Orange County NC Website
2 <br />0014 DRAFT <br />1 Craig Benedict, Director, Orange County Planning Department: <br />2- <br />3 "My name is Craig Benedict, Orange County Planning Director. Tonight we will be <br />4 addressing four items. The first three items are amendments to our Zoning Ordinance. The last <br />5 item is a subdivision amendment which is very closely related to enforcement provisions that <br />6 are noted in the zoning. So, we have items, actually the third and fourth items we'll be talking <br />7 about tonight are enforcement provisions: One for subdivision and one for zoning. <br />8 <br />9 "What I'm going to do is start off my presentation tonight here at the podium. We have <br />10 some presentation material which I'll be showing from the seat behind the dais there. <br />11 <br />12 "The first item has to do with Outdoor Lighting Standards. Presently, the County has <br />13 limited standards for outdoor lighting. I'll do a presentation talking about some new standards <br />14 there. <br />15 <br />16 "The second item has to do with stream buffers. Presently stream buffers and streams <br />17 are identified by U.S.G.S. maps. We are increasing the definitions we have for stream <br />18 identification to include .....° <br />19 <br />20 a. Amend Article 6 to establish Outdoor Lighting Standards <br />21 <br />22 Craig Benedict: "I will move my location now to the dais behind you and i will start off with the <br />23 outdoor lighting <br />24 <br />25 "My staff will get the people who have signed in for the public hearing and I do <br />26 understand that there are some people who do want to speak on a few of these items. <br />27 <br />28 "Since we do have kind of two meetings wrapped into one tonight, we will move with all <br />29 due speed with all proper comment that we can as we move forward through these items <br />30 tonight. The first item that we are taking a look at tonight is outdoor lighting standards. This is <br />31 something that has been put together based on comments from both our Planning Board, from <br />32 the citizens that see new developments come in the area, from the Commission for the <br />33 Environment who has also taken up this as something to examine. The one area that we are <br />34 talking about presently are existing standards are just limited to our economic development <br />35 districts. And even within the economic development districts, there is just minor references to <br />36 where the lights are located and things of that nature. We will talk about the proposed <br />37 standards, we will talk about not just lighting but the amount of energy and energy conservation <br />38 that is involved in lighting. And we will talk about what this means when you change regulations <br />39 from one thing to the next. <br />40 <br />41 "Presently the only reference to asking for lighting standards in our present code is a <br />42 section at the end of our implementation guidelines that say and any other information that is <br />43 necessary. And so we have asked for this information when we review site plans. Most rural <br />44 subdivision are not putting lighting in them so we are in no way asking for people to light rural <br />45 subdivisions, but if they do we want to make sure of the light spill is a minimum. And as 1 <br />46 mentioned economic development districts do have some standards the The proposed <br />47 standards do a few different things. The amount of the light spill that comes in different areas of <br />48 the county if the lighting standards are not appropriate can cause a certain amount of sky glow <br />49 and it can damage the typical night sky that a lot of people enjoy. <br />50 <br />15 <br />