Morganton's UDO Rewrite: Public input should come first

Morganton is right about the big thing.

The city’s development ordinances need a serious overhaul.

If there was any lingering doubt, the Kimley-Horn consultant group presentation prepared for this week’s two-day stakeholder sessions made the case plainly enough.

A national planning, engineering, and design consulting firm contracted with the city recently, Kimley-Horn’s nearly two-year, $245,000 project calls for a “comprehensive review and analysis” of Morganton’s existing ordinances, with attention to structure, organization, clarity, ease of use, and best practices.

The firm says the new Unified Development Ordinance should be “user-friendly,” searchable, cross-referenced, less redundant, clearer in its definitions, and more explicit about procedures, expectations, and timelines.

It also says the city should analyze demographic and economic data to consider reduced lot sizes and setbacks and review zoning districts, overlays, and permitted uses for possible modification.

Specifically, the 10-slide presentation, titled “Stakeholder Meetings – April 20th & 21st 2026,” states a goal is to “Create clear procedures, expectations, and timelines for required processes and procedures.”

That is a consultant language for a plain truth many residential and commercial developers, property owners, and ordinary citizens have been saying for years: Morganton’s ordinances can be difficult to navigate, difficult to interpret, and, too often, difficult to apply without running into delay, uncertainty, or a sense that the code is less a guidebook than a maze.

So, Morganton is right to fix the code. But the city council and city leadership also got something wrong.

A project of this importance should not begin with a two-day session that was, in practical terms, closed off from the public or conducted in a way that discouraged public attendance.

In response to a question whether the public could attend the two-day “Stakeholder” sessions, City spokeswoman Jonelle Sigmon said, “...The UDO meetings are non-majority, informal information sessions and not official meetings of any of the boards or of the council and therefore not subject to open meetings requirements.”

That answer may satisfy the law. It does not satisfy the public interest.

That was a missed opportunity.

The irony is hard to miss. A process that promises community engagement, community meetings, and public hearings was rolled out in a setting where the public was, at best, an afterthought.

Maybe city leaders believed these were only preliminary working sessions. Maybe they saw them as technical briefings for officials. Maybe they assumed the real public engagement would come later.

That is backwards. What is that classic business adage? Hear the customer. Meet the need. Deliver the value.

The opening phase of a UDO rewrite is exactly when residents should be invited in, not edged out.

This is when builders, homeowners, neighborhoods, and taxpayers should be able to see the same presentation their elected officials see and judge for themselves whether the process is headed toward better rules or simply better packaging.

We recommend adding a step that does not appear on Kimley-Horn’s current proposal: a meeting of developers, investors, and other community stakeholders with the consultants and, importantly, held without city staff in the room.

If Kimley-Horn and the city sincerely want genuine, transparent, unfiltered input, this is the most credible forum for collecting candid stakeholder opinion without fear of censorship or restraint.

Critical to the effort: inviting all participants to Kimley-Horn’s presentation of its findings to the city’s UDO team.

The transparency of this strategy, coupled with the city’s proclaimed intent to build a better Morganton by listening to its customers and taxpayers, is irrefutable.

The move is bullet-proof in ensuring that true stakeholders are heard, recorded and presented without filters, alterations, summations or other means of diluting or altering the message.

Stakeholders would not be able to claim Morganton didn’t hear them. Morganton would not be able to claim shareholders didn’t have a chance to be heard.

Morganton is right to fix its ordinances. Now it needs to fix the way it talks to the public about fixing them.

Because a modern development code is not just about land use. It is about trust. And trust is harder to rewrite once it is lost.

The presentation’s discussion questions concede the point. Officials were asked whether the ordinances provide “clear, objective criteria” or leave too much to judgment, and whether the existing regulations “effectively balance community goals with applicant flexibility.”

That is the heart of the matter.

A development code should protect the public interest. It should defend neighborhoods, water quality, traffic safety, and orderly growth while preserving adaptability in ever-changing economic development.

It should not make routine investment feel like a test of endurance and not force smart projects into an exception, workaround, or special plea.

Morganton is hardly alone in confronting this problem. Across North Carolina, cities and counties are reworking their UDOs and land-use rules in response to growth pressures, housing concerns, legal changes, and the need for clearer, more adaptable codes.

For example, Gastonia issued a 2026 RFP for a UDO rewrite that calls for research, analysis, stakeholder engagement, drafting, graphics, mapping, and final document preparation.

Hillsborough is in the middle of a rewrite to align its ordinance with its comprehensive plan and says the updated ordinance will be enhanced with graphics and ease of use.

Morganton’s own current regulatory structure helps explain why reform is needed. The city’s zoning ordinance became effective Jan. 1, 2015, while the broader development rules still involve multiple ordinance areas, including subdivision regulations, zoning, and flood damage prevention.

State law also matters here. North Carolina’s local planning and development regulations are governed under Chapter 160D, which applies to development regulations adopted by local governments.

Kimley-Horn repeatedly notes that ordinances are laws based on North Carolina General Statutes and specifically references vested rights and permit choice protections for previously approved projects.

That legal framework is exactly why a rewrite must be done carefully, transparently, and in a way the public can understand.

Bring the public in early. Now would be good.