Tuesday morning, the Bulloch County Board of Commissioners extended a previous 180-day moratorium on rezoning for higher-density housing subdivisions in the southeastern part of the county by 56 days.

Enacted Aug. 16, the moratorium blocking landowner-requested zoning changes to residential categories denser than R-80 would have expired Feb. 10. It provided for an extension up to 180 days. So the extension now approved, to April 7, is for a little less than one-third of the maximum. At least part of the additional eight weeks be needed to complete the county’s ongoing review of its comprehensive plan, zoning ordinance, subdivision regulations and related policies, said Bulloch County Manager Tom Couch and County Attorney Jeff Akins.

“In view of the potential impact of the Hyundai plant locating in Bryan County, we have now determined that we need a little more time to complete the review and revision process,” Akins told the board.

The elected commissioners first enacted the moratorium in August to stem a flood of rezoning  applications then coming before  them and the county’s appointed Planning and Zoning Commission. Interest in residential development in the Southeast Bulloch area had picked up before Hyundai Motor Group’s plans to build an electric vehicle and battery plant expected to employe 8,100 people at the Bryan County Mega Site, roughly five miles from the Bulloch County line, were revealed in May 2022.

Over the past 12 months, plans have been announced for four manufacturers – two of them direct Hyundai parts suppliers – to build factories, expected eventually to employ more than 1,400 people – in southern Bulloch County.

A nine-member steering committee recruited last summer to help guide the county government through zoning and planning revisions and out of the moratorium includes Board of Commissioners Chairman Roy Thompson, Commissioner Curt Deal, Commissioner Anthony Simmons, Planning and Zoning Commission Chair Jeanne Anne Marsh and member Charles Chandler, farmer and landowner Will Groover, farmer and landowner Wade McElveen, Development Authority of Bulloch County CEO Benjy Thompson and county schools Superintendent Charles Wilson.

Bulloch officials also have a land use consultant, Rob Hosack, who has a firm called BH3, looking at the zoning regulations and the affected area of the county. Meanwhile, an engineering firm, Hofstadter and Associates, is working on preliminary plans and cost estimates for the county’s first foray into water and sewer services.

February goal

“The holidays really put a severe interruption in the flow of trying to get the ordinance work done. …,” Couch said during Tuesday morning’s meeting.

But in January, the county staff has held informal meetings with some of the commissioners and planning board members on the steering committee – not yet the whole committee – and some “focus group” sessions with local developers and engineers.

“And then we anticipate by the end of the month or early February we’d like to reconvene the committee of the whole,” Couch continued. “Then ultimately we want to try to file in mid-February the ordinance changes.”

He said the changes considered so far appear to present “minimal disruptions or conflicts” with existing laws and regulations but that he would have to ask Akins to accelerate his review of the ordinances “to make sure everything is legal.”

Water and sewer

“Then of course water and sewer comes into all of this as well, and there’s a litany of things that we have to do,” Couch said. “Our focus is trying to get a good map for the Comprehensive Plan amendment for future development and the ultimately to bring in zoning, subdivision regulations, stormwater …, perhaps an interim water and sewer ordinance.”

Under an informal multicounty agreement, Bulloch County is expected to host four large wells – two of which would officially be Bryan  County’s, although located in Bulloch – to supply 1.5 million gallons of water per day to the Hyundai plant.

The Bulloch County staff’s strategy for concentrating residential development in a few areas of the Southeast Bulloch section calls for using those wells, along with wastewater treatment capacity in Bryan County and possibly Statesboro, to provide residential water and sewer service.

As part of the planning revision, those areas may be designated as “suburban neighborhoods” or “suburban corridors” in the county’s future land development map, a part of the Smart Bulloch 2040 Comprehensive Plan.

The commissioners, on a motion by Commissioner Timmy Rushing, seconded by Commissioner Ray Mosley, approved the moratorium extension 6-0.

Moratorium area

The moratorium applies only to a mapped area, identified as Southeast Bulloch County, extending south from Statesboro and Burkhalter Road to the Bryan County Line.

As extended, the moratorium continues to bar processing of requests submitted since Aug. 16 to rezone tracts R-40, R-25 and R-15 single-family residential, R-3 multi-family residential, R-2 two-family residential, PUD-1 planned unit development or MHP, manufactured home park.

Rezoning for low-density subdivisions of the R-80 type, in other words with lots measuring 1.8 acres or larger, is not barred by the moratorium. Many of the rezoning requests have been for land currently zoned AG-5 agricultural. In AG-5 there is a minimum lot size of five acres, except that single lots as small as one-acre may be created for transactions between close relatives.