Too Sour for Public Consumption?

Quick Note on 10/18/06 Planning Commission Work Session

By Curmudgeon

Three agenda items. The first involved the Planning Staff briefing the three PC members who showed up on a recommended change in the city's Sensitive Area Overlay Ordinance. It would eliminate the current prohibition on building on land with a slope in excess of 30 degrees in sensiitive area overlay zones. [It would do a great deal more, but that seemed to be its most salient provision.] Planning staff insisted this was necessary because the existing ordinance, drafted in the seventies, was outdated, that much more had been learned of geologic hazards since then, and that Ogden was now aware of hazards that its old ordinance made no mention of, and of problem areas it was unaware of at the time and so were not included as sensitive overlay zones. Planning staff claimed the new ordinance would in fact require more tests, reports of builders, developers in order to justify building on sloped land. But it would eliminate the prohibition on building on land with greater than thirty degree slope in Sensitive Overlay Zones. A document indicating what is to be kept, deleted, and added to the old ordinance was available tonight from the planning staff and will be available from them, I presume, on request for those who want more detail.

The second agenda item involved a proposed Multiple Use Development Area ordinance. Planning staff argued that this would accomplish what the city now accompliches via zoning exemptions and Conditituional Use Overlay zones, and a variety of allied spot-zoning jury-rigged devices designed to work around overly restrictive zoning that makes difficult beneficial projects etc. The proposed new ordinance would be better for many projects because it would make the process of drafting a pre-development agreement a cooperative one, between city planning staff, the city attorney and the developer. The resulting pre-development agreement would go to the Planning Commission for comment, then back to developer, Planning staff and City atty for revision in light of those comments. Then the resulting development agreement would go to the Planning Commission for OK then to Council for OK. All associated changes in the general plan, other zoning, to accommodate the Development Agreement would go to the PC and then to the Council at the same time so all could be passed at once. Once that was done, the developer would be vested in the project, meaning he would have a legally enforceable expectation that he could procede with the project as authorized by the development agreement. A copy of the proposed MUD ordinance was available from the planning staff tonight, and I presume a copy would be available from the PLanning Office for those wanting more detail.

Third, Mr. Greg Montgomery of the Planning Staff briefly discussed the Mt. Ogden Community plan process. Reported there was only one focus group/committee meeting left, and then all the committees wanted one general meeting to compare what each had done. Mr. Montgomery proposed that the results/recommendations be presented to the Mt. Ogden Community in a Town Meeting sometime during the week of Nov. 13. He said it would be unwise to try to hold a town meeting between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and delaying it until January would be unwise as well and would involve a lost of community involvement. But holding the Town Meeting first, before presenting the committee results would be a break in normal procedure. [Normally, committee focus group results would go to the PC, then to a town meeting, then those results back to PC for drafting of final plan, followed by public notice meeting, presumably sometime in January or February.] The staff, because of time constraints, wants to take committee focus group suggestions directly to Town Meeting without going through Planning Commission first. The commission agreed that planning staff should try to set up a town meeting on the Mt. Ogden Plan for the week of 13 November.

Other notes: only three PC members attended. Mr. Herman, Mr. Artencio and the Chair of the committee. That did not constitute a quorum, but since this was a work session not a decision making meeting, the decision was made to proceed with the briefings anyway.

Mr. Peterson's attorney was also in attendance. As was Council member Wicks. Others present I did not recognize.

There was a large jar of candy sourballs on the table for the use of the Planning Committee members and there were cokes available for them too. None of these items were offered to the very thirsty public spirited citizen attending who was furiously scribbling notes. Harumpf.

Further deponent sayeth not.