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(q <br />Orange County Planning Department <br />MEMORANDUM <br />TO: Orange County Planning Board <br />FROM: Gene Bell, Planner III <br />SUBJ: Comprehensive Plan <br />DATE: ;July 1, 1999 <br />An adopted Board of County Commissioners' goal for Fiscal Year 1999 -2000 is the <br />preparation of a new Orange County Comprehensive Plan. The Orange County Land Use <br />Plan adopted in September 1981 has frequently been referred to as the comprehensive <br />plan, but it is actually a land classification plan. Amendments to the Orange County <br />Zoning Ordinance in 1988 designated the Land Use Plan as the Land Use Element of the <br />Orange County Comprehensive Plan. In addition to land use, the amendments also <br />established the following as elements of the comprehensive plan: transportation, <br />housing, open space, recreation, economic development, and. services and facilities. With <br />the exception of housing, each of these elements has been addressed to some degree in <br />the ensuing years though efforts have been somewhat piecemeal and there hasn't been a <br />consistent thread unifying the various elements. As in the past, land use will continue to <br />be the dominant element of the comprehensive plan, and will be the main focus of this <br />report: <br />Two attachments to this memo will be useful in focusing discussion. First, is a handout <br />entitled "An Overview of Land Use Planning in Orange County" prepared two years ago <br />for a community meeting. It captures quite well in two pages the way the County has <br />approached land use planning over the past 20 years. The second attachment entitled <br />"Twentieth Century Land Use Planning' was written by UNC professors Edward Kaiser <br />and David Godschalk and published in the Summer 1995 edition of the Journal of the <br />American Planning Association. <br />An Overview of Land Use Planninzin Oran -e Coon <br />"An Overview of Land Use Planning in Orange County" points out the County's strong <br />consistency requirement between the adopted land use plan and zoning. A point not <br />covered is, that for the most part, the only zones currently applied consistent with land <br />use designations are those of a low - density residential and rural nature, e.g., agricultural <br />residential (AR), rural residential (R -1), and rural buffer (RB). There is very little <br />undeveloped land zoned for commercial or high-density residential uses even though <br />there are areas designated for such in the plan. The County's traditional approach has <br />been to receive applications for rezoning to such uses and if they are consistent with the <br />