BREAKING: Mooresville votes 4-2 against Lake Davidson "straight up" rezoning

aShortChronicle has confirmed with multiple people in attendance at the Mooresville Town Hall meeting where reports indicate the Board has voted down the Lake Davidson rezoning request.

While details are still coming in from people in attendance at Mooresville Town Hall, this much is known.

• The vote was 4-2 against the rezoning request as a "straight up" request.
• Approaching 1100 petition signatures opposing the rezoning request were collected prior to the meeting.
• Commissioner Coble and Mayor Atkins were asked by residents via an attorney to recuse themselves after the embarrassing revelations last month of text messages between themselves mocking citizens who opposed the rezoning request.

While the recusal of two elected officials was denied, it had no impact on the outcome.  Mayor Atkins would only vote in the event of a tie, and with Commissioner Coble being one of only 2 votes for the rezoning if he had been recused the margin of victory for citizens would have only increased.  (For the record, Thurmond Houston was the second "yes" vote.)

On the flip side Commissioner Beaver spoke strongly against the rezoning receiving major applause from the audience.  He expressed concern for people in Davidson and the ETJ - people who can't even vote for him - showing that doing the right thing can in fact trump $$$ into town coffers.

Eventhough this decision was for the Mooresville Board to make, if this decision had gone the other way Davidson would have born the brunt of the negative consequences.  aShortChronicle caught up with Davidson Mayoral Candidate Rusty Knox who was in attendance at the Mooresville meeting.  Here is what Knox had to say on the outcome.

"Tonight after months of discussion and countless hours of public input the Mooresville Board of Commissioners made the decision to deny the Lake Davidson rezoning request. The Board listened, the Board asked the right questions, the Board acknowledged the lack of defined infrastructure to support the project without being detrimental to its constituents and turned down the request. Public input matters."

Knox is of course very correct.  Public input does in fact matter.  Monday evening is proof positive of that.