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GREENSBORO - Depending on who you ask, it's either an unnecessary impediment to development or a citizen's right to influence the political process.

Council members will decide Wednesday which side of the debate they are on.

The council will consider asking the legislature to restore the protest petition - a tool that requires a super majority of the City Council, meaning seven of nine votes, to approve a zoning amendment if it is opposed by 5 percent of adjoining property owners.

Greensboro is the only city is the state exempted from the zoning requirement.

Most City Council members said they had not decided whether they would support bringing it back.

"It will simply give the citizens that live in the area where this high growth is an opportunity to have a little more input about what is put there instead of having something thrown down their throats," said Colin Kelly from the Coalition of Concerned Citizens, which formed after a controversial rezoning last year.

Even if the City Council does not give its blessing to the protest petition, state legislators have suggested they will still seek to remove Greensboro's exemption.

The state legislature exempted Greensboro from the protest provision in 1971 for reasons that are unclear.

When 5 percent of surrounding property owners oppose a rezoning, the protest petition would require a super majority vote of a city council - in Greensboro's case, seven of nine members - to approve a rezoning.

The pros and cons

The push to bring it back in Greensboro started last year, with an unpopular rezoning on West Friendly Avenue near the Urban Loop.

The City Council approved the rezoning on its second reading.

"We did not oppose building on the land. We just opposed dense development and three-story apartments next to a residential neighbor," said Willie Taylor, who lives across the street from the proposed development. "Had we had the protest petition, it would not have passed."

During the past year, groups such as the Greensboro Neighborhood Congress and the League of Women Voters and some bloggers have thrown their support behind the movement, arguing in part that the protest petition gives residents a fair shake against developers.

"We should not be the only city in the state of North Carolina that doesn't have this right," said Donna Newton, liaison to the Neighborhood Congress.

Some opponents and council members have questioned whether it is fair to let 5 percent of area landowners potentially derail a rezoning request.

But a UNC School of Government survey found that protest petitions statewide are rare. Only 134 petitions were filed in 2006 out of more than 2,100 rezoning requests.

And the occasions when the rezoning failed as a direct result of a petition were even more rare. The survey found four cases.

The significant effect of the protest petition more often seems to be the informal impact - the effect on reshaping a developer's request rather than the final vote, David Owens from the UNC School of Government said in a recent League of Women Voters' meeting.

"What we don't know is how many cases that did pass even with the protest petition had become more expensive because of conditions that had to be negotiated," said Marlene Sanford, president of the Triad Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition. "We don't know how many projects never got off the ground because of the protest petition."

Some council members have argued that the council already takes neighbors' comments into account when making zoning decisions.

"Developers meet with neighbors or else they suffer the consequences," Sanford said.

Developer Roy Carroll had a protest petition on a Winston-Salem project two years ago. In that case, he said neighbors said they would drop the protest if he bought and redeveloped a mobile home park in the area.

"Protest petitions can and are used to try to extort all kinds of things out of property owners. Not just developers but property owners. It is something I have seen firsthand the negative effects of," Carroll said.

Wells yes, Perkins no

The City Council will decide whether to support the protest petition as one of the issues they want the legislature to pass this year.

Councilwoman Goldie Wells has said she would support the protest petition, and Councilman Robbie Perkins will oppose it.

"If we are going to have a protest petition law, it needs to be based on realistic parameters. I don't think 5 percent is a realistic parameter to cause a super-majority vote," Perkins said.

Other council members said they would like to hear both sides of the argument. Councilwoman Trudy Wade said she would be interested in getting together a committee that can write legislation everyone can agree on.

"We need to review our zoning process. Is it broken? Do we need to fix it? Are the neighbors winning?" Councilman Zack Matheny said. "I will tell you, in my cases, the neighbors are winning."

Contact Amanda Lehmert at 373-7075 or amanda.lehmert@news-record.com