Reflections on Zoning: I

Oriental's Town Board has scheduled public hearings on Tuesday, June 7 for proposed amendments to five articles of the town's Growth Management Ordinance (GMO). The GMO is our zoning ordinance, and any amendment thereto must be adopted in accordance with procedures spelled out in North Carolina General Statutes. The procedures require a public hearing that is adequately noticed in a newspaper of general circulation.

According to the planning board report explaining the amendments, "in recent years, there have been suggestions that changes have been initiated too often, costing the town too much money in advertisement. The Planning Board decided last summer that it would review parts of the GMO and submit a group of recommendations only once or twice a year in an effort to defray [sic] advertisement costs."

My first comment: beware of the passive voice. "There have been suggestions." By whom? Under what circumstances? Has the Town Board adopted such a policy?

Perhaps there was a groundswell of support for this idea, but I never heard it. I only know of one person who suggested such a procedure. I opposed the idea when she first raised it, and I still think it is a bad policy. In my view, it is better to act when the need for action becomes apparent.

The town should be careful to make sure that lumping a number of amendments together doesn't become a means of discouraging full examination and discussion of the proposals or even worse a means of railroading them through the process.

There is a problem with this particular grouping:
Article IV: Permissible uses by District;
Article VI: Development Standards for Specific Uses;
Article VIII: Signs;
Article XV: Amendments;
Article XVI: Word Interpretations and Basic Definitions.

The problem is, that the only reason to amend what we have is to correct deficiencies and problems with the existing text. Indeed, the Planning Board Report, in its discussion of Article XV says: "Several defects in the current ordinance need to be corrected. The language is inconsistent. The process is confusing and, in some instances, unworkable. Differing perspectives of the appropriate end result of this process need to be balanced and melded into something that will satisfy town authority, petitioner and public.

So we are going to use the existing, admittedly defective, procedure, to amend all five sections of the GMO?

This makes no sense.

Let's first amend Article XV and then, at some future time amend the rest.

Doesn't that seem logical?