COM 0370.004 2002-2004 - Laserfiche WebLink

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STAFF Page 3 May 20, 2003 light, or donate land for a park, or widen a road. The findings should be accompanied by a reason for the conditions: for example, "to limit the potential impact of increased density on the road system." We should have some clear reason for imposing special conditions that limit the uses that can be made of a property after rezoning. The basic premise behind zoning is that land is ~~o zonirZg distric fin the districrt are ~ampatilsl~- Especially in commercial and light industrial areas, businesses demand some flexibility in the future uses of a site. It should not become the norm that a rezoning is specific to a certain project. The public expects us to look carefully at specific zoning proposals and to have conditions suitable for the site. There are many unique questions that come with various sites. At the same time, we need to stress that although a developer may come in with a specific proposal, the rezoning, unless limited, will ordinarily allow a much broader range of uses. There will be situations where a highly specific rezoning is desirable both for the applicant and the community, and we should recognize that this is one of the tools that we have in the Planning Department to make zoning fit overall community goals. In such cases, we may have a rezoning ordinance that is very much tailored to allow only a specific project. Rezoning conditions that limit the uses that can ordinarily be made of a property creates an administrative problem within the Planning Department in reviewing various kinds of subsequent applications, such as building permits or plan approvals. Staff cannot simply assume that all the uses allowed in the zoning code are allowed on the property in question. This means that staff must read the rezoning ordinance, at least when the property is designated as "conditional zoning" in the zoning maps or GIS. This is not the ideal situation but there is no way around it; most rezonings in the past twenty years contain significant conditions that must be met before the zoning becomes fully effective, such as infrastructure requirements or incremental zoning conditions, even if they do not actually restrict the uses. The county has also made it a practice that the ordinance requires that certain restrictions, like the limitation on additional dwellings, be placed as covenants in deeds. This is useful to provide notice to a purchaser that the possibility of additional dwellings, that might normally go with the rezoning, does not exist under the ordinance. I would not