BANI Newsletter- March 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. (That article was shortened to allow it to fit in the available space.)

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With the daylight growing longer, the frost will be breaking soon, and a new building season will be upon us. The Steuben County Plan Commission is looking forward to this spring and wants to alert the builders of some very important upcoming changes.

As we all know, there were many changes between the old zoning ordinance and the new zoning ordinance adopted in 2008. For good or ill, the Plan Commission decided not to fully enforce all provisions of the new zoning ordinance. The rationale was that because of the number of changes, it would be less painful to enforce in stages rather than all at once.

Effective Monday, April 5, 2010, the Plan Commission will fully enforce Chapter 16. This chapter describes what information must be on a site plan, required for non-residential projects, and what information must be on a sketch plan, required for agricultural and residential projects. (A complete list of which plan, sketch or site plan, that different types of projects require can be found in Section 16.02 on page 16-1 of the Zoning Ordinance.)

Most sketch plans this office receives contain most, but not all, of the required information. Section 16.03 on page 16-2 of the Zoning Ordinance lists the required information. Here is a basic review of what the Plan Commission will be looking for on sketch plans:
• Name, address, & seal of the professional engineer or land surveyor who prepared the site/sketch plan
• The address of the property
• Photograph(s) of existing site conditions
• Property survey showing topography, existing structures, utilities, and floodplain elevation
• Property boundaries, including dimensions
• Net lot area (exclusive of road right-of way, easements, or submerged land)
• Building and impervious surface coverages
• Drawing scale and a north arrow
• Zoning of site and adjacent land
• Rights-of-way (with street name and classification labeled) and easements
• Drainage courses, floodplains, lakes, streams, and wetlands
• Required yards and setbacks
• Adjacent buildings, structures, or pavement within 100 feet of site, including buildings and decks on adjacent waterfront lots
• All existing and proposed structures or other site improvement with the dimensions of such improvements
• Height of all structures
• Distances from all proposed structures to the property lines
• Location of any existing or proposed septic field or grinder
• Well sites
• Location of any existing or proposed driveway and/or parking areas
• Fences or walls
• General grades on-site to determine positive drainage
• Flood hazard areas, including the finished floor elevation, base flood elevation, and flood protection grade for all structures

The Plan Commission is developing a sample sketch plan with all of the required information. We expect to have this available in the middle of March.

Starting Monday, April 5, the Plan Commission will not issue an Improvement Location Permit unless the site plan is complete. We understand that this will require more information up-front and may increase the cost of construction. However, these requirements are included in the Zoning Ordinance.

We believe that staff will be able to review applications more accurately and more quickly once this is implemented. It will reduce the amount of time spent at the counter and greatly reduce the number of errors and stop work orders resulting from incomplete information.