Lot 74, Where are you?

By Valerie Cury

During the Commissioner Disclosures portion of the Town of Purcellville’s Sept. 7 Commission Meeting, Planning Commissioner Ron Rise Sr. reported he had an information brief on the Rt. 7/690 Interchange with the town manager and Vice Mayor Chris Bertaut. In that brief, Rise Sr. presented information regarding Lot 74 at 601 N. 21 st Street in Purcellville, owned by the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors since 2018.

“The county has removed the property from the county’s land records and online mapping system and had basically altered the town’s official zoning map,” Rise Sr. reported.

He added that Article 10 of the town’s zoning ordinance says that a zoning change may be applied for by any owner of property, but neither the county nor the administrative department of the town adhered to the process for a zoning ordinance change or a boundary line adjustment.

“Due process was not followed. 601 N. 21 st ”—Lot 74—”does not exist,” he said.

The town has a defined approval process for zoning changes that requires all applications and deliberations at the town council and planning commission levels to have public hearings at each level of review. Only then is there is a town council vote on the application.

Purcellville’s Historic Corridor Overlay District also was overlooked or disregarded by the county and own. Lot 74 is subject to the district’s encumberment restrictions under Article 14a. That regulation requires a specific review process by the Town Council and Board of Architectural Review with Planning Commission knowledge for anything “manmade” (like a road, bridge, or interchange) placed on any property designated by the town as Historic Corridor Overlay District on the town’s official zoning map.

“I’m shocked,” said Planning Commissioner Jason Dengler. Nan Forbes, Chair of the Planning Commission, remarked, “This amounts to malfeasance.”

Forbes said the town attorney should be made aware of the issue and provide advice to the steps the town council should take. “There doesn’t seem to be a plan in place to deal with this issue,” she said. “The process and the actions of the various parties regarding the termination of this lot and ignoring the fact that it is encumbered by the historic corridor—there needs to be a plan of action.”

Referring to Article 10 of the town’s ordinance, which is very specific on the process an applicant must follow, Rise Sr. said, “Any applicant can apply to have a zoning map change … In this case it was an agent of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors. The agent at that time was Dewberry and Associates … They filled out the land application and put it through.”

According to the land development application, Dewberry and Associates stated in their notes of May 7, 2020, that they were intending to extinguish Lot 74 from the Town of Purcellville “without the benefit of a current title report … and all easements and encumbrances or other circumstances affecting the title” to Lot 74.

Dewberry stated on the Plat application that Lot 74 is subject “to all covenants and restrictions of record. “Approval of this plat in no way relieves the owners, developers, or their agents of any responsibilities required by the Town of Purcellville.”

What Article 10 says is that the application needs to be addressed to the Town Council. Then the Town Council will give the application to the Planning Commission, which is required to review and hold a public hearing on that application to change the zoning map. Then they pass their recommendation to the Town Council for review and a public hearing.”

On July 12, 2022, Don Dooley, then Director of Planning and Economic Development, signed off on extinguishing Lot 74 from the Town of Purcellville and the Homeowners Association of Catoctin Meadows. On the same day, County Administrator Tim Hemstreet signed the Deed of Easement.

This resulted in removing lot 74 from the county’s land records and ultimately from the town’s official zoning map – violating due process of the laws of the Town of Purcellville. Also, this was done without the knowledge of the citizens, the town council, the planning commission and the HOA.

Two months earlier, in a May 9, 2022 memorandum to Dale Lehnig, Purcellville’s director of Engineering, Planning and Development, the town’s GIS and Special Projects coordinator, Andrea Broshkevitch, asked about the dedication of Lot 74 as a right-of-way.

“Will it automatically no longer be a lot within the Catoctin Meadows subdivision/HOA?” she wondered. “Will the HOA approve this change or are they required to approve? Will a new subdivision plat excluding this lot be required? Will Loudoun County stop paying HOA dues at the time the recordation of the Deed of Dedication?” she wrote.

Lehnig’s response was that Lot 74 “will no longer be a lot within the subdivision/HOA. No additional paperwork is required for this removal. The HOA are [sic] not required to approve this change. A new subdivision plat excluding the lot is not required. Loudoun County will not pay HOA dues after the dedication has occurred.” She noted her response was preliminary.

Chair Forbes said “The conveyance of the deed was done without due process.” Commissioner Nedim Ogelman said the town has a legal process and “we need legal to weigh in.”

The Planning Commission made a motion: “That the Town Attorney make a determination as to the proper course of action to ascertain what the current legal status is of Lot 74.” The motion passed unanimously.

Rise Sr. also noted that the floodplain was misrepresented in the land application to extinguish Lot 74 and the county knew the floodplain extended well beyond the original FEMA 100-year floodplain of 1970 that was used for the application.

In the council comments portion of the Sept. 12 Town Council meeting, Vice Mayor Chris Bertaut said that the town keeps hearing “from certain quarters that the county has some decision-making authority with respect to county property. This is usually done in reference to the Joint Land Management Areas to the north and south of town, which is in the county, and we are supposed to manage them jointly.”

But, he asked, “What if the county redrew Purcellville’s boundaries and took property away from the town and awarded it back to the county?

“It recently came to my attention that the county, without a single public hearing, erased or extinguished Purcellville in town property in the Catoctin Meadows subdivision,” Bertaut went on. “This property was removed from the county GIS, which means that there seems to have been a de facto boundary change.”

Bertaut said this is something that should have come before the Planning Commission and Town Council for a vote.

“Now, if some are insisting that the county has full decision authority with respect to things outside the town, how does that stand, how does that square with the fact that no decision was made by the town’s or county’s elected officials to sign off on this land grab?” he asked.

“Our town and county experts work for the citizens at the direction of elected officials who represent them. Any other arrangement is completely unacceptable,” said Bertaut.

Update: This article was corrected to clarify the following mistake: In the lead we wrote: During the Commissioner Disclosures portion of the Town of Purcellville’s Sept. 7 Commission Meeting, Planning Commissioner Ron Rise Sr. reported the town manager had requested an information brief on the Rt. 7/690 Interchange from him and Vice Mayor Chris Bertaut.

It is corrected to read: During the Commissioner Disclosures portion of the Town of Purcellville’s Sept. 7 Commission Meeting, Planning Commissioner Ron Rise Sr. reported he had an information brief on the Rt. 7/690 Interchange with the town manager and Vice Mayor Chris Bertaut.