02-11-19 Zoning and Annexation - Laserfiche WebLink

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CITY OF SOUTH BEND I OFFICE OF THE CLERK Committee Chair Davis followed up, That's the issue that I wanted to have clarified. Ok, I'm at peace. Go ahead. I'm at peace. Mr. Corcoran continued(referencing a presentation which is available in the City Clerk's Office), So, why establish a Plan Commission for South Bend? Philosophically, we believe that South Bend citizens should be making decisions for South Bend. We believe the focus on both the rules and ordinances we pass, the City's goals and objectives are probably best suited to have those decisions made by South Bend residents. Simply put, we think the best people able to make those decisions for the City are the people of South Bend. This is in the best interest of both the City and the resident. This resolution only allows us to progress to the hiring process. As I just discussed, this resolution does not initiate the Plan Commission. We will come back at a future date with an ordinance amendment for the Plan Commission itself and I will get that toward the end of the presentation. He went on,We feel that having the Plan Commission as a City Department or within Community Investment will help us streamline and balance the planning and development process. We want to strengthen and develop the synergies between our economic development department, long- term strategic planning, which is what we do right now, and the plan review process which is in the building department. Right now, some of those things work but we feel they could work better when all of those people are more or less in the same room or right next to each other. This is also about balancing competing interests when it comes to things like the difference between economic development and any rezoning in a neighborhood. So strategic planning, just to explain, for instance is like the neighborhood plan you were talking about today. Economic and business development is usually when a developer or maybe a neighborhood organization, as well, comes to us with a particular project that they would like to see happening in their neighborhood or within the City. The plan review process is when there is,what I call complying development, something that already meets the use of the particular zone, and that goes straight to the Building Department. At the moment, Community Investment doesn't see those as readily as we do for rezoning. So, while we have access to the Building Department's document system, we are not necessarily involved in looking at the day-to-day building of things that comply with the current zoning ordinance. He continued, So, what this does allow us to do is help shape those things, a little bit, as well. And even help push in complying development, to help make it better than what the zoning ordinance allows it to do.We know the zoning ordinance is kind of a blunt instrument and it is not very subtle sometimes. So, this will help us work with that. The last part here is the Planning Department initiative. So,over the last few years we've been coming to you with a series of quick fixes. There has been six (6) of them to date and a lot of these quick fixes have targeted things where we've been granting variances almost all the time. There are also a lot of silly rules that were developed or carried over in 2004, which is when our zoning ordinance took effect, and we wanted to bring those things up-to-date. We did a lot of things that have helped us reduce the number of variances and even some of the rezoning's as well. I think we are starting to see some of that smooth out, which has been good to see. We intend to bring about five (5) more sets of quick fixes to you before the summer just to round that out before we get to what is the complete zoning ordinance overhaul. He went on, So, this brings me to the question, why now? You know, why do this now? We have worked really well with Larry and his staff at the Area Plan Commission for at least since I've EXCELLENCE ACCOUNTABILITY j INNOVATION INCLUSION EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building 227 W.Jefferson Bvld South Bend,Indiana 46601 p 574.235.9221 f 574.235.9173 TTD 574.235.5567 www.southbendin.gov 2