By ANN HINCH
Assistant Editor

COLUMBUS, Ind. — Readers may have noticed an unusual advertisement in the last two Farm World issues, titled “Two-Mile Jurisdiction Protest Farm Auction.”
The auction’s website warns potential buyers: “IF YOU PURCHASE THIS FARM AND LIVE ON IT OR NOT, YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO VOTE FOR THOSE PEOPLE WHO CONTROL ITS USE AND ZONING!!!”

James Puckett, who owns the 108-acre farm just outside Columbus with his wife, Barbara, is selling the property April 15 in solidarity with friend and former tenant Scott Woolls – who, until recently, rented 1.5 acres including a 50-by-80-foot metal tool shed to assemble hay balers for farm equipment manufacturer Claas.

Woolls and business partner Roger Mouser now run their assembly operation, S&R Enterprises and Imports LLC, out of a former rural office building just outside Scottsburg, about 40 miles south of Columbus.

“The folks here have been great,” Woolls said of moving to Scott County, adding while he does business in as close proximity to Scottsburg now as he did to Columbus in Bartholomew County, he doesn’t feel as restricted by the new city’s laws.

Columbus exercises a state-allowed two-mile jurisdiction beyond its city limits. Indiana Code Section 36-7-4-205 states an incorporated city, for purposes of development, “may include any part of the contiguous unincorporated area within two miles from the corporate boundaries of the municipality” in zoning decisions.

And Puckett’s farm is inside that two-mile radius.

“It’s certainly not unique to Columbus at all,” said Jeff Bergman, executive director of the Columbus-Bartholomew Planning Department. “Most people (within that two miles) I encounter are aware they’re in the city’s jurisdiction,” but they don’t always know what it entails.

It does entail conforming to city zoning restrictions. Puckett’s land is zoned AP, or Agriculture Preferred, Bergman said. City language describes AP as “intended to provide an area suitable for agriculture and agriculture-related uses.”

Complaints stall business

Woolls thought assembling hay balers was related to agriculture, since they have to be tested on a farm once they’re put together. So did Woolls’ lawyer – “The attorney came to the conclusion a hay baler is farm-related, so he told Scott to go ahead, it was just fine,” Puckett said.

S&R contracts with farm equipment manufacturers to receive nearly-finished machines from overseas factories; crate kits are delivered to S&R by semis. S&R employees finish assembling, calibrating and testing the balers, then semis return and take them to retailers.

Woolls – also a farmer and mechanical engineer who said he used to design molds, dies and machines – started with Claas but said he and Mouser also work with other companies, and recently signed a contract with Praxair, Inc.
In late 2008, Puckett leased part of his property to Woolls to assemble the balers, so Woolls could earn income in the winter months. Woolls also wanted his few employees to continue earning income as well, by helping assemble.
Bergman said the county highway department received calls from residents after Woolls began assembly. People were complaining, he said, about the amount of semi traffic coming through and its effect on the county road.
Heavily-laden grain trucks also use those roads, Puckett pointed out – but the callers didn’t mention those, Bergman said. “I don’t know what it was in the minds and opinions of the people along that road” that made them call about the semis when they didn’t on grain trucks, Bergman added.

In Puckett’s opinion, it was one caller causing most of the problem – a neighbor of the property Woolls used to own, whom Puckett said had a previous dispute with Woolls. (Woolls sold his 280-acre farm – which he said had been in his family since the 1870s – last year, partly because of “pressure” from this situation.)

Variance denied

Bergman shared the complaint with the Department of Technical Code Enforcement for Bartholomew County/Columbus. The city and county have separate planning commissions, but share the same staff and director, since Columbus’ planning jurisdiction takes up 30 percent of the county.
They contacted Woolls, Bergman said, so they could understand his work. Bergman said the businessman invited them out, walked them around and explained what he did.

“We concluded that the use was more of a ‘research and industrial use,’” Bergman said – which requires a zoning variance.

“They said it was ‘just a little more than agricultural,’” Woolls said. “None of the stuff that we do changes the sale structure or the tax base (of the land).”
So, Woolls applied for a variance in February 2009; that June, the Columbus Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) denied it by a 3-1 vote. The BZA cited unsafe driving conditions and damage to roads; that outdoor storage of baler equipment “has considerably altered the character of the area” and adversely affected adjacent property; that industrial use is not permitted on ag land; and that Woolls would not suffer a hardship to move because the land had always been zoned for agriculture.

Woolls filed a lawsuit to protest the decision, but dropped it last year – then the city of Columbus filed suit against him to halt his work. At press time, this suit is still pending.

“I’m not in business to get into lawsuits with people,” Woolls said of his move, which he recently completed. “It makes you no money.”

Bergman said Woolls and Puckett had options they didn’t pursue. They could have petitioned to rezone the property, which ultimately goes to the city council. They could have appealed the planning department’s administrative decision to the BZA – “very different criteria would have applied” in considering his case, Bergman said.

“I think that there were places elsewhere in Columbus where (Woolls) could have had the business,” Bergman said, adding the city and county have similar zoning goals. “There’s not really a connection between the city of Columbus itself and its jurisdiction, and this use of this property.”