In recent weeks there has been a public and political outcry as discrepancies have been revealed between the master plan for Clarksburg Town Center, the developer's approved site plan and what has actually been built in the town forecast to grow from 5,000 to 40,000 people in 20 years.

As Barnesville wraps up its a master plan review process, the town's five-member planning commission is unanimous in its desire to preserve the town "as is" for the foreseeable future, chairman Meg Menke said. That wish is reflected in the five-year master plan that will have its public hearing Tuesday. The town commission will have the final vote on the document.

"The main issue is what can we do differently or keep doing to keep Barnesville as a small, rural village," Menke said. "We're not looking to change who we are."

What Barnesville is, is a collection of 65 homes set in the middle of the county's Agricultural Reserve, without a central water or sewage system. There are four roads within town boundaries.

Although as a municipality Barnesville retains authority over its own planning, questions of whether and how to grow are largely forestalled by the limitations of space and septic service.

Nonetheless, town planners said that with developable land remaining along the town's outer edges and some of the town's homes -- two-thirds built before 1940 -- seemingly ripe for the tear-down and rebuilding trend becoming more common elsewhere, there were important issues to address in updating a plan more than a decade old.

The planning commission finished its work in May. "Since then all this has come up with Clarksburg and just made us go 'Wow,' " Menke said. "Things are much simpler here. ... It's actually made me very proud of what we did. ... I think we took a very reasoned, balanced, forward-thinking approach to some of the same issues."

The draft plan calls for increasing minimum residential lot size from two to four acres; lowering maximum building height for non-agricultural structures from 50 to 40 feet; and imposing new restrictions on road frontage for new buildings. It also calls on the town government to survey town businesses and bring into compliance those operating without the special exception required by town code.

"We do not have a commercial zone but we do have actually a pretty extensive cottage industry," said Mayor Pete Menke, brother-in-law of Meg and a member of the planning commission. The mayor said such businesses need to be operated in accordance with town laws in order to protect against less benign uses in the future.

"We're a small town with a small government, and we don't try to over regulate, but you need to regulate to protect everybody's interest," he said.

It was one of the lessons of Clarksburg, Meg Menke said.

"If you don't pay attention to the rules, they can come around and the situation can bite you, which is what happened there."

The attempts to limit the size of new residences also originated in the anecdotes of "McMansions" elsewhere in the upcounty, planners said.

The town already has a wide variety of home styles. Planners wanted to contain the bulk of new homes and maintain the town's current atmosphere without limiting the personal choices of residents.

"Given that Barnesville is dedicated to being a street-front community then if what you see on the façade is limited, then it solves the problem without taking away from people who want the extra bedrooms and the three-car garage," Pete Menke said.

"If you're going to build, build big to the back, not big to the front," Meg Menke said.

The doubling of the minimum lot size was guided by both new requirements for back-up septic fields and the desire to have the outer edges of town blend with its agricultural surroundings, Meg Menke said.

Other plan recommendations include continuing restoration of Town Hall and developing a method by which town residents could pool funds to pay for water quality testing of local wells.