An old schoolhouse, a church and a small cemetery. That’s all Bugscuffle is. And for folks like Jerry Genz, that’s why he loves it.
“You can sit in the front yard at night and, you know, still see the stars because there's no light pollution,” Genz said. “You may hear a dog bark from a neighbor and a cow moo or a horse knicker, and that's about it. It's extremely peaceful.”
His family’s ancestral home is an unincorporated community located in the southwest corner of Washington County near Devil’s Den State Park. They have a Prairie Grove address, and their kids attend school in West Fork, but Bugscuffle itself does not have an official designation as a municipality.
It’s just a loosely associated area of privately owned land. Genz said this remote, bucolic lifestyle is precisely why he’s chosen to maintain residence at his rural property rather than move into a city like Fayetteville or even a small town like West Fork.
However, as populations rise and industry expands in Washington County’s metro areas, people who live in places like Bugscuffle feel like their way of life and land stewardship are under threat. A recently proposed zoning ordinance called the “The Freedom and Property Preservation Zoning Act of Washington County” has caused alarm to ripple through these usually quiet spaces.
Washington County Judge Patrick Deakins introduced the legislation in September and said it’s intended to simplify and unify various planning laws that have evolved since the 1970s.
“Our first planning ordinance was passed in the county back in like, I think, ’78 and you know, these were minimal as they got started,” Deakins said. “Well, now our planning is over 100 ordinances long. And so one of the interesting comments I heard from a citizen the other day is they said, Well, you've taken a 15-page ordinance and made it 100-plus pages. Well, now I look back at that, and I say, ‘Yeah, that was kind of a victim of the circumstances for us as county,’ because what we're doing is we're taking all those old ordinances, and we're trying to consolidate them into one ordinance.”
Combining all those laws into one made for a lengthy, complex document that establishes many changes. But it also leaves some things alone. Deakins said that, in summary, the new ordinance aims to streamline the planning approval process, provide more options for landowners and establish objective criteria to make the system more transparent and predictable. He said it accomplishes this while preserving the county's rural character.
One way the ordinance does that is by flipping the conditional use permitting process on its head. Previously, the county planning commission would approve a developer’s plan and then move on to the quorum court, where the elected justices of the peace have final authority on whether the project lives or dies by granting a conditional use permit. Right now, a permit is necessary because Washington County’s rural areas are predominantly zoned as Agricultural or Single-Family Residential.
“What we're running into is now what I see as a big government overreach as a county,” Deakins said. “Because now we're getting into meetings, and we're saying, ‘Well, we don't want you to take out all the trees, or we don't like your logo, or we don't think that's a good place for a wedding chapel.’ Well, by and large, that's not government's role to start telling people what to do with their private land and so on the back end like that.”
Deakins said that way of considering developments is illegal, and the county risks being sued for making “arbitrary and capricious” decisions. The new ordinance also centralizes planning authority under the County Judge and an appointed Administrative Officer, who manages zoning compliance, notifications, and enforcement.
Beth Coger is Justice of the Peace for District 6 in Washington County and disagrees with Deakins. She said that as a JP, the planning board provides necessary insights that the Quorum Court relies on.
“We can use that information that we get from the public hearing of the planning board,” Coger said. “And that's not only what the planning board and the planning department have, but we hear from their neighbors, and whether or not they support that. We hear how it's going to impact them and impact their lives. And that's very valuable information to have.”
The aspect of the proposed ordinance that garnered the most attention came at the end of the document. County staff included a map proposing to rezone all land along major highways for commercial use. This is what concerns rural landowners like Jerry Genz.
Rezoning every parcel would do away with conditional use, and Genz said that would actually lower landowners’ property rights.
“If a landowner doesn't want to change his the use of his property, that's great, but he can have neighbors on either side of him that do,” Genz said. “And all of a sudden you've got some type of commercial development that can spoil the neighborhood, the preservation, the quiet. It’s what I've told every JP and used the same example.”
He’s mostly worried about tarnishing the natural character the county is known for.
“It's slated at the entrance of Devil’s Den State Park,” Genz said. “So if you went seven miles back towards West Fork, and every single landowner in that stretch of seven miles is, I don't want to be rezoned. Could the JP then remove that rezoning from that area? And they all said yes. But the caveat to that is it takes two-thirds of a majority vote from the quorum court to approve or disapprove those changes, so just working with a single JP that represents your district isn't necessarily going to get approved through the entire court, and that's the reason we need to reach out and let every JP know how we feel.”
That map is not final, and Judge Deakins emphasizes that it’s an amendable document currently undergoing a public legislative process.
“This is a work in progress,” Deakins said. “If your ideas or your stipulations aren't in this ordinance yet. It's because we probably haven't heard it. Come tell us, and if it makes sense, we want to put it in there. Yes, the map has been a big issue. Maybe we should have went through that process a little bit more responsibly. Just back to the arbitrary and capricious on a specific project, you can also be arbitrary and capricious about who you're granting these zoning rights to, and so what we're trying to get the quorum court to be careful about is to say, Well, I just don't want this project or this area to have a project or to have a designation. Why we need a good legal reason of why we're not going to grant a commercial status to its place or not grant it, you know, one way or the other, granted or not granted. We need to know. We need to have that behind us. So what we're doing now is we're trying to say we have to have a place to start.”
He said his ambition is to allow smaller businesses a place in rural areas, not just huge developers that can afford to undergo the current planning process.
The Freedom of Property and Preservation Act is a complex document. Deakins encourages citizens to read it and come forward to the county with thoughts and questions. In fact, the map has already undergone some changes since it was first published. On Tuesday, Nov. 5, Coger shared a new map that gathers commercial zoning into groups or nodes where development has previously occurred and more infrastructure is in place.
The next Quorum Court meeting is set for Thursday, Nov. 21. Deakins, Coger and Genz all encourage citizens to reach out to their JPs, the County Judge’s office or attend the meeting. You can visit Washington County’s website for more information.
