(Dec. 22, 2016) After several months of work sessions and meetings, the Snow Hill town government unanimously adopted the comprehensive rezoning proposal without alteration at last Tuesday’s council meeting.
Though the vote was 3-0 in favor, it was not without dissent. From the time the council began focusing on the issue months ago, Western District representative Michael Pruitt has asked the council to reconsider rezoning a particular property, owned by Jay Bergey, from R2 residential to R3 residential.
Bergey intends to develop the land into housing, drawing funding and tenants from a federal program that had lost funding previously, but has since been reinstated.
Bergey has called the reclassification “spot zoning,” which is illegal in Maryland, and has gone so far as to threaten the town with a lawsuit, according to the minutes of an October work session.
The type of housing Bergey planned to construct on the property is also at issue. Though he had strongly opposed the use of the terms “affordable housing” to describe his project in the past, he had no objection during the town meeting when NAACP member Judy Davis described it as such and argued for the necessity of the development based on that description.
Davis said with new businesses and opportunities available in Snow Hill, the people who were working these jobs would need places they could afford to live in town, and the town needed more places like Bergey’s proposed development.
Properties zoned R3 are the only areas in town where multi-family dwellings are allowed. As part of the comprehensive rezoning ordinance, the density of that zoning was also lowered from 12 units per acre to eight. No reason was given for the change, and councilman Pruitt said in his dissenting statements, but affirmative vote, that he didn’t know where the decrease came from, or who had asked for it.
Pruitt said that he saw more good than bad in the document the town had developed, and that’s why he chose to support it.  
Mayor Dorman said, according to the minutes of an October work session, that he was not in favor of the project and the town already had enough of this type of housing.
Emails to town staff asking to quantify Dorman’s claims went unanswered.
Bergey has since backed off on the lawsuit threat.
“I think there’s going to be a lot more going on when other groups start applying pressure,” Bergey said. “I think they made their bed and will end up having to lie in it for a while. My project is nothing like Section 8 housing.”
Ivory Smith, Worcester County NAACP president, did not return a call seeking comment.