2006-02-24 TInitiator_Planning_Director

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how they were going to build their roads. And then this would be reviewed and then approved. And theres a lot of information that thats supposed to be on a preliminary plat that says it shall be on the plat. In actual practice at least since the 1970s whats submitted in a preliminary plat you will have a road and you will have a general layout of the subdivision and much of the information that would not have the level of detail called for by strict reading of the subdivision code. This goes back, I talked to Sidney Fuke who was a Director in the 70s and this goes back at least to Sidney Fukes time. And it has been a more practical way of doing subdivisions because its actually premature to engineer the roads before you have approval of the basic layout. Sometimes a subdivision comes in, the subdivision map comes in for initial review and sometimes the department will require changes to that. For example to connect the road to a road on an adjacent property or at a different location. So there are often changes on the plat and if you had spent the money to engineer your roads before hand if wouldve been wasted. Also the Department has typically waived some minor deficiencies in the plat. For example, just to give one example it calls, the subdivision code says youre supposed to show zoning on adjacent properties.Wellweknowwhatthezoningisonadjacentpropertiesfrominformationthatwe have in our own office and so rather than be nasty and send the map back to the subdivider or their surveyor we would often accept it and then have, have the information on when their map is finally approved. This sort of things the Supreme Court says we cant do anymore and it creates a problem for a number-. We have several hundred pending subdivisions in the office, which may not comply. And theres also a lingering question about subdivisions that have been approved that dont comply. So what we want to do is amend the subdivision code to fix all these problems. And so in doing so we went through and we found a number of things that have been not been typical practice and so theres a series of amendments here and Im going to try to quickly go through and explain what each one does. I know its been a long day but I do think to be fair to everybody I want to explain this. The first one is at the bottom of page 2 and the top of page 3 of the handout. The subdivision code specifies maximum grades and curves. As we were just discussing these have not been followed over the years. They, they do, there is an out that says that they can be, variations can be permitted to meet unusual conditions. Well, an unusual condition is usually that the ground is really steep and the parcel is kind of narrow. So and that tends to come up all the time. So rather than specify this in the code we simply say that it shall conform to accepted engineering practices determined by the Department of Public Works. And they do have a manual for how they. This doesnt leave it wide open. They have a manual and there are national standards that they can use. The next one is just to cross out the word improvement plans. Those are not typically submitted with the preliminary plat that was the first part of the application. Then the next on page 4 is to make it clear. The way the procedure was because you were supposed to be submitting really complete application then the County was supposed to complete the review in 45 days. But the typical practice has been to defer, to take it in and then to defer final action while it is being reviewed and this, this spells out that this is a permitted practice. It also says there is also an automatic approval clause and it, in the original, in the subdivision code and this basically says that if the County misses the deadlines and its automatically approved that the normal subdivision requirements apply to the plat. So that in other words youre not going to have a substandard subdivision approved by, just because the County didnt get to, you know lost it in a pile or somebody was sick the day it was due or something like that. Page 6 is an important clause and that is-. It says that once the Director has accepted the preliminary plat that any, that we waive any defects in it. We can ask for information to fix it but what, we cant-. Somebody who wants to attack it later cant come back EXHIBIT 2