Joint Town Council/Planning Commission Work Session (Zoning Ordinance Rewrite)

meeting

Leesburg Planning Commission 1h 31m 4 agenda items transcribed 7 days ago official recording ↗

▲ 0

Transcript

jump: agenda · find in transcript

Transcript

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

What is the purpose of tonight’s joint Town Council and Planning Commission session?

Unknown 0:03

Mayor, we have less than 30 minutes to recognize the President. We can

Brian Mabry 0:11

start the clock when Mr. Babering begins. Well, good evening. Madam Mayor and Chair and members of the Council and the Planning Commission. Appreciate you all coming together for this joint board session tonight. We're focusing on the zoning ordinance rewrite that we're currently underway on in town. And so tonight is a pretty major milestone where our consultant, Brian Mabry, is visiting to present two deliverables. One is the code audit, and the other is an annotated outline of the format of the proposed zoning ordinance. So code audit, you can think of that really as a Third party critique. Mr Baby works for Kennedy Keys Collaborative and that firm updates selling ordinances across the country. Actually, unless today Mr Baby told me they've got 31 clients right now and some range from small towns all the way up to large cities like Oklahoma City or large counties like Knox County.

Brian Mabry 1:21

We're not supposed to. They've been doing this for about 30 years and so when they do that code on it, they rely on their experience. Other jurisdictions to offer fatigue suggestions on how we. A little bit, but he also assured me it's not just a cut and paste from work they've done in other jurisdictions. They really customize what they do for each client. Listen to the local officials, talk to the neighborhoods, talk to the stakeholders and work hand in hand staff. So we're pleased to have a volunteer. So we'll learn more about Code Audit here in a minute. And the annotated outline is really the structure for how we're going to take some existing chapters in the zoning ordinance and maybe roll them up into new sections, try and make it a more user-friendly document for actually the platform because we are limited to the online

David 2:15

zoning.

Brian Mabry 2:16

So once we get through that, obviously we have time for questions and discussion about Code Audit. We'd also like to talk about the process going forward. Staff has laid out a process in that project plan that will attach to your agenda package. We want to make sure that council and commission feels like we're on the right track. And also, if you have any of our top zoning priorities, council members would love to hear from you. And the commission would love to hear from you as well, so that they know where the council wants us to dig into as we get into the faculty

David 2:52

test. So that people over to.

David 3:14

Thank you David and thanks

Brian Mabry 3:15

everyone for having me here this evening in town. Had a good day.

How does the consultant’s code audit and annotated zoning outline work?

Brian Mabry 3:20

learning even more about the town, meeting with town staff and others to continue on with this project. Again, I'm Brian Mabry, McKinney Peace Collaborative. Marsha Boyle, my colleague, could not be with me because she has COVID, so she's home in Pittsburgh. This is an agenda for the topics we're going to be covering in this review and this critique of your existing regulations. No way to cover everything in your written report that's in your packet. And even covering every bullet from the PowerPoint might not be completely possible just because I'm wanting to be efficient and respect your time and open it up for questions and comments. So here's the kind of path we're taking for this presentation this evening.

Brian Mabry 4:06

So there are several goals for this project. Some of them are, and many of them were laid out in the RFP, the request for proposals that the town originally sent out you all advertise for someone to update your zoning ordinance. And one of the first goals of the project is this right here to perform a code audit, looking for areas that should be improved upon in the existing zoning ordinance, looking at legal soundness, concentrating on certain specific subjects. Parking was one of them because that's changed a lot in the past few years and can be kind of a hot button issue. improving the structure and format of the zoning ordinance was another thing that the town wants to accomplish, that you all want to accomplish as part of this project.

Brian Mabry 4:55

Really, that third bullet there is one of the biggest jobs of the zoning ordinance, to implement the policies of the comprehensive plan.