[Durham INC] Planning Department newsletter

[Pat Carstensen]

There is a new issue of the Planning Department's newsletter out.  It contains the following article on elimination discretionary actions:
Discretionary Regulatory Changes to the UDOThe Durham Planning Department is initiating changes to Durham’s Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) to remove discretionary ordinance standards for site plan approvals. At the beginning of 2010, state legislation went into effect that explicitly defined quasi-judicial decisions to include discretionary decisions. These are portions of local development ordinances that allow for departmental discretion in regard to site plan approval. Durham’s UDO contains provisions that allow flexibility in response to unique development circumstances. Some of these provisions require the exercise of discretion without the use of quasi-judicial procedures. Therefore, these provisions are no longer compliant with statutes. The purpose of this text amendment is to bring the UDO into compliance with those statutes, while continuing to provide flexibility. The proposed text amendment modifies the discretionary provisions of the UDO to allow flexibility through multiple methods. The first of those methods is to provide specific supplementary, or performance, standards for applicants. The second is by seeking approval through an existing quasi-judicial mechanism. Lastly, in some cases, both methods would be applied. Almost all of the UDO will require some amendment. However, some of the most significant changes are as follows: Dissolve the Development Review Board (DRB) and the Design District Review Team (DDRT).Create new site plan categories and remove Section 3.14, Administrative Adjustment.Revise the Tuscaloosa-Lakewood Neighborhood Protection Overlay (TLNPO), and the Major Transportation Corridor (MTC) Overlay.Make revisions to limited use standards and custodial care.Revise the parking and sidewalk requirements for the University-College Districts (UC and UC-2).Make revisions to utility and trash handling.Make revisions to the approval authority for development in special flood hazard areas.Make revisions to landscape and screening requirements, and modify the landscape guidelines to add required standards.Revise the methods for parking reductions and alternative forms of compliance.Make revisions to vehicular access and sidewalk requirements.Revise Section 14.4, Nonconforming Improvements and Structures, reducing the instances that would require a minor special use permit. Having already been through the Joint City-County Planning Committee and the Durham Planning Commission, the text amendment is now in the public hearing process. It is tentatively scheduled to go before the City Council in March and is expected to go before the Durham Board of County Commissioners for final approval soon thereafter. For more information please contact Michael Stock, AICP, senior planner with the Durham City-County Planning Deparmtent, at 919-560-4137 ext.28227 or Michael.Stock at DurhamNC.gov 		 	   		  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://rtpnet.org/pipermail/inc-list/attachments/20130126/e9060e7a/attachment.html>