MILFORD — The city’s leadership hopes to update the zoning and subdivision codes this year, so the Planning Commission and other figureheads began Tuesday brainstorming what that may look like.
City Solicitor David Rutt hopes to change the way residents are notified about potential construction in their neighborhoods.
“Where you have the 15-day notice in the newspaper, I would also suggest that it be on the website and posted to public places (like) on the bulletin board there in City Hall and maybe at the library,” he said.
Rob Pierce, the city’s planning and economic development director, wanted to go even further.
“We don’t physically post (on) the property. Most other jurisdictions will go out and put a public notice on the site,” he said.
“That way, if you don’t get the mailing or you don’t see the newspaper, you ride by and see this yellow sign that kind of catches your eye,” Mr. Pierce said. “You can go over and get some more information about (it). It’s just another level of public outreach.”
The duo also hopes to strike discretionary language from the code wherever possible, which would make administering the code simpler and less controversial in certain cases.
For example, Mr. Pierce said that in the site-review section — which requires designs for traditional subdivisions, town home tracts and shopping centers to be reviewed — also has a clause allowing the city planner to require a resident or developer to have any other site plan reviewed.
Both he and Mr. Rutt want to take away this discretionary power.
“I think it needs to be a little clearer what determines needing a review,” Mr. Pierce said.
“To the extent we cannot have discretionary language, we’d be better off because once you start doing that, if you rule one way on one thing and then a different way on another, you’re going to have somebody mad,” Mr. Rutt said.
“You’re better off having objective criteria on any of these things.”
Mr. Pierce had an idea for a process to address this situation.
“I would like to make this similar to what Smyrna, Dover and Kent County do,” he said. “They base (site plan-review requirements) on square footage limitations.”
MILFORD — The city’s leadership hopes to update the zoning and subdivision codes this year, so the Planning Commission and other figureheads began Tuesday brainstorming what that may look like.
City Solicitor David Rutt hopes to change the way residents are notified about potential construction in their neighborhoods.
“Where you have the 15-day notice in the newspaper, I would also suggest that it be on the website and posted to public places (like) on the bulletin board there in City Hall and maybe at the library,” he said.
Rob Pierce, the city’s planning and economic development director, wanted to go even further.
“We don’t physically post (on) the property. Most other jurisdictions will go out and put a public notice on the site,” he said.
“That way, if you don’t get the mailing or you don’t see the newspaper, you ride by and see this yellow sign that kind of catches your eye,” Mr. Pierce said. “You can go over and get some more information about (it). It’s just another level of public outreach.”
The duo also hopes to strike discretionary language from the code wherever possible, which would make administering the code simpler and less controversial in certain cases.
For example, Mr. Pierce said that in the site-review section — which requires designs for traditional subdivisions, town home tracts and shopping centers to be reviewed — also has a clause allowing the city planner to require a resident or developer to have any other site plan reviewed.
Both he and Mr. Rutt want to take away this discretionary power.
“I think it needs to be a little clearer what determines needing a review,” Mr. Pierce said.
“To the extent we cannot have discretionary language, we’d be better off because once you start doing that, if you rule one way on one thing and then a different way on another, you’re going to have somebody mad,” Mr. Rutt said.
“You’re better off having objective criteria on any of these things.”
Mr. Pierce had an idea for a process to address this situation.
“I would like to make this similar to what Smyrna, Dover and Kent County do,” he said. “They base (site plan-review requirements) on square footage limitations.”
