ReCap of March 28 Board of Supervisors meeting

Board of Supervisors: Scothorn, Clinton, White, Martin and Bailey. Photo Botetourt County

Editors Note: This story has been corrected

“We had received one formal request for reconsideration recently (from one citizen regarding 12 titles in our collection). To my knowledge, that’s the first formal request libraries have ever received, at least within the memory of long-time staff,” Julie Phillips wrote in an email after the story was published.

A request for a short-term rental property use for a home in a Residential Use District (R-1) received the thumbs down from the Board of Supervisors at the March 28, 2023 meeting at the Botetourt Administration Center at Greenfield in Amsterdam.

Daniel and Jennifer Myers had requested a Special Exception Permit (SEP) in order to use their home for a short-term rental property. The 0.66 acre lot is located at 171 Eagle Ridge, Roanoke, in a Botetourt County subdivision.

Several neighbors spoke against the SEP and asked the Supervisors to heed the Planning Commission’s recommendation for denial of the request. The applicant was not in attendance and the Supervisors unanimously turned down the SEP application.

Earlier in the afternoon session, the Supervisors had accepted a total withdrawal of an application for an SEP for multi-family dwelling units that would have been located on five contiguous parcels totaling 21.446 acres. The apartment complex would have been situated between Botetourt Commons and College Drive off US 220. A public hearing on the SEP had been scheduled for February, but at the request of the applicant, the Supervisors had agreed to hold the public hearing in March.

Instead, the applicant withdrew the request.

Since the public did not have a chance to speak at the February meeting, the Supervisors, at the request of Chairman Mac Scothorn, voted to allow public comment on the project at 6 p.m.

Seven people spoke about the development of the property in question and the Daleville area in general. Comments ranged from a request to provide a rescue squad in the Daleville area before more development is put in place to school crowding concerns.

Danny Goad asked that the Gateway Crossing Overlay, which the Supervisors put in place in September 2022, be rescinded in its entirety.

Anna Bruce expressed concern about the historic nature of Daleville, including the old cemetery that is next to Botetourt Commons and the Daleville Apartments, which are the remains of a former college. Additionally, she said, the Daleville area was actually the site of the first meeting of the county’s official government when Botetourt was formed in 1770.

Earlier Comments

During the public comment period at the 2 p.m. session, the Supervisors heard from citizens on several issues, including folks opposed to the creation of a rails-to-trails project in the northern end of the county, concerns about low-flying planes and the height of the proposed windmills for the Rocky Forge project, and concerns about the content of books in the county libraries.

Five persons addressed what several citizens called, “pornographic and sexual” books in the library system.

Supervisor Billy Martin said such books were “something our children should not have available to them,” and expressed concern about the possibility of such books being in the library system.

Supervisor Steve Clinton, who is the county’s liaison with the Library System, in a phone call after the meeting, said that, “over the past several weeks or months there has been innuendos that the books are prominently displayed in the children’s section. They may have been inadvertently propped up but they weren’t singled out for prominent display and not in the children’s section.”

Library Director Julie Phillips said in a phone call after the meeting that this was her understanding as well. “The books they were discussing were not on display,” she said, although a library patron could have placed the book in a prominent place.

She also said no one has ever filed an official complaint against a book in the library system.

“No one has come to us with these concerns,” she said. Only one person has spoken to staff at the Fincastle Library, Phillips said, and that was about a completely different book than those addressed at the Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday afternoon.

The county library system has a policy in place to review books. Called a Reconsideration Policy, the procedure kicks in when someone complains about a book and fills out a form available at every library.

“We always have a recourse for people who have concerns, and it’s been there forever. There is a process. All they have to do is talk with us,” Phillips said. “Our doors are open. We can’t help people if they won’t converse about it.”

PEN America, a nonprofit that defends and celebrates free expression in the United States, in a recent study noted, “The large majority of book bans underway today are not spontaneous, organic expressions of citizen concern. Rather, they reflect the work of a growing number of advocacy organizations that have made demanding censorship of certain books and ideas in schools part of their mission.”

The nonprofit’s study says at least 50 groups have national, state or local presence focused on book bans. Messages often spread through social media, where fact-checking is practically nonexistent and emotions run high.

The Botetourt County Library’s Reconsideration Police can be reviewed online at https://www.botetourtva.gov/DocumentCenter/View/2506/Reconsideration-Policy

                                                            — The Botetourt Bee