GEORGETOWN – Business leaders and residents packed the Sussex County Council chambers Tuesday morning, as one of the council’s newest members raised the possibility of a development moratorium in one of Delaware’s more rapidly-growing areas.
While Councilman Matt Lloyd shared good intentions regarding his proposal, citing Sussex County’s quick growth as a reason many in the county chose to shake up the council in the most recent election, most of the public speakers commenting on the issue expressed other views. The meeting drew at least 37 speakers in person and through call-in options.
The meeting did not result in any votes on the proposed moratorium, but it did shine a light on how the construction industry has now become embedded in Sussex County’s economy.
The impact of the moratorium, even if just for one year, would be far greater than a simple break in applications, according to Steve Fortunato, the Delaware branch manager for Bohler, a national land development consulting and site design company.
Emotionally, he told the council about the roughly dozen University of Delaware graduates he oversees in Sussex County who may need to find other employment because of any moratorium placed by the council.
“I helped train some of these staff over the last three years very, very carefully and I looked at them yesterday and said, ‘Hey guys, if this goes through, everyone is working on a Sussex residential job will probably not be here next year,’” he said tearfully. “Their faces went blank and their eyes went wide. I said, ‘That’s what this means because the industry cannot support the current amount of growth, the current amount of employees, the current amount of young employees that are here if the building construction halts.’”
Davis, Bowen & Friedel President Ring Lardner said his company’s employees would also be greatly affected by any moratorium placed in the lower county. He said that about one-third of their employees live in Sussex County and would be directly impacted.
“From a one-year moratorium, it takes about four years to recover from it. Not just from applications. . . it also includes hiring and everything else,” Lardner said. “Because I remember we laid off staff during that time in 2008. We didn’t start hiring again until 2013 or 2014. That is six years to hire new staff.”
That gap, he said, is where the engineering firms lose most of its senior engineers right now because we could not hire them and train them appropriately.
Adding to the conversation during public comments, Community Bank Delaware President Jack Riddle told the council that he often talks to business leaders of all walks, many of whom have similar concerns such as affordable housing and other workforce related issues. Riddle also sits on the Council for Development of Finance, which votes on awarding taxpayer-backed grants to companies in the entire state, as well as the treasurer of TidalHealth Nanticoke Hospital.
“I think [the moratorium is] a true dramatic step. I think everybody in this room wants the same thing – we all want to keep this county a great place to be. . . This is a beautiful place to be; we want to keep it that way,” Riddle said.
Many others, like Dr. David Tam of Beebe Healthcare and outgoing president of Delaware’s chapter of Associated Builders and Contractors Ed Capodanno, stepped up to the podium to speak during the long council meeting, calling for cooperation on the part of the council and a way for stakeholders to participate in the process instead of sweeping actions so early on in the new council’s legacy.
Some said the issue was misguided altogether, suggesting that many of the local concerns about quick growth can be traced back to transportation and infrastructure issues which should be managed by Delaware’s Department of Transportation (DelDOT) and not the council.
Lloyd thanked those who came to speak on the proposal but clarified that his intention would be to pause applications for major housing developments that would include five or more homes in the for a period of one year. AR-1 zones in Sussex County allow for agricultural purposes, as well as low-density single-family residential developments with churches, recreational facilities and other accessory uses as necessary while supporting the protection of watersheds, water resources, forest areas and scenic values, according to Sussex County code.
Lloyd is one of three councilmembers that were elected amid the community’s growing concerns about how single-family homes were cropping up on former farmland in Sussex County.
He told those who spoke out that he hoped that they would come back as the council continued the discussion. Meanwhile, he added that Sussex County has a backlog of home building permits that span between 14 and 22 months, depending on various stages in the approval proves.
“Keeping that in mind, let’s just assure our workforce now that they ought to keep their hammers and shovels ready because their livelihoods will continue,” Lloyd said. “It’s not to ultimately wholesale deny them after 12 months, but rather to capture what changes the voters demanded this election. If we can admit today that our current growth practices into the farmland isn’t working, then I do think it’s appropriate to have this inflection point and we need to start getting very serious about what changes need to be made.”
“Not waiting years to make them, but to instill a sense of urgency and to meet this level of crisis with an equal level of effort,” Lloyd continued.
While the meeting did not result in any votes on the proposed moratorium, although Lloyd announced that he has asked the council’s legal counsel to proceed with drafting the targeted moratorium.
“Once it’s of sufficient form and can stand legal scrutiny, I would introduce it at that time,” he said.
Longtime Councilman John Reiley disagreed with the approach due to what he considered to be a lack of interest in the proposal by other council members.
“First of all, the law says that any one of us can introduce an ordinance or request that. But if there’s no will on council, to pursue and potentially adopt a moratorium and, I might be wrong, but by my head count at this point there’s only one person who is interested in that, then all we’re doing is tying the resources of our legal staff and our administrative staff on an exercise that’s going to be bearing no fruit. So, I don’t see the point in that,” he said while also encouraging stakeholders to present suggestions or recommendations.
Driving his point home, he suggested that any such moratorium at this point would be “a dead-on arrival circumstance.”
“Let’s focus our attention, rather, towards concrete action on specific… let’s be sharp shooters and not hand grenade lobbers,” he added. “One takeaway from today is we probably need to have a working group.”