Bell Buckle studies growth boundary proposals

The Bell Buckle Planning Commission will be looking at any and all possibilities when it comes to re-sizing the town's urban growth boundary. At the Tuesday night meeting, the commission agreed to come up with three different proposals to present to the board of mayor and aldermen at a later date.

"We've got to be in a position to compromise," said Mayor Dennis Webb. "We've got to be careful -- this stuff is tricky."

Webb suggested to the commission chairman, Rodney Simmons, that each commission member come up with three plans for UGBs: one smaller, one medium, and one roughly the same as it is now.

"I think we ought to shrink it," said David Robinson, a member of the planning commission.

The UGB is a boundary used by local governments to plan and control growth. While the UGB is not within the city limits, it does extend certain powers to the city, especially when it comes to zoning and future annexation. Currently, Bell Buckle's UGB looks like a jigsaw puzzle piece, with "arms" branching along major thoroughfares into the town. Simmons said he would like to see more UGB areas around more access roads, which would let the town preserve its rural character at all entry points by regulating what could be built in those areas. Webb said he would like to see the UGB pulled in some, and more areas immediately surrounding the town be included.

The commissioners were told to bring their three proposals to the next meeting, Aug. 6, at the town hall.

Potential annexation issues were also behind a suggestion from commission member and alderman Frank Reagor, who brought to the meeting a revised resolution for a plan of services that would be adopted, should the town ever annex the area known as "The Hill." Even though the town is not considering annexing the property in the near future, said Reagor, some changes could be made to the resolution that would make it "more palatable" when the times comes.

He suggested changing the wording in the resolution to indicate the town would supply services as funds become available, instead of within a definite time frame.

"It means we would have no pressure to be doing things right away," said Reagor. "But we'd do them as we can get to them."

Webb stressed that the commission was looking at the plan just "to clean it up," and the town was not looking at annexing the area at this time.

The commission voted to send the proposed changes to the city planner and the University of Tennessee's Municipal Technical Advisory Service to confirm verbiage and legality.