2007-08-31 TCOUNCIL-SUBDIVISION - Laserfiche WebLink

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have Agricultural 5-Acre zoning has been requested for rezoning to Residential 15,000-square foot lots, and say, that’s gone up to the Council and has been approved. Before that subdivision can actually take place, the owner of the property must get an approved subdivision. That’s done currently as an administrative process by the Planning Department. There isn’t any formal public hearing process. In the last three years there has been a requirement of a notice being posted by sign on the property. With the amendment to the Subdivision Code last year there is a requirement of publication in the newspaper when the application comes in. But the process is primarily a review by people in the administration in the administrative side of government. We included a sample subdivision file for the Commission just to give the Commission an idea of the kinds of things that do happen in subdivision. The issues in a subdivision are primarily conformance with the conditions of the zoning – there may be special conditions of the zoning that have to be met – then water supply, road and drainage infrastructure constructed in connection with the subdivision. So those are reviewed by the Planning Department and the Department of Public Works; when there is a connection with State highways, by the State DOT. And ultimately there is a first stage that is issuance of a tentative approval of a subdivision, which is basically an approval of a layout and a listing of the types of infrastructure improvements that have to be made, and second final subdivision approval, which happens after the improvements have been made or after they have been secured by a bond so that they assure that they can be done. Final subdivision approval allows the subdivider to actually sell individual lots. The Council has proposed that for subdivisions of seven lots or more that this be handled in the same way as a change of zone, except that the final decision would still be made by the Planning Department. The Council originally proposed that the final decision would go to the Council. There is a Corporation Counsel opinion that because of language in the Charter that says essentially the Planning Director makes final decision on subdivision applications, this would not conform with the Charter. So the bill that’s before you says that whenever there is a subdivision of seven lots or more, the application would come to the Planning Commission, and would be heard here like a rezoning-type application; then it would go up to the Council and it would be heard by the Council like a change of zone; and the Council could recommend conditions, but then it would go back to the Planning Director to actually implement the conditions. The Planning Department has a negative recommendation on this. We don’t have an alternative bill. We tried to outline some of the practical and administrative problems along with the overall question of what is supposed to happen and what kinds of decisions are supposed to be made at the subdivision rather than at the zoning level. And so we tried to explain that in the letter. We have a negative recommendation on the Council bill with no alternative bill actually being proposed. The second bill, which is related, concerns Planned Unit Developments. A Planned Unit Development is a variety of subdivision; typically it’s a way of doing a project that’s a little bit different than the strict standards of the Code.The kinds of things that can happen in a Planned Unit Development, for example, would be a mix of lot sizes. Say, an example of a project that had zoning of Residential 15,000-square foot lots; with a Planned Unit Development you can do lots that are smaller than 15,000 square feet, as long as the average size is 15,000. In other words, you can have a mix of smaller lots and open space. You can change the roadway standards in a Planned Unit Development. So it offers flexibility to developers, and often times results have been a better project. The proposal by the Council is that Planned Unit Developments would also go to the Council. In this case there isn’t anything in the Charter, EXHIBIT F 2