Minutes 02-28-2011 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Better define conditional districts so that rural areas are not subject to conditions that fit the EDDs. Priorities for Phase 2 —that are important to the rural community We will also talk about process transparency and how conditional districts are working in the towns. A common thread is for the Comprehensive Plan —which many of you have worked on - to guide future land use planning, conditional uses, and zoning. Please appreciate that we did not plan to get involved in Phase 1 at all because we believed that it was a consolidation of existing ordinances and that changes would be deferred to Phase 2. I personally attended a public information session last summer. The 2 or 3 hour session focused on organization, table of contents, formats and colors. Conditional zones were mentioned at the tail end of a long night with no discussion about how they were being applied. Please know that we are not anti-development- we are anti sprawl. We believe that the UDO and well defined conditional districts will make it easier to attract the development we want. If you agree with our comments, we are committed to work with the county and the planning board to correct the Phase 1 UDO and move quickly onto Phase 2. Speaker 2: Enhance Conditional Zoning Districts to support the rural community (Marilee McTigue) After attending the January 27th public information session and generally feeling overwhelmed by the complexity of the UDO, I decided to read all 824 pages of the document plus Article 7 of the current ordinance plus all Planning Board minutes related to this topic and meet with Craig Benedict to review my questions. I find the overall approach to the UDO to be sound and believe that the implementation of Conditional Districts is a significant improvement in the ordinance. I particularly appreciate the ability to limit uses and specify conditions. I also believe that it will help us take an important step forward in our efforts to improve economic development in the Economic Development Districts, commercial zones and highway corridors. However, I do have a concern about how the Conditional Zoning Districts relate specifically to the rural community. • I determined that the language that identified specific requirements for appropriate planned development, from Article 7 of the existing ordinance, has been eliminated in the UDO. This language explained how things like industrial or commercial development should be placed near transportation corridors and public utility services. It is this language that clarified how the Economic Development Districts differ in character and purpose from the rural areas. Unfortunately, those distinctions have now been lost with the elimination of these important elements. • I also determined that most categories of planned development have been combined into a single Conditional District called Master Plan Development or MPD-CZ. Five different Planned Development districts including Industrial, commercial, residential, mixed use, and office/institutional have been combined into this single district. It allows virtually any use, including light, medium and heavy industrial. In what I believe to be an administrative oversight, many pages of specific requirements for these five planned development types were not incorporated into the UDO in any way. In fact, close to 15 pages of specific requirements were left out and this deletion was not visible as a change. In contrast, Planned Development for Mobile Home Parks was given its own conditional district (MHP-CZ) and 10 pages of