To the editor:

Last year we were forced to protect our rural community from a 2008 value-added agricultural business: conditional use permit (CUP) being issued on a 5-acre parcel in our area. Now, text amendments are threatening our way of life.

Who would have thought this could happen in our county? We agree that this CUP is beneficial for rural residents to develop their own business by canning fruits they have grown or establishing a vineyard for a distillery. We feel that this particular CUP venture is a loophole for an established Lawrence business to relocate its factory outside the city with no crops grown on the plot.

Our primary concern now is that the text amendment, if approved April 29, would allow corporations to buy any parcel of land that was divided before 2006 and build a 10,000-square-foot commercial factory as long as it can be linked to this CUP. By removing acreage and road frontage, what will make our rural community different from the city?

Residents of rural Douglas County, you are at risk.

Large buildings, parking lots, lagoons and additional traffic will quickly change the quality of our country living and property values. To be clear, we are pro-agriculture. Restrictions are needed to tighten the loophole (acreage, frontage, owner must live on property, etc.). We understand that some updates may be needed due to growth in Douglas County, however removing these is not the answer.

Let’s keep “county” in Douglas County.