Morganton kicks off UDO planning with closed-door discussions

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Morganton launches rewrite of development rules shaping future growth.

• Some stakeholders want less restrictive regulations and more user-friendly guidelines.

• Related editorial in Opinion, 9B.

How land can be developed in Morganton for years to come will be shaped by a new ordinance, and the process began last week behind closed doors where city officials said they expressed the need for more builder friendly regulations and heightened public education surrounding development requirements.

On Monday and Tuesday, those stakeholders, which included members of the Planning and Zoning Commission and the Board of Adjustment, began the first steps of creating the city’s future Unified Development Ordinance. The ordinance will outline requirements for subdivisions, zoning, flood damage prevention, and more.

In March, the city council awarded a $238,000 contract with a $7,500 contingency to Kimley-Horn, which will be handling the project. The company describes itself as one of the nation’s leading engineering, planning, and development firms, with nearly 10,000 employees in more than 150 offices nationwide.

Kimley-Horn’s Project Manager Cindy Szwarckop noted that the creation of the UDO is expected to take 18 months to complete. Some aspects of the city’s current development guide are expected to be updated because they are outdated. This includes the watershed protection chapter, which hasn’t been updated since 1994, and the flood damage prevention chapter, which dates back to 2007.

The goal is to regulate the norm, not the exception; provide a user-friendly, easy-to-navigate document; make the ordinance understandable to all; clarify regulations and standards with graphics and tables; and emphasize that ordinances are laws based on the North Carolina General Statutes.

Szwarckop and Kimley-Horn Planner Greg Feldman pulled stakeholders in to gather information, asking questions like whether the current rules on zoning and subdivisions strike the right balance between community goals and flexibility for developers. They also asked whether the current development ordinances give clear, objective criteria for decision-making on development applications, or if too much is left to judgment.

Pete Wallace, member of the planning and zoning commission, said that the UDO concept is one that will be a great one-stop shop for builders, but that the regulations within the ordinances need a friendlier approach.

“Ten years ago, we wrote really restrictive regulations,” Wallace said, adding that some of the city’s current regulations can be costly. Several stakeholders also mentioned regulations having more freedom for decision-making and interpretation, he said.

Johnnie Carswell, who represents the Extraterritorial Jurisdiction as a county appointee, went through a similar process when Burke County was creating its UDO.

“It’s a very meticulous process,” Carswell said. “You can’t please everybody, but the county ended up with less restrictions than before.”

Carswell emphasized the need for more education surrounding permitting, zoning, variances, and more. He also said that stakeholders and leaders need to consider whether Morganton’s ordinances are serving today’s needs, or the status quo of what’s been done in the past.

City Manager Sally Sandy, who attended portions of the sessions, said some common themes that stakeholders addressed were landscaping requirements and design standards, and whether they needed to be tweaked.

“There were lots of comments from folks that don’t want to see us go to no standards,” Sandy said. “They don’t want us to give up on green space and landscaping and all of those things.”

Another major part of the discussion was educating leaders and the public about why certain development decisions are made, Sandy said.

“One of the reasons we hired Kimley-Horn is because their community involvement and engagement piece was the most robust of all of the proposals,” Sandy said. “It’s just that that time isn’t here yet.”

The greater community can expect to be pulled into the process around mid-summer, Sandy said. The feedback from stakeholders will be put into an initial assessment, which will then be used to start the community engagement process.

Carswell, who attended one of the Monday sessions, noted that Szwarckop and Feldman were articulate and understanding while they were gathering feedback from stakeholders.

The community business meetings were closed to the public because they were were informal, non-majority information sessions, not official meetings of any board or the city council, said to City Attorney Keith Rigsbee. Therefore, the meetings were not subject to open meeting laws he said.

“The whole point in them having these meetings with these folks in this way is for them to get their personal and honest feedback, and not feel pressured,” Sandy said.

The comments that Kimley-Horn staff received during the stakeholder meetings will be summarized and made available during the UDO creation process. During Szwarkcop’s presentation to the city council and staff at the city’s winter budget workshop, she noted that Kimley-Horn staff will log comments into a matrix that will be posted on the project website for the public to see the types of concerns and how they will be addressed.