Concord's limiting of land splits stems from the vision put forth by the Town of Concord Comprehensive Plan. The 2022 comprehensive plan update continues to follow this vision.
The plan was over three years in the making, being developed almost entirely by Concord citizens under the authority of Wisconsin's Comprehensive Planning Law (S.66.1001, Wis. Stats.). Various people who live in Concord volunteered to write almost all of the chapters. Vanessa Kuehner from the firm Ruekert-Mielke was hired to guide our progress. Steve Grabow of the University of Wisconsin Extension was a tremendous help. More than 40 citizens participated in the plan creation process. Bill Ingersoll, a town board supervisor at the time, was the only officially appointed member of the group that created the plan. Visioning sessions were held, and each chapter of the plan was discussed at the monthly meetings as it was being developed.
The rural quality of life in Concord was established to be very important to most citizens. One of the final steps in the planning process was to mail a questionnaire to every household in Concord. The poll results came back with 54% in support of limiting the land splits.
Here is a link to a slide show that describes the Concord plan development process. (4.4mb pdf)
Here are many more details of the month-to-month meetings that were held while creating the plan.
The plan was adopted by the Concord Town Board on July 13, 2009, and was set to take effect on November 1, 2009. Since the plan went into effect, lot splits have been limited to two, with the procedure for determining this based on the Jefferson County comprehensive plan. The following quote from the implementation chapter (p. 87 of the paper copy or p. 97 of the electronic copy of the Concord town plan) describes how the Concord Planning Committee is to evaluate Concord petitions for parcel splits zoned A-3 by Jefferson County.
"The Town will use the procedure established by Jefferson County in the 1999 Jefferson County Agricultural Preservation and Land Use Plan pg. 88-941 to determine “parent parcels” and the number of potential A-3 building sites available. However, the Town will allow a maximum of only two A-3 lots to be created on a non-prime parcel as opposed to the three-lot maximum allowed by the County. The Town would allow a maximum of 6 total acres to be used for the two A-3 lots with the minimum lot size being one acre. Under this procedure, the Town Plan Commission would grant only two petitions for the creation of A-3 lots from a non-prime parent parcel. It will be the responsibility of the Plan Commission to contact the Jefferson County Zoning Department when a petition to create an A-3 parcel comes before them. If the Jefferson County Zoning Department already has two approved petitions for the creation of A-3 building sites on record for the parcel in question, the Plan Commission will reject the petition to approve a third A-3 building site (also see sections 2.B., 2.C ., 5.B ., 10.B., 10.C ., and 10.G.)."