More on zoning battle

Contributed
Published: July 3, 2008

To the editor,
The feature article “Supremely Satisfied” by Hannah Wever presented a good overall view of events leading up to the Virginia Supreme Court decision. This article involved an attempt by us to obtain a building permit for a home on 106 acres zoned agricultural. The building permit, initially approved, was later revoked by the zoning administrator.
We would like to mention some things which the coverage did not mention.
We feel that Orange citizens should be aware of a series of events which have involved at least three levels of county government (including the board of supervisors), and dragged out over two years, that possibly resulted in the expenditure of taxpayer funds during that period.
In 2006 this “unbuildable property” was assessed at $691,300.
There were three attempts to settle this case in exchange for a building permit. We agreed to the first two conditions by Orange. When the third condition was added later by the supervisors, we rejected it as being impractical and unreasonable.
Not mentioned in the article were observations made in both the Supreme Court and Circuit Court decisions that the process was handled by Orange officials in a careless and sloppy manner that wound up harming innocent parties (us).
Officials knew there were no restrictive covenants on this land, so why all the time and money for a home on 106 acres?
Jim and Barbara Lovelace