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By Carey Reeder | Managing Editor

Subdivision regulations have been a hot topic around Chilton County in recent weeks, and steps are being taken by elected officials and county personnel to help bring some clarity to a dense subject.

On Sept. 9, the Chilton County Commission scheduled a meeting inside the large courtroom at the Chilton County Courthouse to allow the public to comment on the subdivision regulations in the county, and the issues they have faced when it comes to them. In order to understand the full picture of the issues, it begins in 2015.

On Sept. 14, 2015, the county commissioners that were in office at the time agreed and voted to adopt subdivision regulations that were from the State of Alabama. The regulations are 62 pages long, and are available for public viewing at www.chiltoncounty.org/road-department. The forward in the regulations spells out what is defined as a subdivision under these regulations — “the development and division of a lot, tract or parcel of land into two or more lots, plats, sites or otherwise for the purpose of establishing or creating a subdivision through the sale, lease or building development or the lot or lots.”

These regulations were hardly ever enforced, and many people knew nothing about them when it came time to divide or sell a piece of their land for many years. The population in the county has grown greatly over the last five years. As it did, more houses needed to be built to house these new residents, and the issues with the subdivision regulations showed more prominent than ever.

Since the current commission was elected in 2020, it has run into several people coming to meetings who have bought lots or houses in subdivisions. They tell the commission that the developer of the subdivision they live in told them that once it was developed fully the county would maintain their road and other things. However, that is not the case.

The State of Alabama will not allow county equipment on private property. So, by any means, the county cannot maintain any roads or fix any problems within subdivisions. Chilton County Commission Chairman Randell Kelley said they were never approached about maintaining any subdivision roads, and could not in the first place anyway.

When Chilton County engineer Heath Sexton was hired last year, he came to the commission with the subdivision regulations in hand. While he could have just enforced them without checking in, he asked the commission if they wanted him to enforce the regulations that were laid out on paper. All seven commissioners said yes to enforce those regulations, a mistake that Kelley became aware of after assuming the Chairman position. He alerted the commission and engineer after realizing the mistake, and he took full responsibility for himself, or any of the other commissioners, for not reading over the full subdivision regulations before agreeing to enforce them where they could have caught the mistakes earlier.

“All seven of us commissioners said yes,” Kelley said. “Well, a couple of months down the road, I became Chairman and saw really quickly the mistake we made. We just took for granted that we could trust the engineer on what to do, and he has done a great job, but he is the type of guy that is going to go right by the book and whatever it says.”

Sexton operated as a textbook engineer ensuring that everything was within the regulations that the county had adopted, it was just the regulations themselves that were causing the issues. Under the regulations, the only exception one could have from their land being deemed a subdivision when splitting it was if it was over 10 acres or they were giving it to a spouse or child. Kelley said he saw that was not going to work for a place like Chilton County. Like many rural counties and citizens in them, when you hear a subdivision is being built, you think of a number of new houses and a road going through them. Not two or three houses on the side of the road, which is more the speed of rural Chilton County.

“What we have run into is aunts or uncles wanting to give their nieces or nephews, or sell them, an acre or two of land to build a house on, and they have to go through subdivision regulations to do that,” Kelley said. “That is not what we want. We want it revised, and it is going to be a long, drawn out process.”

The process will be a lengthy one and take a lot of time, and the more people on it the quicker the process can happen to get new regulations better shaped around Chilton County’s needs. As Chairman, Kelley appointed an advisory panel, or team, to help him gather information on things regarding the subdivision regulations. They will operate as information collectors only for Kelley and the commission.

Following the Sept. 9 public meeting, the news of the advisory team was blown out of proportion quickly. The notion was believed that Kelley appointed these people to go around in the unincorporated areas of the county and tell people what they can and cannot do. That is not the case. This advisory team has no authority, no vote and no say on anything related to the subdivision regulations. They are solely there to help Kelley and the commission gather information through this tedious process and bring it back to them.

“Any commissioner can appoint themselves an advisory team, or advisory person, and there does not have to be a resolution before the commission to appoint such a person or team,” Kelley said. “I did discuss it with our commission about appointing an advisory team, but I did not come back and tell them who it was, but I do not have to. I probably should have, but that has been blown out of proportion.”

Kelley added that there has to be regulations on this type of thing, but “we do not want it so strict that the have nots will never have, and we do not want it so flimsy that your half million-dollar homes will never come to Chilton County.”

The changes to the subdivision regulations will not happen overnight, and it needs to be stressed that the process will take a while. There will be a lot of effort from the commission, the county engineer and attorneys to word everything correctly so the rules are explicitly laid out. However, in the end, the goal for everyone involved is to have a better way of living for all Chilton County residents.