A commission has requested to meet with a Uhrichsville Council committee to streamline ordinances.

Board of Zoning Appeals/Planning Commission Chair Randy Lindsey and member Rita McPeak talked with council, at their recent meeting, after questions arose surrounding existing legislation.

Lindsey says the wording can be confusing for building permits, plus manufactured home technology has changed.

“And another item that we want to specifically deal with is different zoning ordinances for subdivisions. There’s a lot of vagueness and we’d really like to clean that up, so it’ll be a lot easier for builders, developers who want to come in and actually establish subdivisions in the city.”

Lindsey says problems include confusing and sometimes vague wording.

“We’d like to streamline it so that not everything that comes through we’re going to have to have a variance hearing on it. We want to clean it up so it’s more cut and dry, so it’s better business for council, for us, builders and developers, and the residents so it’s easier for them to understand.”

The goal, notes McPeak, is to clean up applicable ordinances and simplify them.

“The way that the structure of the documents are written is that maybe there was a previous revision, but it refers back to another part of the ordinance code and it’s all this tangled web of information and it’s very hard to read and cross reference it.”

McPeak adds that new building technology and terms also need update, even in an ordinance revision in 2020, which does not include the word modular.

“That’s actually becoming a more intriguing type of housing for people to buy, and we learned, in a presentation recently from the folks of Hartzler Homes, there are very big differences in the quality of the construction between a manufactured and a modular, and our ordinance doesn’t address it, so it doesn’t whether it’s allowed in the city or not.”

The matter was sent to council’s zoning committee for further review.

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