BROOKVILLE — Baltimore-Phillipsburg Road resident Wilbur Meyer voiced at the Oct. 15 council meeting his unhappiness with comments directed toward him on social media concerning the property his father purchased on Upper Lewisburg-Salem Road that has resulted in controversy where city residents will vote on a referendum (Issue 2) at the polls on Nov. 5 that will decide the fate of the proposed zoning classification of the land.

The property, consisting of lots 2798, 2799 and 2800 (85.611 acres), was annexed to the city at the request of Meyer.

After approving the Meyer’s request, both planning commission and council approved Ordinance 2024-07 that established the zoning classification.

Planning commission voted 5-2 while council voted 7-0 in favor of the ordinance.

The ordinance establishes approximately 27.465 acres as a General Business (GB) Planned Development Overlay District (PD), and 58.146 acres as (R-1A) Suburban Residential Planned Development Overlay District ((PD).

The referendum was placed on the Nov. 5 ballot after a group of residents calling themselves “Brookville Citizens for Keep It Rural,” garnered enough signatures from registered city voters.

A yes vote on Issue 2 approves Ordinance 2024-07 and the GB and R-1A zoning for the 85.611 acres.

A no vote disapproves Ordinance 2024-07 requiring planning commission and council to once again go through the process of determining zoning classifications for the 85.611 acres.

“My property is the property you annexed and the zoning some folks are against,” Meyer told council.

Brookville Mayor Chuck Letner asked Meyer if he wanted to address council or the public.

Meyer replied he wanted to address the public.

“My question is for you and the Keep it Rural crowd. Do you not believe in the Constitution or the rights of this land?” Meyer asked.

“That property was sold in a public auction. Anyone of you in this neighborhood in the state of Ohio could have bought it. You didn’t. Nobody stepped up,” Meyer said.

Meyer said his father “bought the land as potential investment property and to farm it in between.”

“Some of you are making comments and I really don’t care for the comments about greed. You don’t know my situation,” Meyer said.

“If you’d like to know my situation, I was gifted the farms a few years ago, but with that came seven figures of debt,” Meyer said.

“I don’t know what generation farmer I am. I’ve been in the Clay Township area and lived on the same property for 48 years, going on 49 years,” Meyer said.

“With that came thoughts of what is going to happen with the succession of the family farm,” Meyer said.

Meyer’s family farm is located on Baltimore-Phillipsburg Road.

Meyer noted he has two children.

“My daughter is a tattoo artist and helps periodically on the farm,” Meyer said.

“My son left for the Air Force. After going through basic training and being stationed in Germany, he has decided he wants to come home and take over the family farm,” Meyer continued.

Meyer said after learning of his son’s decision to take over the family farm, his first plan was to request the Upper Lewisburg-Salem Road property his father bought be annexed by the city of Brookville.

“I didn’t bring General Motors in, but there’s an opportunity for me to eliminate debt and put my son on a path better than mine and potentially with that buy more land and help keep this area rural,” Meyer said.

Meyer said “many of the people involved in Keep it Rural, from what I can see, want to argue from your keyboard from your houses in a housing subdivision.”

“You’re not helping to keep it rural at all because all the farmers outside the town are buying land,” Meyer said.

“Land is not cheap. You have to leverage it against the other ground that is paid for,” Meyer continued.

“Ask farm credit if you don’t believe me. They will only loan you money at a certain dollar value, otherwise they put their fingers on everything else you have,” Meyer said.

Meyer said his argument for the people involved in Keep it Rural is “to contemplate what you are doing. Is it really in the best interest in keeping it rural?”

“My answer is no,” Meyer said.

“All you are doing is stripping me of my rights and actually hurting farmers like myself to take the potential and use that potential to help keep it rural,” Meyer continued.

“But you guys don’t see it that way. You just want to call me greedy and make all sorts of comments from your keyboards,” Meyer said.

Wilderness Cove Court resident Rob Rutherford agreed with Meyer concerning the financing of farmland.

“To echo what Mr. Meyer said, from a banking perspective, it is difficult to finance farmland,” Rutherford said.

“Rates are not cheap. Balloons are riskier. When you buy a house you can almost get 100 percent financing when you buy a home. It’s not the same with farmland,” Rutherford said.

Sycamore Street resident Bruce Garber told Meyer he “sympathized with your situation with your family.”

“But if you would have owned the land just past the land you own, you would not be here tonight and we wouldn’t either because you wouldn’t be in Brookville and your family situation would be without the possibility of being annexed and reap the benefits of selling it all to benefit your family,” Garber said.

“I understand where you are. It’s just the location where you are that makes you and your argument valid,” Garber said.

“If you’re annexed, then the next farmer further out can say, well, I want to get annexed because of my family situation and so forth and so on and pretty soon there is no country. There’s no rural. It’s all the city of Brookville. It’s location, location, location,” Garber said.

Meadow Glen resident Jared Ledford suggested the community needs to “get together and talk about what we might like there,” referring to the Upper Lewisburg-Salem Road lots.

“For me, it’s going back and forth enough. It’s been talked about in the community enough that I think simply somebody needs to say this is what’s going to happen if you vote yes and this is what’s going to happen if you vote no,” Ledford said.

“If you vote yes, everything’s going to be kind of as it is right now. The property is going to stayed zoned the way it is and that doesn’t mean there’s going to be bulldozers and backhoes in that property tomorrow,” Ledford said.

“It means 20 years from now or five minutes from now, it doesn’t matter when, nothing has been written in stone to do anything on that property, so I think all the arguing isn’t going to resolve anything,” Ledford said.

Ledford said the best solution is to come together as a community and decide what is best for the property.

“We could attract certain things to come in here that might be very attractive to the community at large if that property was annexed properly into city of Brookville,” Ledford said.

Ledford said “once we get through the election cycle I would think everybody would like to relax and everybody would like to go back to business as usual.”

“I think there is a good majority of people who are starting to get kind of sick and tired of it,” Ledford said.

Meadow Glen resident Dave Kindle said he would like “to try to put this in a little bit more perspective.”

“People are out there saying we don’t want to be a Huber Heights,” Kindle said.

“I can tell you honestly we will never become Huber Heights,” Kindle continued.

Kindle indicated Huber Heights has a population of almost 47,000 and is still growing.

“Brookville has, I’ll give you, 5,900 people,” Kindle said.

“So let’s bring it back a little bit and put a little more perspective on it,” Kindle said.

Kindle noted Englewood has a population of 13,125, but “has no more land to really grow.”

Kindle indicated Clayton has a population of 13,325.

Kindle said when looking at the population of Clayton and Brookville, Clayton has approximately 7,071 more people.

Kindle indicated the average household size in Ohio is 2.4 while the average household size in Brookville is 2.27.

“So if you take that 7,100 and divide it by 2.27 or 2.37, whatever you want to use, we would have to build almost 3,100 houses in Brookville, and that is with nobody passing away in Brookville, to even get close to Clayton,” Kindle said.

“That’s not going to happen. There’s not enough farmland to be annexed into Brookville,” Kindle said.

Kindle said a majority of the the land west of Brookville “is in the state easement.”

Wengerlawn Road resident Steve Berk noted the conservation easements that were mentioned by Kindell “are called the Farmland Preservation Program and is administered by the Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA).”

“The idea behind that program is put land into a permanent easement that will go on into perpetuity,” Berk, who is the Ohio Farm Bureau’s elected southwest regional trustee, explained.

According to the ODA, the program’s purpose is to permanently preserve Ohio’s farmland for agricultural use by working with landowners, local governments, and other organizations to achieve this goal.

The ODA states the program uses agricultural easements, which are voluntary agreements between landowners and the ODA.

The ODA states in exchange for maintaining the land for agricultural use, the landowner receives compensation or a tax deduction.

The ODA states “the easements are permanent, meaning the land must remain in agricultural use forever.”

The ODA states the program has two ways to grant easements:

Purchase: the landowner sells the easement to the ODA in exchange for payment.

Donation: the landowner donates the easement to the ODA, but may be eligible for a federal tax deduction.

Berk said “a lot of land around Brookville is in the Farmland Preservation.”

“My personal farm is in Farmland Preservation,” Berk said.

Kindell said “the land that is available in Brookville for purchase right now to build on would bring in, if that all took place, roughly around 700-800 people.”

“That takes us from 59,000 to 67,000. That’s not close to Clayton,” Kindell noted.

“Those are facts,” Kindell said.

Reach Terry Baver at [email protected].