Steering Group III:  Policies and Ordinances

November 18, 2003

Notes

 

I.          Group Structure

 

• We understand that we have two separate tasks:

1)   To support and help guide the Zoning Ordinance Update process and consultant team, focusing initially on:  the structure; unintentional inconsistencies; increasing user friendliness, etc.

2)   To achieve substantive improvement in polices and ordiances to improve the ministerial process.

 

• We will continue to work as one group on overall issues.  We will break into sub-groups as necessary to work on the separate tasks.  Sub-groups will report back to the larger group as a whole. 

 

II.        Environmental Criteria

           

• We will begin work in the following areas:  House Size/Height, Slopes/Grading, Creek Setbacks, Tree Protection, Design/Visual Protection

 

III.       Important Past Meeting Work

 

• September 30, 2003:  Criteria for a “truly” ministerial permit path without the discretion introduced by BAR. 

 

Set criteria that are below the base zone district requirements.  Eligible projects would be small in scale, below the maximum height, FAR, and setbacks of the zone district, and design elements such as screening and a single story would be required.

 

Progress:  An intern is collecting information on all of the ministerial permits approved by P&D over the past two years.  We will use this to see if the “truly” ministerial permit path is feasible, what the criteria may be, and how many projects would be eligible, etc. 

 

• October 15, 2003 & October 28, 2003:  Environmental Criteria.

 

Criteria for various issue areas, such as grading, slopes, trees, creeks, geologic hazards, ESH, etc.  These issues frequently arise in the course of ministerial permitting, as projects must be found consistent with the applicable policies of the comprehensive and community plan.  Criteira would be consistent with comprehensive and community plan policies. 

 

The applicant could choose to design their project to be consistent with these criteria to receive an automatic finding of policy consistency for each issue area.

 

This will address the vague nature of the comprehensive plan polices, such as grading shall be minimized to the “maximum extent feasible,” by providing a minimum criteria, below which projects are automatically consistent with the policy. 

 

Progress:  Our flagship criterion is grading, on which we are currently working.