Highland County

Highland County's Department of Building and Zoning, headed by Building Official and Zoning Administrator Joshua Simmons (540-468-2323, jsimmons@highlandcova.org), handles the full local-permitting stack: zoning permits, Conditional Use Permits, site plan review, land-disturbance and erosion-and-sediment-control permits, building permits, trade permit coordination, floodplain development permits, and E-911 addressing. A typical ADU-like permit bundle (where a second dwelling is permitted) includes: (1) pre-application zoning inquiry, (2) Conditional Use Permit from the Board of Supervisors with Planning Commission recommendation (unless the parcel qualifies for an agricultural tenant or farm-labor dwelling allowance, or the project is a no-kitchen 'guest house'), (3) zoning permit confirming use compliance and setbacks, (4) building permit with stamped residential plans, (5) electrical, plumbing, and mechanical trade permits, (6) Virginia Department of Health (VDH) Central Shenandoah Health District construction permit for well and onsite septic — essentially every parcel in the county relies on private well and septic, as there is no public sewer and only limited public water (Town of Monterey water serves the town footprint), (7) floodplain development permit if any portion of the parcel is within the FEMA Special Flood Hazard Area along the Jackson, Bullpasture, Cowpasture, or South Branch Potomac headwater systems, and (8) land-disturbance / erosion-and-sediment-control permit for projects exceeding the state E&S threshold.

Highland County real estate is assessed by the Office of the Commissioner of the Revenue. The Commissioner prepares the land book annually, assesses new construction and changes to improvements, and administers state income-tax processing for county residents. An ADU or second-dwelling addition is captured through the supplemental real-estate-improvement process under Va. Code § 58.1-3292: the Commissioner of the Revenue receives the building-permit record and Certificate of Occupancy from Building and Zoning, and adds the ADU's assessed value to the parcel's land and improvement base, prorated to the completion date. The primary dwelling is NOT re-valued off-cycle as a result of the ADU addition. The county operates on the Virginia general-reassessment framework under Va. Code § 58.1-3252; small counties (under 50,000 population — Highland is well under that threshold) may elect five- or six-year intervals, and the county has historically contracted general reassessments to an outside firm. Real Estate Tax is due to the Treasurer.

Assessment policy: An ADU is captured as a real-estate improvement under Va. Code Title 58.1 Subtitle III Chapter 32. On receipt of the building permit and (later) the Certificate of Occupancy from the Department of Building and Zoning, the Commissioner of the Revenue prorates the supplemental assessment from the completion date through the end of the tax year under Va. Code § 58.1-3292. The ADU is added at its assessed fair-market value (typically derived from cost-approach residential cost multipliers calibrated to the current reassessment-cycle base) on top of the parcel's existing land and improvement value; the existing primary dwelling is NOT revalued off-cycle. There is no Highland-County-specific ADU assessment exemption. Standard Virginia real-estate tax-relief programs (elderly and disabled relief under Va. Code § 58.1-3210 as adopted locally, disabled-veteran exemption under Va. Code § 58.1-3219.5) apply to the homeowner's principal residence and may extend to the parcel as a whole depending on local-option rules; they do not create a separate carve-out for the ADU itself.

Highland County administers a Floodplain Overlay tied to FEMA Special Flood Hazard Areas along the Jackson, Bullpasture, Cowpasture, and South Branch Potomac headwater systems and their tributaries. The Building Official serves as Floodplain Administrator. Highland County is NOT a Tidewater locality and is therefore NOT subject to the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act (Va. Code § 62.1-44.15:67 et seq.) — the headwater drainages in Highland flow into the James and Potomac systems, but Highland sits west of the CBPA jurisdictional boundary. Highland County has NO designated coastal-commission analog (none exists in Virginia), NO statewide WUI regulatory overlay (Virginia has no CalFire-style WUI program), and NO seismic-retrofit overlay. There are no FAA Part 150 commercial-airport noise zones reaching the county. The Town of Monterey applies the same county zoning framework with town-level review for the historic core.

• Floodplain Overlay District
• Agricultural and Forestal District (state-enabled, locally-adopted)
• Town of Monterey historic core (locally and federally recognized)