Albemarle County already has active special-interest groups looking after homebuilders, realtors, farmers, the environment and business. But Hank Martin has started a new group, Forever Albemarle, with a mission to advocate for property rights to the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, a role that has typically fallen to the Farm Bureau.
“We’re seeing these decisions that are being made for property owners that it’s getting to the point that the only thing that we’re allowed to do is pay the taxes on the property,” says Martin. “It’s getting to the point that we’re living in a 750-square-mile homeowners’ association. Had I wanted to live in a homeowners’ association, I know where they are, and I would go move there.”
 Hank Martin hopes his group Forever Albemarle can change the county conversation on property rights. |
To Martin, the last decade has shown a gradual deterioration of local property rights that started with limits on commercial building and reached a new low with the Board of Supervisors’ February 6 vote to impose a group of ordinances that limit building around intermittent streams and increase engineering requirements for private driveways. Scores of county landowners showed up to oppose the measures, which they saw as limiting the building potential—and therefore the value—of their land. Martin held an exploratory meeting for Forever Albemarle in December, but he has accelerated planning since February.
“I saw we’re speaking but they’re not hearing us,” says Martin, who says Forever Albemarle has about 80 members. Martin intends it to be a nonpartisan group and has invited the chairs of both local parties to a May 1 organizational meeting.
Martin doesn’t see himself as an extremist—he believes there has to be some zoning and government regulation. “There can’t be chaos,” he says, pointing to big developments like Biscuit Run or illegal dumpsites like the one in Cismont as examples of appropriate regulation. “What I say is, you don’t need to create a whole new level of bureaucracy and go around and play Big Brother or Nanny State. The vast majority of the people are not trying to play fast and loose with the rules.”
As has been demonstrated time and time again when the Board of Supervisors has discussed restrictions in the rural areas, the “property rights” issue has drawn dozens of county residents to public hearings that often don’t end until after midnight. The question is whether Martin and Forever Albemarle can channel that political energy into a sustained presence.
To do so, it might require the same vigilant attendance at less glamorous daytime work sessions as the “paid lobbyists” of the Southern Environmental Law Center and the Piedmont Environmental Council, who Martin thinks get too much attention from some supervisors.
“At this point, it’s just not feasibly possible for me to be at all the meetings,” says Martin, whose day job is at an equipment rental business. He says he’s trying to find retired folks who could have a presence during daytime meetings. “That would be a goal to work towards so that when [supervisors] Ken Boyd and Lindsay Dorrier look out they just don’t see the other side being represented.”
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