County working to draft new zoning resolution on The Murfreesboro Post

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County working to draft new zoning resolution

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By: MICHELLE WILLARD, Post Staff Writer

Posted: Sunday, September 21, 2008 7:38 am

Rutherford County needs a better tool to deal with growth, one local organization said.

“The bottom line is we need a plan now to get a good tool and one that will preserve our quality of life and maintain what people expected when they moved here,” Rutherford Neighborhood Alliance member Susan Allen said.

RNA held a town hall meeting Thursday night for Regional Planning Director Doug Demosi to explain just how the county plans to improve its main tool for dealing with growth, its Zoning Resolution.

The County’s Zoning Resolution has most often been described as “arbitrary and capricious” at worst and “vague and unclear” at best.

But the resolution will become more workable after the Regional Planning Commission completes a Comprehensive Community Plan.

“It’s a picture of where you (the county) are now and where you want to be in 20 years,” Demosi explained, adding a new zoning resolution and new subdivision regulations for the unincorporated parts of Rutherford County can be crafted from the Comprehensive Plan.

The county’s plan will be similar to the land-use plans developed for the Blackman Community, Christiana/Buchanan area, the North Corridor and Salem Pike area.

Community land-use plans were developed to guide traditionally rural communities into the future as nearby cities, like Murfreesboro expand, and growth swallows farmland.

The Planning Commission will use consultants and community input to develop the county’s plan for the future.

“We would like to see the county planners and county commission to end up with … better tools for smart growth and where business can go without having negative impacts on surrounding homes,” Allen said, adding community and business input is necessary to the process.

“We are going to try to hear from as many people in the community as we can,” Assistant Planner Elizabeth Emslie said.

The goal is for work to begin on the comprehensive plan by early spring of next year. Demosi expects to take a hard look at the Zoning Resolution and Subdivision Regulations soon after.

Currently, the county has no comprehensive plan and the zoning resolution hasn’t been overhauled in almost 25 years.

Emslie said the resolution was amended in 1999, which saw some minor changes in wording to clarify some sections. But major revisions haven’t been done since the county population was half of the more than 240,000 it is now.

“We’re dealing with a zoning resolution that was written in the 60s and rewritten in 1984,” Demosi said. “We need something that’s more responsive to what we’re experiencing.”

The county has seen explosive growth over the past 25 years and the current zoning resolution isn’t written to easily manage that growth.

When it was rewritten in 1984, most of the unincorporated parts of the county were designed as Residential 15 (R-15), which allows for homes to be built with a minimum lot size of 15,000 square feet.

The blanket R-15 zoning has resulted in unchecked subdivision growth with no way for the Regional Planning Commission or the Rutherford County Commission to stop it.

The county has seen more planned communities recently, but if the county commission denies conditional-use permits, developers can always bring them back as R-15 subdivisions with no oversight by the planning commission.

This loophole is one Demosi wants to look at with the comprehensive plan and develop more forward-looking regulations for subdivisions.

Allen said another problem with the blanket R-15 zoning results in subdivisions being developed away from existing services and the county has to play catch-up to resolve issues with traffic and other service problems.

Around a year ago, the Regional Planning Commission looked at the Subdivision Regulations and developed a plan to make developers more responsible for infrastructure costs and to create more cohesive housing developments.

Demosi has also taken steps recently to streamline the planning process by dissolving two subcommittees and establishing a second planning commission meeting per month.

He has also pushed other minor changes in the Zoning Resolution as different sections are reviewed and problems arise.

Michelle Willard can be contacted at 615-869-0816 or mwillard@murfreesboropost.com.

Tagged under GROWTH, RUCO

Member Opinions:

By: diddlede on 9/21/08
Good step in the right direction.

By: borowatcher on 9/22/08
So it sounds like the intention is to devalue properties by rezoning them where they can't be readily developed. While I don't have have property that would be effected, that is a property rights issue. I don't think you can take something away from someone without compensating them for it. You might think it to be the best option, but you can't do it just because it's your preference. I agree it would have been best if all the property in the county had not been rezoned R-15, but the County did it. Spilt milk.

By: Curious on 9/22/08
Demosi is managing this department well. At last we have a planning director who realizes that planning means getting ready for the future.
Naysayers and cheerleaders should both make sure they participate in this process.