BANI Newsletter- December 2010

A version of the following article appears in "The Higher Standard," the newsletter for the Builders Association of Northeast Indiana. www.ba-ni.com.

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As the holiday music, decorations, and store stampedes descend upon Steuben County, the Plan Commission begins to turn its thoughts to ordinance amendments. This ordinance amendment season promises to be a very busy one, perhaps the busiest since the current zoning and subdivision control ordinances were adopted in 2008. This article will cover some of the areas identified for revision.

As a reminder, the Steuben County Plan Commission reviews its ordinances every year to find improvements to better serve and protect the community. These ordinance revisions are discussed by the Plan Commission at public hearings. Once they have approved an amendment, it is forwarded to the County Board of Commissioners for their consideration.

This year, we will address a lot of grammatical and linguistic concerns. True, ordinances are not pieces of literature, but they should still be easy to read and represent their community well. Sometimes, poor grammar can cause a lot of problems with ordinance interpretation. We feel it’s best to address these areas before a problem comes up.

We’ll also be adding specific setbacks for alleys. Most counties have few alleys within their jurisdiction. Because of this, they don’t have special alley setbacks. Alleys are instead considered as streets and any structure must meet street setbacks. Steuben County has many more alleys than most counties around. This can cause problems. (Just think of Pleasant Lake!)

The current zoning ordinance requires a survey for all projects on properties of less than two acres. Staff may waive that requirement for residential projects on properties larger than two acres if the structure is at least five feet away from a required setback. We still believe the survey requirement is important and has prevented countless problems. However, there are many times where it can be difficult to justify as a property approaches two acres in size. Staff are proposing that the requirement may be waived starting at one acre rather than two.

As one might expect, we will be looking at sign standards. Sign standards are often one of the trickiest areas in ordinance language because it is easy to run into Constitutional issues. Standards are further complicated because we must comply with our comprehensive plan and federal and state laws. Our goal is to simplify and clarify that section of the ordinance while complying with the law.

Steuben County has a large number of campgrounds. We do not have a robust campground standards section. This often means campgrounds must comply with the standards for the zoning district it’s located in. This can cause a lot of problems. We intend to develop campground specific standards similar, in structure, to mobile home park standards, for example, measuring from structure to structure rather than from property lines.

Last year we made low-impact home occupations a permitted use in all zoning districts. This year, we will be separating low-impact from regular home occupations a bit more. This will allow for less hassles for low-impact home occupations and provide an avenue for more robust home occupations, with appropriate standards.

We’ll be conducting an extensive review of the Subdivision Control Ordinance, as well. The primary focus will be on amending how minor subdivisions are processed. The current draft calls for minor subdivisions to be reviewed by the plan director with consultation of the design review committee.

As always, we welcome your suggestions and comments. Feel free to drop us a line or come speak at a meeting. The Plan Commission will be hearing the proposed ordinance amendments on Wednesday, December 1, 2010, and again on Wednesday, January 5, 2011.