Decatur

Brown County, Ohio (rural southwest-Ohio county on the Ohio River; ~43,500 residents; county seat Georgetown — boyhood home of Ulysses S. Grant; 16 townships including Byrd, Clark, Eagle, Franklin, Green, Huntington, Jackson, Jefferson, Lewis, Perry, Pike, Pleasant, Scott, Sterling, Union, and Washington; incorporated villages Aberdeen, Fayetteville, Georgetown, Hamersville, Higginsport, Mount Orab, Ripley, Russellville, and Sardinia) does NOT operate a countywide zoning ordinance and has not adopted county-tier zoning under O.R.C. Chapter 303. Ohio is a home-rule state under Article XVIII of the Ohio Constitution; counties may adopt county zoning under O.R.C. Chapter 303 but most do not (Lake County is the canonical Ohio county that does), and Brown County has not. Townships in Brown County may adopt township-tier zoning under O.R.C. Chapter 519, and a minority have done so — Pike Township (containing fast-growing Mount Orab on the U.S. 32 'Appalachian Highway' corridor) has the most-developed township zoning resolution, and several townships closer to the Cincinnati commute shed (Jackson, Pleasant) have partial zoning. The rest of Brown County's townships have NO township zoning resolution in force. Where neither county nor township zoning exists, a parcel in unincorporated Brown County is effectively unzoned for land-use purposes; the Ohio Residential Code (OAC 4101:8) still governs construction standards for any dwelling, including an ADU, and the Brown County General Health District still governs septic permits, but there is no local zoning prohibition on a second dwelling on a parcel. ADU permissibility in unincorporated Brown County therefore turns on (1) whether the parcel is in a township with adopted zoning (a minority but a growing one along U.S. 32), (2) whether the parcel is inside village limits (in which case the village's zoning applies — Mount Orab and Georgetown have the most active village zoning), and (3) whether the parcel can support a second septic field under OAC 3701-29 capacity rules.

• flood-zone
• historic-district
• other
• other