By Brian Shane

Staff Writer

Residents of campground communities may now use gazebos and sunshades legally in their parking spaces, after homeowners from the White Horse Park neighborhood successfully petitioned Worcester County leaders to allow them.

“I haven’t been in the park very long, but others have had these shade structure for years and years,” said White Horse Park resident Tracey Barnhardt. “That’s really all we’re asking for is something to sit under and enjoy the little bit of property we have in the heat.”

After the Dec. 17 public hearing on the matter, when Barnhardt spoke, the county commissioners voted to amend the county zoning code to allow for two accessory buildings on a campground site, one of them being unenclosed.

Property owners will have to prove they have two parking spots before being granted a permit for an accessory sunshade. Temporary pop-up sunshades like ones seen at the beach or farmers market or like an umbrella over a table don’t need a permit.

“You got your shade,” said Commissioner President Ted Elder when the bill passed, drawing a small round of applause from the crowd.

Over the summer, when a White Horse Park resident asked the county’s permitting office for a gazebo on their property, they learned that only one “accessory structure” – zoning speak for a building like a shed, gazebo, or detached garage – is allowed per campsite by county code. Typically, that lone accessory at White Horse Park is a shed.

County officials since found that many of the park’s homeowners were in violation of this code by having a sunshade taking up parking space. Commissioner Eric Fiori (District 3, Sinepuxent) introduced a bill in August to amend the code and lift the restriction.

Fiori said not only do gazebos provide shade from the sun, but having a more permanent version of a sunshade means residents, many of whom are seniors, won’t have to put them up and down on a daily basis, which is labor-intensive.

Originally, Fiori’s bill would have reduced the required parking from two spaces to one space on a campsite. The intent was to allow campsite owners to permit a gazebo or sunshade in what is now considered a required parking space.

However, county planning officials did not support reducing the amount of required parking because it could lead to street parking that might cause congestion and block emergency vehicles.

At 20 feet wide, campground roads are much narrower than typical county roads. This, Fiori said, creates a concern about whether fire trucks can drive there with additional cars on the street. The other problem was zero separation of gazebos between campsites being a fire hazard.

Based on overall feedback, the bill that passed now removes parking modifications, so two parking spaces would be mandatory per campsite. The bill also sets a minimum distance between buildings at the campsites from 0 feet to 3 feet for gazebo placement, according to Jennifer Keener, the county’s director of Development Review and Permitting. Gazebos also are limited in size to 8 by 10 feet.

In a campground subdivision, lots have to be 50 by 60 feet, making the usual parcel size about 3,000 square feet. However, White Horse Park was exempted from this provision when it was founded decades ago, so the lots there are smaller, about 2,000 to 2,500 square feet in size, Keener wrote in a June 21 memo to the county’s Planning Commission.

County zoning allows campers to have an RV, a park trailer, a manufactured home, or a modular home. Dwellings are limited to 750 square feet including additions. Open decks are allowed and do not contribute to the square footage calculations, Keener also wrote.

This code amendment could affect nearly 1,000 homeowners in northern Worcester County. There are 465 lots in White Horse Park and 525 at Assateague Pointe, another campsite subdivision, Keener said.

However, the county does not have a land survey for every single lot in the campgrounds, so if a land survey showed a site lacked its required two spots, a property owner would be required to install that second parking space before getting a sunshade permit, Keener added.

Mike Herbert, a property owner on Snowbird Court in White Horse Park, told the commissioners at the hearing that parking is not a problem because public overflow parking exists throughout the park.

“There’s no reason why anybody should ever have to park on the road. Down by the marina, you could park probably 75 cars in that big lot there,” he said.

The sunshade discussion among the commissioners also expanded into a kind of review on the state of campground properties in Worcester.

Some commissioners were surprised to learn that campsite properties have no fire hydrants and rely on fire department tanker trucks. Others discussed how code violations, such as sheds straddling property lines, are rampant. Another conversation emerged about firewall protection in sheds from flammable liquids.

In response, Elder told the board that “this bill has absolutely nothing to do with that,” he said. “Zero.”

“There’s code violations everywhere in the county,” Elder said. “You can’t use violations when you’re setting code. Violations are not what determines the code. It is what it is. You’re not allowed to park that car on the street.”

The vote was split 4-3, with yes votes from Commissioners Joe Mitrecic, Ted Elder, Eric Fiori, and Diana Purnell. Commissioners Chip Bertino, Caryn Abbott, and Jim Bunting voted no.

“Somebody who’s been living there for 30 years, when they bought the property, they knew what the conditions were,” Bunting said of White Horse Park. “And to change ‘em now, for no reason whatsoever, you might as well just throw your code out on everything. Because somebody might get cancer from the sun, that’s not an excuse to change the code for everything in Worcester County.”

On the heels of this discussion, the issue of whether sheds and fire safety will be reviewed next. A motion from Commissioner Mitrecic (District 7, Ocean City) passed unanimously for staff to look into requiring firewalls for sheds and proper storage of hazardous materials.