Preview of March 20, 2018 P&Z Commission Meeting

The agenda for the P&Z meeting this week is fairly limited. The draft zoning and land use charts for the proposed Single Family Estate District is under review.

The city is creating a new zoning district that will encourage larger lot sizes by allowing for certain uses and larger accessory structures within the district without requiring a permit. Currently there is no zoning district between Agricultural and SF-43 (the one house per acre standard zoning), so houses on larger lots such as 3 acres are either subjected to the strict SF-43 requirements or are grandfathered into the broader Agricultural districts.

For lots of greater than 3 acres, the city has assembled a sliding scale which allows for larger and more numerous accessory structures on larger lots sizes.

The larger than 10 acres lot sizes will probably not be utilized very often as it is likely a property owner would prefer to retain an Agricultural zoning. As someone with experience with accessory buildings and agricultural activities the maximum allowed floor areas are a little small. The size requirements are probably small by 500 square feet for the smaller two categories and at least 1000 square feet in the larger two categories.

This chart illustrates the differences with the Agricultural and SF-43 districts. The proposed SFE-43 district allows for multiple accessory buildings without the need for a conditional use permit, but has more restrictions on the types of structures such as guest houses and servants quarters.

Overall, the proposed new zoning district is not objectionable on its face, and can be adopted without too much heartburn.