CHARLES TOWN -- Jefferson County voters shot down a zoning ordinance in a Nov. 7 special election, but a leader who advocated for the reforms says he doesn't feel discouraged in the least.

"It was a missed opportunity," said Jefferson County Commissioner Jim Surkamp, a Shepherdstown Democrat elected in 2004. "But what we learned is that it's very easy to use misinformation and scare voters into saying 'no.'"

Still, Surkamp believes many of the ordinance's key provisions will be enacted.

"We realized we can't ask voters to take in 1,000 different ideas at once and give their okay to all of them. It's just too complex," he said. "What we can do is take the good ideas and put them into place in a piecemeal fashion."

According to county election officials, more than 5,200 citizens cast ballots in last week’s election out of some 22,000 eligible voters. The outcome: 3,249 voted against the new zoning rules and 1,953 backed them.

Proponents had stressed the new zoning proposal would better protect the area’s farmland from large-scale housing developments and allow farmers the option to operate markets and sell value-added products from their land. Opponents of the measure described the new rules as restrictive and a further weakening of landowners’ rights.

Only voters who live in Jefferson County outside any municipality were eligible to take part in the special election. The county has a total of about 33,000 voters on its rolls.

The public vote on the ordinance followed a citizen petition organized late last year after members of the Jefferson County Commission OK’d the new rules in October 2008. With the defeat of the new rules, the county is left with guidelines that have been in place since 1988.

Surkamp said the updated zoning rules were not rushed, but came after hundreds of meetings with farmers and other residents over a period of more than three years.

"I'm not heartbroken over the outcome because thanks to the process and to all the people we heard from, we came up with a lot of good ideas," he said. "Now what we'll do is take the guidelines and, bite by bite, have the County Commission approve them. It'll be a lot more understandable for citizens and if there's an idea that isn't well-liked, well, the petition option is always there."

Surkamp said that what's happened with zoning in Jefferson County might inform the decisions of leaders and citizens in other parts of West Virginia where zoning is under debate.

"We were kind of a test case," he said. "We've learned some things through this."