Town officials in Smithfield say a change in Virginia’s public notice laws will lengthen the approval process for rezoning applications and other permits that require votes by the town’s Planning Commission and Town Council.

State law has for decades required local governments to solicit public input ahead of adopting any new ordinance or amendment, including a developer-requested rezoning, by advertising a hearing two successive weeks in advance of the scheduled date in a newspaper with “general circulation” in that locality.

According to Town Attorney Bill Riddick, the law until this year allowed the second of the weekly ads to be published six days in advance of the hearing, with the day of the hearing counting as the seventh.

A bill by state Sen. Christopher Head, R-Roanoke, which Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed into law on March 28, now explicitly requires the second notice appear “no less than seven days before the date of the meeting referenced in the notice.”

When a developer applies for rezoning to build a residential or commercial project in town, the application is first vetted by town staff, then heads to the town’s Planning Commission, which is tasked under state law with holding a hearing and voting on a favorable or unfavorable recommendation to Town Council.

The process repeats upon reaching the Town Council, which is obligated under state law to hold its own hearing before taking a final vote on the application.

The Planning Commission meets at 6:30 p.m. on the second Tuesday of each month, typically leaving little margin for error to give the required 14-day notice ahead of the next meeting of the Town Council, which meets the first Tuesday of the following month.

Because The Smithfield Times’ print edition goes to press on Tuesday and is mailed to subscribers on Wednesday, town staff must wait until the following Wednesday, a full week after the Planning Commission meets, to place any required advertisement.

By counting the day of the council hearing, town staff had been able to give the 14-day notice while making applicants wait only three weeks to see their applications advanced by the Planning Commission reach the Town Council. 

“It looks like that’s not going to be feasible any longer,” Town Manager Michael Stallings told council members at their July 22 committee meetings.

Now, the gap between the Planning Commission’s and Town Council’s respective hearings will be more than a month.

Isle of Wight County is facing the same issue. After the county’s Planning Commission voted unanimously on June 25 to recommend denial of a permit for a proposed 3-megawatt solar farm on 27 acres bordering Old Stage Highway and Morgarts Beach Road, County Attorney Bobby Jones told commissioners that a change in state law pertaining to meeting advertisements would delay until Aug. 15 any possibility of Denver-based Pivot Energy subsidiary Elk Development LLC’s application going to the Board of Supervisors for a public hearing and final vote.

Town Councilman Randy Pack floated the idea of advertising in a different newspaper, such as The Daily Press, which town staff say would come at a significantly higher cost, and possibly passing the extra cost onto applicants in the application fees the town charges.

Stallings said the town currently spends $200 for a two-week notice, or $400 in total on a single application for hearings at the Planning Commission and Town Council. The last time the town advertised in the Daily Press, by comparison, cost $800 for two weeks or $1,600 in total for the two required hearings.

Pack also acknowledged the counterargument that the town could be perceived as “doing a disservice to the community by not getting these published in a truly local paper.”

“I can’t tell you the last time I read the Daily Press,” Pack said.

Councilman Jim Collins asserted the “people who are standing here waiting for an application to be approved” would be “more upset if they have to wait another month.”

The council also discussed publishing the required notices on the town’s website in addition to advertising them in a print newspaper. But publishing the notices at no cost on the town’s website in lieu of any print advertising isn’t an option.

The firm 14-day notice requirement was one of several changes the General Assembly discussed in its 2024 session, not all of which became law.

Legislation that Del. Ellen Campbell, R-Fairfield, proposed for the 2024 session, which would have allowed local governments to publish notices on the locality’s website in lieu of a newspaper, died in a house subcommittee on counties, cities and towns.

Twin bills by Del. Patrick Hope, D-Arlington, and state Sen. Jennifer Boysko, D-Herndon, which Youngkin signed into law this year, made Virginia the first state in the nation to allow online-only news outlets to petition their local circuit court to qualify as a publisher of public notices, a certification that must be renewed annually.