limited to three minutes, and they respect that limitation.
We would think that Town Council members would want to hear more from the public they have been elected to serve, not less. With two public-comment periods, Southern Shores property owners and residents are able to comment before the Town Council’s business agenda, as well as after, thus offering an immediate response to action that the Council may have taken.
Mayor Elizabeth Morey has been gracious about allowing members of the public to speak during these comment periods, even though they did not sign up to do so. She has invited people to the lectern. We urge her to continue this graciousness and not curtail the Council’s commitment to allotting time for public comments.
CHANGES TO SOUTHERN SHORES CEMETERY ORDINANCE
The Town has introduced Town Code Amendment 25-1 to amend the ordinance establishing and governing the Southern Shores Cemetery, which is Section 10-1 of the Town Code.
Regrettably, we have not had an opportunity to do more than skim the proposed changes, which are numerous. The only change that leaped out at us as inappropriate is a limitation on the number of cemetery lots that a family can buy. That number is four.
Is the Town trying to conserve space in the cemetery for more families by legislating this restriction? Certainly, it’s not trying to “break up” families.
Eventually, the cemetery will run out of space, but with cremation becoming more popular, that may not be for quite some time. We do not approve of an arbitrary restriction that discriminates against large families. If the Town is trying to prevent the hoarding of lots by families, it should find another way to do so.
You will find a report about TCA 25-1 and the proposed amendment on pages 33-38 of the meeting packet.
HEARING TO EXTEND BAN OF HOMEOWNER FROM TOWN PROPERTIES
The Town Council will hold a public hearing at 3 p.m. Tuesday to extend a temporary ban of homeowner Anthony Mina, of 75 E. Dogwood Trail, from all Town-owned properties. As evidence for the hearing, Town Manager Cliff Ogburn has posted in the hearing packet 37 of the more than 1,000 emails that Mr. Mina has sent to the Town.
We wrote about Mr. Mina’s property situation, which is the source of his complaints, on 10/19/24 and 10/22/24. Starting Dec. 23, we, too, have been on his email list.
If you have been to a Town Council meeting in recent months, you will have noticed an increased police presence. Mr. Mina is the reason why.
We hope he is not the reason for the proposed change in the public-comment periods.
The hearing will be live-streamed on the Town’s You Tube website.
TAKING A BREAK
We are unable to cover either of the Town Council’s meetings Tuesday. In fact, because of changed circumstances, we are taking an extended break from publishing The Beacon, effective immediately.
We regret having to make this decision, but we need to focus our time and energies elsewhere. In the event that something momentous happens in town that demands coverage, we may step back into reporting temporarily to cover it.
PLEASE NOTE: Dare County’s property reevaluation notices are now scheduled to be mailed in March, not February.
By Ann G. Sjoerdsma, The Southern Shores Beacon, 2/2/25
Despite considerable reluctance by four of its members, the Southern Shores Planning Board unanimously recommended approval Wednesday of an amendment to the Town’s nonconforming lots/recombination ordinance that is exclusively designed to give a new property owner who refused to comply with the existing ordinance an exemption from its operation.
Only Board Chairperson Andy Ward supported Zoning Text Amendment (“ZTA”) 25-01, which adds a tailormade exemption to the recombination mandate in Town Code sec. 36-132, in order to be a “good neighbor” to wealthy investor Melvin L. Garrison III of Fredericksburg, Va.
Mr. Ward, who participated five years ago in “carving out” exemptions from sec. 36-132, also advocated approving ZTA 25-01 in order to avoid litigation and the expenditure of more Town Attorney’s fees than the Town has already paid.
FACTUAL AND LEGAL BACKGROUND
Last August, Mr. Garrison, doing business as Garrison Beach LLC, bought three lots on Dolphin Run that are each smaller than the minimum 20,000 square feet required of lots in the RS-1 single family residential district.
When Deputy Town Manager/Planning Director Wes Haskett issued a formal interpretation of sec. 36-132 stating that Mr. Harrison had to recombine the three lots into one, the nonresident landowner rejected it. Instead, Mr. Harrison hired local attorney Casey Varnell of Sharp, Graham, Baker & Varnell to appeal the interpretation.
Please see our 1/28/25 report for further details.
Louis J. (“Johnny”) Hallow III, a young associate in the Elizabeth City office of Hornthal, Riley, Ellis & Maland, which represents the Town, presided at the Planning Board’s meeting Wednesday and acknowledged that he had spent “weeks” grappling with Code sec. 36-132 and drafting the language of ZTA 25-01 to allow Mr. Harrison to legally disregard the ordinance.
Mr. Varnell stated that he had not had a hand in writing the amendment.
ZTA 25-01 principally addresses sec. 36-132(a)(1), which lists property scenarios that are exempted from the requirement in sec. 36-132(b) that all adjacent nonconforming lots owned by the same owner must be recombined (or combined) into one lot upon sale or development.
As Mr. Ward recalled, the current exemptions were “carved out” for known property owners whom the Town thought were unduly harmed by a 2018 rewrite of the ordinance that sought to prevent property owners from selling 100-foot-wide land tracts consisting of two 50-foot-wide lots as two lots, rather than one.
A trend emerged in 2017 of property owners dividing up such 100-foot-wide parcels, which were located on or near the oceanfront—the first area developed in Southern Shores—and the Town had to catch up with it. At risk was the loss of the low-density environment for which Southern Shores is known and loved.
Before the Town took corrective action, the Planning Board, sitting as the Board of Adjustment, granted side-setback variances to property owners of some newly created 50-foot-wide building lots. They were allowed to reduce the side setback width from 15 feet to 10 feet.
Mr. Garrison’s lots consist of 23 Dolphin Run, a 15,000-square-foot tract of land made up of two 50-foot-wide lots (43 and 44); and 27 Dolphin Run, a 10,500-square-foot, 70-foot-wide lot (45), on which a flat-top home currently sits. (See photo above.)
As Mr. Haskett summarized the action of ZTA 25-01 in his Staff Report, it would: “permit the construction of a single-family dwelling and customary accessory building on two or more currently nonconforming adjacent lots as a single development site, if at least one of two or more nonconforming adjacent lots is located adjacent to a single nonconforming lot that is under the same ownership and on which there is located an existing single-family dwelling, and the adjacent improved land is made up of no more than two lots all of which are nonconforming.”
ZTA 25-01, therefore, allows Mr. Garrison to build on lots 43 and 44 without having to recombine them. Should he decide to sell the lots, and they are vacant, the ZTA requires him then to recombine them.
Neither the confusing and complicated language of the zoning text amendment nor the fact that it does not require Mr. Garrison to recombine lots 43 and 44 sat well with the four reluctant Planning Board members.
Mr. Ward participated in the drafting of the current ordinance, which was finalized in September 2019 after more than a year of discussions in the Planning Board and the Town Council. He told his colleagues Wednesday that former Town Attorney Ben Gallop, the ordinance’s principal author, predicted the Town would have problems with it. We are not sure this is what Mr. Gallop had in mind.
“I just want to send [the ZTA] to the Town Council, I don’t want to approve it,” said Board Member Robert McClendon. “. . . This is more complicated than it might need to be.”
Board Member Jan Collins asked what would happen if they sent the ZTA to the Town Council without taking action on it. Mr. Haskett replied that no action was equivalent to a recommendation, but he did not explain why.
“I’m hamstrung by the language,” Mr. McClendon said later in exploring the ZTA’s meaning and expressing exasperation with it.
He also thought that lots 43 and 44 should be recombined, to create a 15,000-square-foot building site. Mr. Garrison plans to build on that, regardless, he probed, so why not require a recombination? Others agreed.
“This is probably the most complicated ordinance I have read” in the Town Code, said Board Vice-Chairperson Tony DiBernardo. “A layman should be able to pick [an ordinance] up, read it, and understand what it says.”
That is not the case here, Mr. DiBernardo said, emphasizing the point by reading some of the language from sec. 36-132. He received no argument from Mr. Hallow.
Mr. DiBernardo also asked about the “next exemption” request. Isn’t ZTA 25-01 opening the door for other property owners, with two or more adjacent nonconforming lots, to ask for preferential treatment? Mr. Haskett replied that Mr. Garrison’s scenario was unique.
Ed Lawler, who joined the Planning Board in January 2019 during the discussions about a new nonconforming lots/recombination ordinance, posed hypotheticals about what would happen to Mr. Garrison’s property if he built a residence on lots 43 and 44 that later burned down. And suppose Mr. Garrison had removed the flat top on lot 45 after the house’s construction?
The recombination exemption in ZTA 25-01 applies only if there is an “existing single family dwelling” on an adjacent tract of land that is no more than two nonconforming lots.
It also provides that if the exempted lots are sold later as vacant lots, Mr. Harrison loses his exemption and must recombine them.
Indeed, the sellers from whom Mr. Harrison bought the lots were required by Code sec. 36-132(2)(e) to recombine them first, but they did not, and the Town, presumably unaware of the sale, did not enforce the ordinance.
Although Mr. Hallow argued that enforcement by the Town was not realistic, and Mr. Varnell agreed, saying that the buyer (his client) bought at his/her/their own risk, we believe otherwise.
Five years ago, Mr. Haskett identified, with the assistance of the Dare County Tax Dept. and the Tax Mapping Dept., the total number of lots in Southern Shores (3,037) and the number of those lots that are nonconforming because they are less than 20,000 square feet in area (846). Of those 846, according to Mr. Haskett’s data, there were 241 parcels with multiple lots, of which 55 were nonconforming in total land size.
We do not believe it would have been difficult for the Town to have sent out notices to the owners of those 55 properties, two of which were 23 and 27 Dolphin Run, and advised them of the operation of sec. 36-132. Nor do we think it would have been that difficult to monitor those 55 properties on the Multi-Listing Service. Someone would just have had to have done it.
After much discussion, Chairperson Ward made a motion to recommend approving ZTA 25-01 and waited some time before he got an unenthusiastic second from Ms. Collins.
TOWN COUNCIL PUBLIC HEARING
ZTA 25-01 is scheduled for a public hearing before the Town Council at its regular meeting next Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. in the Pitts Center.
We will preview the agenda in a blog post Sunday. Among the items to be discussed is an amendment to the Town Council’s Rules of Procedure to eliminate the requirement that two public-comment periods be held at the Council’s regular meetings.
Based on what we saw and heard at the Planning Board meeting, we have no doubt that the Town Council will pass ZTA 25-01, most likely unanimously.
Mayor Elizabeth Morey has made clear her motivation to “stay out of court,” and enactment of ZTA 25-01 allows the Town to do that. In fact, Mr. Haskett stated in his Staff Report that ZTA 25-01 was drafted in order to “avoid an appeal” by Mr. Garrison to Dare County Superior Court.
We also have seen repeatedly in the past 10 years that the Town Council will not second-guess nor decline to adopt Code language that a Town Attorney has devoted considerable time drafting. It just isn’t done.
We would have preferred a settlement that required Mr. Harrison to recombine lots 43 and 44, but gave him a variance for lot 45 so that it could remain separate. There is precedent for single lots of its size.
We agree with the Planning Board majority that the language of ZTA 25-01 and Town Code sec. 36-132 is dreadful. We said the same thing five years ago. But what bothers us more is that Mr. Harrison apparently will be able to buy a change in the Town law that benefits only him.
By Ann G. Sjoerdsma, The Southern Shores Beacon, 1/31/25
The lots at issue are those making up 27 Dolphin Run and 23 Dolphin Run, shown above in a photo from Dare County GIS.
The Town Planning Board is holding a special meeting tomorrow at 3 p.m. to consider a Zoning Text Amendment that would allow a wealthy investor from Virginia to circumvent the Town’s nonconforming lots/recombination ordinance and develop two of three undersized lots he bought on Dolphin Run last August without combining all three into one.
The meeting will be held in the Pitts Center. Zoning Text Amendment 25-01 has already been scheduled for a public hearing before the Town Council at its Feb. 4 regular meeting.
You can live-stream the meeting on the Town of Southern Shores You Tube website.
According to the Staff Report for ZTA 25-01, Deputy Town Manager/Planning Director Wes Haskett and the Town Attorney worked with a local attorney hired by Melvin L. Garrison III of Fredericksburg, Va., to establish “a new exemption” to the mandatory recombination of nonconforming lots, as set forth in Town Code sec. 36-132(a)(1), in order to “avoid an appeal” by Garrison to Dare County Superior Court.
Although Mr. Haskett also writes in his report of enacting ZTA 25-01in order to “modernize the Town Code,” the proposed changes are clearly driven by the threat of litigation.
Rather than enact a preferential exemption to appease an aggrieved property owner, we would like the Town to thoughtfully review the language of the nonconforming lots/recombination ordinance, which was finalized and enacted in haste in 2019, and to consider its practical application since then.
Is the ordinance doing what the Town intended it to do?
It certainly is a torturously written ordinance that will only become more so with the enactment of the proposed language of ZTA 25-01. We would rather see the entirety of Code sec. 36-132 revised and simplified than to see it rendered even more impenetrable.
FACTUAL BACKGROUND
On Aug. 13, 2024, Mr. Garrison purchased 23 Dolphin Run, a 15,000-square-foot tract of land consisting of two 50-foot-wide lots (43 and 44); and 27 Dolphin Run, a 10,500-square-foot, 70-foot-wide lot (45), on which a flat-top home currently sits.
The actual record owner of the properties is Garrison Beach, LLC, which is managed by Mr. Garrison and uses his home address.
Lots are considered “nonconforming” when they do not meet the dimensional requirements in the Southern Shores Town Code of Ordinances. Code sec. 36-202(d) spells out the requirements for the single family residential district, RS-1, in which Dolphin Run is located. The minimum lot size is 20,000 square feet. (This is sec. 36-202(d)(1).)
(The minimum lot width in the RS-1 district used to be 100 feet, but it is unclear now whether that requirement applies to lots created before June 6, 2023. We would need to write another article to explain why. See Town Code sec. 36-202(d)(2).)
As we read the nonconforming lots/recombination ordinance, which was extensively overhauled in 2018-19 by the Planning Board and Town Council, the one seller of the three properties now owned by Garrison should have recombined them before the sales occurred. But this did not happen. We believe that is how the ordinance should operate.
Instead, in response to circumstances not explained by the Staff Report, Mr. Haskett issued a formal interpretation of Section 36-132(a) on Sept. 16, 2024, in which he said that Garrison could not “legally construct a single-family dwelling and customary accessory building upon Lots 43 and 44 without recombining them with Lot 45 prior to development.”
In other words, all three nonconforming lots had to be recombined as one.
Subsection “a” of 36-132 spells out when the sale and development of nonconforming lots owned by the same party may occur without recombination.
Garrison’s local attorney, Casey Varnell, appealed Mr. Haskett’s interpretation, and the parties have been in what Mr. Haskett has described publicly as mediation until now.
In our view, the Town is proposing to make an already confusing and poorly written ordinance even worse in order to give Mr. Harrison, who should have known about the mandatory recombination when he bought the three lots, what he wants: to build a dwelling on nonconforming lots 43 and 44 (23 Dolphin Run) without having to combine any of the three nonconforming lots.
If Mr. Garrison’s lots are exempt from recombination, then presumably he could tear down the flat top and re-develop Lot 45, or sell it.
As Mr. Haskett summarizes its action in his report, ZTA 25-01 would:
“permit the construction of a single-family dwelling and customary accessory building on two or more currently nonconforming adjacent lots as a single development site, if at least one of two or more nonconforming adjacent lots is located adjacent to a single nonconforming lot that is under the same ownership and on which there is located an existing single-family dwelling, and the adjacent improved land is made up of no more than two lots all of which are nonconforming.”
ZTA 25-01 proposes such cumbersome language be added to Code sec. 36-132(a)(1) as an exemption to the recombination mandate, which is already cumbersome enough.
The Town first grappled with rewriting Town Code sec. 36-132 in 2018 after property owners began selling 100-foot-wide lots consisting of two 50-foot-wide lots as two lots, rather than one.
The trend toward splintering such lots, which were located on or near the oceanfront—the first area developed in Southern Shores—started in 2017, and the Town had to catch up with it. At risk was the loss, or at least the degradation, of the low-density environment for which Southern Shores is known and loved.
Among the properties that slipped through the cracks were 103 Ocean Blvd. and 103A Ocean Blvd, which were once a single property with one dwelling; and 155 Ocean Blvd. and 155A Ocean Blvd., which also were one property with one dwelling.
Then-Town Attorney Ben Gallop deemed the then-current version of sec. 36-132 inadequate to defeat this trend, so the Town embarked on a rewrite of the Code section, which took shape in a series of meetings over months, all of which we attended. The last of the changes to sec. 36-132 were not made until September 2019.
Mr. Gallop authored the revised ordinance.
In the process, the Town reviewed what it considered the equities of the circumstances of identified property owners and made very deliberate exemptions to the recombination mandate.
Hence, you have an exemption from recombination of a lot that is “one of three or less [sic] adjacent nonconforming lots under the ownership of related siblings on September 6, 2019.”
These siblings were known to the Planning Board and the Town Council.
You also have a widow separately selling the three vacant nonconforming lots she owned on Porpoise Run to three different buyers in July 2018, as 22, 24, and 26 Porpoise Run. The smaller of the three lots—22 and 24 Porpoise Run—are only 7500 square feet.
We have no problem with the Town protecting property owners for a fair and defensible reason: Before the rewrite of sec. 36-132, property owners justifiably relied upon being able to sell adjacent nonconforming lots individually—and hence, for more money—not as a single whole.
But rather than awarding preferential treatment—as it proposes to do again—we would like the Town to develop fair and reasonable principles to govern and limit the nonconforming lots/recombination ordinance.
Is the ordinance working as intended? After five years of operation, Mr. Haskett should know.
We also believe the ordinance should be rewritten so that it is less confusing, more comprehensive, and friendlier to all property owners.
We are aware, for example, that Mr. Haskett has interpreted a subsection of the ordinance to require longtime homeowners to recombine the lots, on which their beach homes were built decades ago, before he will approve a building permit for a new back deck or a new staircase.
This is an expensive prerequisite: Recombinations require surveys, which cost up to $1500 today. Then fees are paid on top of that cost. (See Code sec. 36-132(a)(2)(c).)
Government action taken only in order to avoid litigation by an aggrieved party is poor government, in our view. It is a disservice to the community, including the aggrieved party, and a discredit to the Town. When will the next exemption occur?
And if all it takes for the Town to back down from defending its ordinance is the threat of litigation, isn’t it favoring the wealthy over those who cannot afford to pay $400 an hour for an attorney?
We encourage you to read Town Code sec. 36-132 and ZTA 25-01 and to participate in the Planning Board’s discussion about the nonconforming lots/recombination ordinance. The ordinance is fundamental to the preservation of Southern Shores as a low-density housing town, but, as currently written, it is problematic to read and interpret and is conditioned on exemptions.
By Ann G. Sjoerdsma, The Southern Shores Beacon, 1/28/25
A view south this morning toward the three-way-stop intersection of South, East, and North Dogwood trails.
We intend to hunker down today and stay indoors, but first we had to photograph the snowy scene on North Dogwood Trail (above) and measure the snow accumulation. By our crude method—a yardstick, inserted in several places—our area in Southern Shores received about six inches.
Reports by Dare County Emergency Management, which The Outer Banks Voice has relayed on its website, indicate that more snow fell in Kill Devil Hills and points south—up to nine inches of accumulation.
We saw the first snow flurries at 4:09 p.m. yesterday, but we did not see when the snow ended early this morning. (If you did, please update us.)
According to an intrepid dog walker whom we met during our assessment, all of the snow-covered residential streets he traversed in Southern Shores (and this guy travels with his snow-savvy dogs) are slick with ice underneath, making walking dangerous.
He reported seeing mostly pick-up trucks on the road. An SUV and a landscaping truck with a crew (!) drove past us on North Dogwood Trail while we were talking, and we saw a Southern Shores police sedan turn right on East Dogwood Trail from South Dogwood Trail at the three-way-stop intersection.
Some of you may remember the last appreciable snowfall on the Outer Banks, which occurred in January of 2018. According to The Outer Banks Voice, Southern Shores reported close to 10 inches then.
Other significant snowfalls occurred in January of 2002 and 2003, with up to eight inches reported. The Raleigh News & Observer has posted archival photographs of Outer Bankers sledding at the Wright Brothers Memorial, engaging in snowfall fights, and otherwise enjoying/tolerating the snowfalls of 22 and 23 years ago.
We recall a snowstorm in 1996 that drew us out of the house for a walk to the beach to witness that transformed natural splendor. Unfortunately, we fell on black ice on the Dick White Bridge, hitting our head, and did not make it that far.
(We also remember our vehicle doing a 360-degree tail spin while turning left slowly on to U.S. Hwy. 158 from Southern Shores at the “big” Welcome Center intersection when we thought it was safe to travel. It may have been in 2018. We turned around and drove home.)
Please be safe and careful out there! Do not underestimate the hazards. They are there, sometimes hidden.
We welcome your posts about the road and snow conditions where you are. What are you experiencing? For area updates, we recommend you check The Voice or dial into Dare County Emergency Management at DareNC.gov/Winterstorm.
It looks like our best snow-plowing equipment—rays of sunshine—will not arrive until Friday, according to the National Weather Service, but the daytime temperature should rise above freezing tomorrow. The NWS forecasts a high temperature today of 28 degrees F.
The results of a study to assess the “feasibility” of the non-profit Southern Shores Volunteer Fire Dept. (SSVFD) becoming a department of the Town of Southern Shores’ municipal government will be available in February, according to Town Manager Cliff Ogburn, who reported on the study’s progress at last night’s Town Council meeting.
The “merger feasibility analysis” is being conducted by consultants whom the Town hired from the N.C. Fire Chief Consulting organization, according to Mr. Ogburn, who elaborated upon the interview- and data-collection/review process that has occurred so far and briefly looked at the impact a merger might have on Southern Shores property taxes.
The Town Manager’s report about the SSVFD study and other town projects, including the Juniper/Trinitie Trail Bridge Replacement and the use of the Town’s flat top at 13 Skyline Road, and his report on the Town’s finances for the second quarter of FY 2024-25, constituted the bulk of the Town Council’s first regular meeting of the year, which lasted only 45 minutes and concluded with another closed session.
You may stream Mr. Ogburn’s presentation on the Town’s You Tube website. Simply access the video for the Jan. 7, 2025 meeting and fast-forward to the 10-minute mark.
SSVFD-TOWN MERGER: IS IT (FINANCIALLY AND OTHERWISE) FEASIBLE?
The first that Southern Shores property owners heard about the prospect of a merger or “unification” of the Town’s longtime volunteer fire department with the Town’s government was Dec. 6 when Mayor Elizabeth Morey sent a “special announcement” email to Southern Shores residents, property owners, and business owners. She was joined in this email by Eddie Hayman, Chairman of the Board of the SSVFD. (See The Beacon, 12/7/24, for a report.)
The Mayor’s email announced that an evaluation of the “long-term sustainability of our present volunteer system” is “appropriate at this time,” but she gave no explanation as to why.
We believe Southern Shores property taxpayers deserve to know the reasoning behind the Town Council’s decision to commission a study.
Mr. Ogburn spoke last night of the study enabling the Town to assess “what a transition from volunteer to paid would look like,” but the public “optics” of the demands currently made on the SSVFD do not support such a transition.
While we recognize the important role the SSVFD plays in responding to EMS calls, many of us are hard-pressed to remember when Southern Shores last had a structure fire—although we appreciate that the SSVFD assists neighboring fire departments in emergencies.
SSVFD Fire Chief Ed Limbacher, who has been cooperating with the consultants’ study, told The Beacon last night that, although he is a proponent of the volunteer system, in which he came up, he favors the merger. He expressed difficulty in fielding and retaining a complement of trained firefighters.
We believe the Southern Shores public would benefit from hearing directly from Chief Limbacher about his department’s everyday activities, needs, and resources and would encourage him to hold a forum after the feasibility report is filed. We feel certain that members of the public are not reading the community-minded Chief’s annual reports and will not read the N.C. Fire Chief Consulting’s report, but they will care about an increase in their taxes.
As The Beacon reported 12/7/24, the Town of Southern Shores’ budget for the SSVFD in FY 2024-25 was $1,207,335: $893,315 for contracted services and $314,020 for the annual debt on the new fire station at 15 S. Dogwood Trail. The Town assumed a 25-year mortgage in FY 2020-21 to pay for the construction of the station, which cost $5,419,223.
Southern Shores property owners pay a general ad valorem tax of 23.58 cents on each $100 of real and personal property value. Taxes for beach nourishment, assessed according to Municipal Service District, are added to this rate.
Mr. Ogburn said last night that Southern Shores property owners currently pay 7.15 cents of their 23.58 cents per $100 of value for SSVFD’s contracted services, an amount that includes salaries for three full-time and two part-time employees.
If the SSVFD were to become a paid department of the Town now, he said—before this year’s property revaluations, which, he noted, will change tax rates “tremendously”—property owners would see a 1.15-cent tax increase to hire just two firefighters.
(Dare County property owners should expect to receive their revaluation notices in mid- to late-February.)
So far, according to the Town Manager, the feasibility study consultants have interviewed 15 members of the SSVFD, all five members of the Town Council, and “key external stakeholders,” and will soon survey the full membership of the SSVFD. They also have accessed the SSVFD’s “incident record systems,” “response data,” and financial data. We await their analysis.
“The idea,” Mr. Ogburn concluded, “is to keep the volunteers as long as we possibly can.”
QUARTERLY FINANCIALS: REVENUES ARE DOWN
The Town’s expenses exceeded its revenues in the second quarter of FY 2024-25 (October through December) by $481,842, Mr. Ogburn reported, an amount that he said “is typical, historically, for us.”
As of Dec. 31, 2024, expenses for the fiscal year were $6,351,998.32, while revenues were $5,870,156.04. In FY 2023-24, the expenses as of Dec. 31, 2023, were $6,452,867, and the revenues were $6,137,819, for a shortfall of $315,048.
The Town has spent 44.54 percent of its approved amended budget for FY 2024-25 of $14,261,969. In the same quarter of FY 2023-24, the Town had spent 53 percent of the budget.
The Town Manager provides an informative financial report to the Town Council each quarter. You may access his second quarter report at https://www.southernshores-nc.gov/media/11361.
As anticipated, occupancy, sales, and land-transfer tax revenues for FY 2024-25 show a “steady decline from the massive increases in recent years,” which were attributable to the pandemic boom, Mr. Ogburn said. Such revenues are $170,392 lower than they were as of Dec. 31, 2023, and $134,405 lower than they were as of Dec. 31, 2022.
Ad valorem tax revenues should pick up in the third quarter. As of Dec. 31, 72.73 percent of the assessed taxes had been collected.
“Eventually, things start to level up and catch up, as we start to collect more ad valorem and occupancy, sales, and land-transfer taxes,” the Town Manager observed.
TRINITIE TRAIL BRIDGE REPLACEMENT UPDATE
As you undoubtedly know, the Juniper Trail/Trinitie Trail Bridge was closed to all traffic as of Dec. 9, and contractor Smith-Rowe LLC, of Raleigh started the bridge’s reconstruction. On Dec. 13, a portion of the culvert, which channels water under the bridge, caved in when a crane came into too-close contact with it.
The crane was being put in place by Smith-Rowe for use the next week in removing the culvert, Mr. Ogburn explained in a Town news release.
The Town Manager reported last night that the crane is still not in the correct position, and the culvert has not been hauled away. The contractor also has experienced some delays because of “mechanical issues.”
Smith-Rowe has been driving sheet piles at the bridge site, Mr. Ogburn reported, work that creates vibrations that can be felt by people in nearby homes and can damage property.
The contractor also mistakenly performed construction on a Sunday, much to neighbors’ consternation. Mr. Ogburn assured Town Councilman Mark Batenic, who lives in Chicahauk, that this will not happen again.
According to the Town Manager, Smith-Rowe has only billed the Town $100,000 of its $1.667 million contract costs. This amount was for mobilization.
An in-water construction moratorium goes into effect Feb. 15, and Mr. Ogburn said the contractor is on schedule to have all in-water work done by then.
The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission imposed the moratorium to protect anadromous fish, including Atlantic sturgeons, which can be found in Southern Shores waters. The moratorium expires on Sept. 30, which is about two-three months after the expected completion of the bridge replacement.
USE OF THE ‘UNDERUTILIZED’ TOWN FLAT TOP ON SKYLINE ROAD
The Town is exploring leasing the flat top it owns at 13 Skyline Road to the Southern Shores Civic Assn. and the Chicahauk Property Owners Assn. for office space. Both associations currently have offices on the second floor of the Pitts Center, where the Town would like to store files.
The Town’s original plan for the renovated flat top was to offer it to a newly hired police officer as temporary housing. It was viewed as a hiring “incentive,” Mayor Morey said last night, but after more than a year, the Town had no takers.
While the Town recently hired a new police officer, it also lost Deputy Police Chief Jonathan M. Slegel to retirement. Rather than continuing to offer the flat top, which the Mayor described as “an under-utilized piece of property,” to a police hire, the Town is looking to move on.
The Town purchased the flat top, which was built by Southern Shores’ founding owner and developer Frank Stick, from the Outer Banks Community Foundation in September 2022 for $400,000. The OBCF received the historic residence in 2007 as a gift from John and Norma Tietjen, who restricted its use to the OBCF’s offices, the offices of another qualifying non-profit (501(c)(3)) organization, or the offices of a federal, state, or local government.
The OBCF expanded and moved to Manteo.
Mr. Ogburn said he anticipates bringing a rental agreement between the Town and the SSCA and CPOA to the Town Council at its Feb. 4 meeting.
AMONG THE OTHER HIGHLIGHTS OF THE TOWN MANAGER’S REPORT:
*The Town has received $91,533.67 from the Dare County Tourism Bureau to continue its efforts to replace damaged multi-use pathways on Duck Road (N.C. Hwy. 12) from Fifth Avenue to Hillcrest Trail.
*The Town has finished scanning all Planning Dept. property documents for digitization.
THE NEXT ENTRY CORRIDOR ENHANCEMENT COMMITTEE MEETING IS SCHEDULED ON MONDAY, AT 9 A.M., IN THE PITTS CENTER.
According to Chairperson/Mayor Pro Tem Matt Neal, the committee has spent its first two meetings discussing its mission statement. Minutes are not yet available. Monday’s meeting is open to the public.
By Ann G. Sjoerdsma, The Southern Shores Beacon, 1/8/25
A perfect example of a Christmas tree placed curbside that can be recycled on the beaches. Not an icicle remains.
Southern Shores homeowner Len Schmitz, who has been a leader in the on-going effort to plant grass on our beaches, will be placing discarded Christmas trees on the dunes the first three Saturdays this month to help prevent sand erosion. He will be meeting with other volunteers at noon each Saturday in the Hillcrest Beach parking lot, where residents may dispose of their trees, provided they have removed all metal and decorations.
Mr. Schmitz also will be driving around town, picking up similarly unadorned trees that residents leave at the roadside for pickup by the Town during its regular limb/branch collections, he told The Beacon. (Do not be surprised if he retrieves your tree before the Town does.)
The Town will start its tree (and other brush) collections on Monday, Jan. 6, with sector one and continue weekly in chronological order with sectors two through four. If you do not know what sector your street is in or if you did not even know there were sectors, we encourage you to look up the Town’s website page for 2025 collections, at the bottom of which a street/sector legend appears: https://www.southernshores-nc.gov/media/11211
Mr. Schmitz will be working alongside volunteers from the Southern Shores Civic Assn. and Better Beaches. If you would like to help out, all you have to do is show up at the Hillcrest Beach parking lot on the Saturdays when they will be recycling trees.
The Christmas trees act as a natural barrier to windblown sand—catching it—and provide a biodegradable structure that will help to grow the dunes.
For more information, you may contact Mr. Schmitz at fenceplantrepeat@gmail.com.
GRASS PLANTING TODAY: If you would like to help with beach-grass planting and have some time this afternoon, Mr. Schmitz will be meeting with volunteers at the 108A Ocean Blvd. access to plant grass from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Such plantings are a valuable addition to the beach nourishment that was performed.
TOWN COUNCIL MEETING NEXT TUESDAY: The Southern Shores Town Council will meet for the first time in 2025 next Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. in the Pitts Center. The meeting agenda should be posted on the Town website tomorrow.
Happy New Year and thank you to all volunteers who help to maintain the Southern Shores beaches and coastal environment for all of us to enjoy.
The Southern Shores Beacon 