Sussex County working group struggles to finalize development reforms

A group meant to help Sussex County find compromise in its ongoing struggle with the onslaught of growth and development has hit road bumps as it nears the finish line.

The Sussex County Land Use Reform Working Group was supposed to send a list of recommended action items to the Sussex County Council by the end of August. But in the final steps of the process, some members are expressing concern about the draft recommendations, which could delay the group’s timeline.

“I don’t think that those draft recommendations in their current form go far enough,” said Jill Hicks, a working group member and president of the Sussex Preservation Coalition, a grassroots organization advocating for smart development, about the working group’s July 24 meeting. “I don’t think that they’re specific enough to really satisfy what County Council and the public are looking for.”  

The 10-member working group has been meeting since March. It includes a housing developer, a state transportation engineer, preservationist, farmer, state planner and others, all appointed by Sussex County Council members.

The working group was asked to propose reforms to the county’s development codes to ease the impact ongoing growth has had on affordability, road conditions, services and the environment.

County Council formed the group after three newcomers beat out incumbents in the November 2024 elections. They campaigned on changing the county’s development policies, and their victory was fueled by resident frustrations over how the five-person council had previously handled new development.

More than 13,000 homes have been built in Sussex County over the past five years, bringing  an increase of more than 32,000 residents, the county council said in February. 

About a quarter of that growth has come in areas that state planners designated for open space and farmland preservation. 

Andrew Bing, the group’s facilitator, told Spotlight Delaware that members may need until the end of September to finalize their list. 

“The most important thing is to develop good recommendations and take the time necessary to do that,” he said. 

The working group was slated to review all 17 recommendations at its July 24 meeting, but only made it through the first eight because of debates delaying the process.

Draft_Recommendations_List-Meeting 7 (July 2025)Download

What are the recommendations?

The 17 draft recommendations cover a wide variety of concerns, including preserving trees, supporting farms and making it easier for developers to build mixed-use developments and affordable housing units.

But Hicks said the recommendations do not do enough to address traffic concerns or preserve land.  

“We’ve done a lot of work on increasing density in specific areas, but we haven’t done enough to restrict density in the outside areas, and we haven’t done enough for the infrastructure,” Hicks said.

Jay Baxter, owner of Baxter Farms, agreed, saying there should be a recommendation to improve each of the county’s roads.

“If you expect us, in our very large equipment, in our tractor-trailers, to get out of the way of the cars on the road, you’ve got to make the roads bigger,” Baxter said. “We’re tearing out mailboxes. We’re running over cars. We’re running over trash cans. We’re running over people’s front yards.”

Several group members pointed to Transportation Improvement Districts (TIDs), or areas where traffic improvements are coordinated together in one area and supported by impact fees on projects, as the best way to address congestion issues. 

But Hicks said TIDs are only updated with new traffic data every five years, so it can sometimes be outdated — especially in rapidly developing Sussex County.

David Edgell, the director of the Office of State Planning Coordination and a group member, said TIDs do work when there are specific parameters on where the county wants development to take place. 

“I think they will only be successful if the county can pivot from everything can happen everywhere, to more density where we want it in the growth areas, and less incentive, or less ability to develop … in rural areas,” Edgell said.

Mark Luszcz, chief engineer at the Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT), said he thinks incentivizing mixed-use development would help ease traffic congestion because people could walk, bike or use public transit instead of driving. 

Luszcz said he thinks there needs to be different levels of service standards, or expected traffic, in “growth zone” areas, or places where the county wants to incentivize development. 

“There’s no practical way to add capacity to Route 1,” Luszcz said. “So if you want that to be a growth zone, it’s gonna be what it is and, or, get worse.”

In a rare moment of agreement between concerned residents and developers, Hicks, builder Jon Horner and engineer Mike Riemann all agreed that some of the draft recommendations are not specific enough.

Horner said if any wording on what is or is not allowed is too vague, it could lead to a long, drawn-out fight between developers and those who don’t want the development on what exactly the regulations mean. 

“It’s going to lead to exactly what got everybody in this room,” Horner said.