‘Proceed with Plan:’ BOMA
After hearing about the Town’s proposed Vision Plan for its Mixed Use Town Center (downtown) District in a workshop Thursday, Sept. 26, Farragut Board of Mayor and Aldermen gave Town staff directions to proceed.
While initially proposed as an ordinance, the Board, while taking no formal action, favored a resolution instead, especially after hearing from Town attorney Tom Hale, who advised against an ordinance.
Alderman Drew Burnette, South Ward, agreed keeping the plan as an ordinance keeps it consistent with what the Board has done in the past.
“A vision plan is concepts, not requirements?” Burnette asked.
“What if we approve it by resolution, but then tie it back to needing to go through the Board of Mayor and Aldermen and have the coverage of both bodies?” he added.
“I think the difficulty of your suggestion is — I think you can do that — the problem, though, is what do you say in the plan versus what do you say in an ordinance?” Hale noted. “My whole issue of adopting it as an ordinance is what that means is you now have a zoning ordinance that has very specific requirements that everybody understands our requirements, and they are detailed and written in a way people can understand.
“Plans are usually not written in the same fashion,” the attorney added. “They don’t have specific requirements. They talk about, kind of, a vision and concept of what you want to do.”
From a lawyer’s standpoint, Hale asked, “how to we enforce a document that is not clearly written; that has, sort of, visionary kind of concepts.”
Hale reminded the Board that was the problem he had before. While “the Vision Plan is a great document … it’s got a lot of stuff in there that is not really conducive to being enforced.
“The reason that’s important is because, in the statute that provides for the adoption of the general plan, not the zoning ordinance … it provides that if a legislative body adopts the general plan as an ordinance, and for all land use decisions thereafter made by the legislative body, actions by the respective planning commission or Board of Zoning Appeals,” he added. “ … All those (decisions) must be consistent with the plan.
“When it has to be consistent with the plan, as (Alderman) David (White) says, ‘That’s the law.’ That’s what you’re required to follow.
Hale said he was “thinking about it from a standpoint of how am I going to enforce this language that’s somewhat vague and not really clear when a citizen comes in and complains about how it’s applied because they interpret it one way and we interpret it another way.”
The Town attorney said he likes to keep plans and ordinances completely separate. While the plan can be relied on, the attorney advised the Board put the important requirements in a zoning ordinance.
“My thought is this (district) is the heart of our Town,” Burnette said. “This (plan) is a second check over. It’s not just Planning Commission that will decide something. You would also have the checks and balances of a Board of Mayor and Aldermen to go to as well.”
“That’s kind of like everything else in the Town right now,” Hale said. “Still, you could certainly do that … I don’t think there would be anything wrong with (adding oversight).”
At the same time, Burnette said he would like to see language removed in the Vision Plan that would allow for more apartments in the MUTC District.
“The last four months, I have been hearing, constantly, ‘we don’t want more apartments …’” the alderman added. “There seems to be an opportunity for more apartments (in the proposed Vision Plan), even though the opportunity is slim …while we have the opportunity, I would say why don’t we go ahead and remove it?”
“There’s only a couple areas where that’s shown as a concept,” Community Development director Mark Shipley said. “It’s just there as an option.”
“I think that’s part of the fine tuning,” Mayor Ron Williams said. “Really, the way I looked at the visioning of something along that line, (it) would be multi-use, meaning more of some sort of a commercial shop on the bottom of a two-story building and what might be above it would be a lawyer’s office or something to that effect.”
“Vertical mixed use doesn’t always have to be residential,” Shipley added.
“I agree with Drew,” Alderman Alex Cain said. “(Allowing apartments) was my big concern. I’d like to see that removed also.”
“We’d have to run it by the Planning Commission, but that’s a very easy change to make in the plan,” Shipley said.
In the citizens forum portion of the subsequent regular Board meeting Thursday, former Vice Mayor Louise Povlin advised about removing the language in the Vision Plan regarding apartments.
“You’re not just going to have to amend the Vision Plan, you’re going to have to amend C-1, the zoning district, because it is a use-by-right for residential at least one story above commercial in the C-1 zoning district,” she said.
“With regard to the land use plan, amending it to incorporate this new Vision Plan, I’m thinking that you may want to consider updating the entire plan at this point,” Povlin added. “The last time it was updated was 2012. The Town has a history of updating their plans fully every 10 years or so.”
