Revising Our City Code

The city is currently revising our zoning and development ordinances for the commercial zone. We will be collecting extensive public feedback to ensure that the changes reflect resident preferences and protect property rights. The changes will also be reviewed by our legal council to ensure that they meet the requirements of state and federal code. This post summarizes our process to date so that residents can be ready to provide feedback to the planning commission and city council.

Process

The city council asked the Planning Commission to review our zoning ordinances and planning documents for the commercial zone last year. This includes our City code and Commercial Development Guidelines. Our development guidelines were primarily written in 2000 and 2004, with some modifications in 2006, so it has been some time since they have been updated.

The commercial area is shown below:

The Planning Commission has provided the city council with their recommendations.

The city also formed a General Plan Committee to review our General Plan. They have met a few times, and you can view minutes of their meetings.

Over the next few months, the city council will be conducting an extensive review of the recommendations to date and proposing significant revisions to our city code and development guidelines. These will be sent to the Planning Commission for review and a public hearing, before coming back to the council for a vote.

Current Progress

The city council is reviewing many aspects of our commercial development ordinances, including:

• zone boundaries
• intent of each zone
• uses in each zone -- permitted and conditional
• density of any residential uses (units per square foot)
• building size
• building height
• setbacks
• parking
• landscaping
• fencing/walls
• outdoor storage
• lighting
• signs
• itinerant merchants (e.g. food trucks, fireworks)
• architectural standards
• conditional use standards of review

We are preparing a survey to ask residents about their preferences regarding high intensity uses (e.g. superstores like Home Depot or Wal-Mart and car lots) and residential uses in particular.

Get Involved

The city values your input. We will ask for your input via surveys, social media, email, and public hearings. Public participation is a critical part of the process, and we are listening.