Now that the guiding document is in place, city planners are working to implement the goals outlined in City Plan 2025.
Karen Minkel, senior long range planner, said a lot of progress was made in 2007 in terms of implementation of the plan.
In September of last year, staff held the first in-house charette and created the Walker Park Neighborhood Plan, she said, which was adopted by the City Council in February. The proposed rezoning of the Walker Park neighborhood is currently before the Planning Commission.
Amendments were made to the master street plan, Minkel said.
"We updated the master street plan using context sensitive solutions, recently approved by institute for transportation engineers," she said.
Planners also pushed the idea of transfer of development rights to state legislators, which would allow property owners to sell development rights for a piece of property in one part of town in exchange for building incentives or credits to developers in another part of town.
"We provided educational information on the transfer of development rights to both legislators at the state level and the Washington County Farm Bureau in hopes of getting legislation passed," she said.
Other accomplishments include passing the urban residential design standards, the sidewalk cafe ordinance, an amendment to building heights, the on-street parking ordinance and the accessory dwelling unit ordinance, Minkel said.
During the 2008-09 year, Minkel said planning staff will look at starting the second complete neighborhood plan in September. City Plan 20025 recommended that a complete neighborhood plan be looked at each year for five years.
Staff have been looking at different areas of the city and will likely make a recommendation to the City Council on June 3, Minkel said. The council will approve the rough boundaries of the planning area before staff begins to work on it, she said.
The planning staff looks at certain criteria when deciding on a neighborhood. It must have areas that are receiving or will receive development pressure, a percentage of underutilized or vacant land, the timing of road improvement projects to the area and the potential for partners to work with in the design process, she said.
The City Plan 2025 also recommended that the city look at tiered impact fees for roads. Those could work in a number of ways, Minkel said. For example, in order to encourage infill development, reduced impact fees could be an incentive to develop in core parts of the city where infrastructure is already in place rather than on the edge of town where there is no infrastructure.
Staff will also look at what other cities have done in terms of waiving impact fees for affordable housing.
Other long range planning projects include a used car lot ordinance, which is still in the research phase and a decentralized sewer ordinance.
The decentralized sewer ordinance will look at how the city deals with systems in annexed properties and whether or not it would be appropriate to prohibit the systems in the city entirely.
Staff is also looking at a street vendor ordinance that would allow street vendors selling food and beverages or arts and crafts to set up vendor carts in certain areas where there is a lot of pedestrian traffic. The ordinance is currently in draft phase.
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