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Discussion on ordinance amendments for downtown Warsaw parking lots and signs in the public right-of-way extended the Warsaw Area Plan Commission meeting out a bit Monday evening.
In the end, the commission tabled the amendments to their 7 p.m. July 14 meeting in the council chambers at City Hall for further discussion. Some of the members of the commission also will meet with City Planner Justin Taylor separately before the next meeting to talk about the proposed changes.
Presenting the ordinance changes, Taylor asked the Plan Commission for a favorable recommendation to the Warsaw Common Council for the zoning amendments.
The first amendment deals with removing parking lots as a permitted use by right in the Commercial-4 zoning district, and separating out regulations for parking lots and parking garages. A parking garage would be permitted in the C-4 zoning district.
“This change is intended to help the city have a little bit more control over what happens downtown,” Taylor said. The only C-4 in the city is the historic area of downtown Warsaw. “We’re really going for that dense urban core and trying to limit the amount of the historic buildings that get demolished for surface parking. So that’s one effort that we’ve been trying to make. We’re hoping that this small change to the permitted uses table will help us take one more step in that direction.”
The second amendment deals with the sign ordinance.
“As our code enforcement department has migrated to the police department, we’re trying to streamline things with how they enforce the regulations. So the sign ordinance, we’re wanting to make one small change where if a sign is in the right-of-way, if it’s determined to be a nuisance or safety hazard, it could be removed immediately by our code enforcement staff. It wasn’t something that was spelled out in our already existing ordinance,” Taylor said.
Commission member Jeff Owens had a two-part question, the first part being, “The thinking here is a stand-alone parking lot does not help us in a C-4, why are we just focusing on C-4 and not across the board on any commercial zoning, or for that matter, industrial? We’ve just locked in on C-4 as being the only zoning designation that we don’t allow this.”
Taylor said the reason was the historic buildings in downtown Warsaw. There aren’t as many historic buildings in other parts of the city. The city sees benefits in industrial zoning districts for businesses to expand their parking lots. “We think it’s less detrimental in those other zoning districts than it is where we have historic buildings we’re trying to preserve,” Taylor said.
Owens then asked why parking structures were being treated differently than just a vacant lot.
“A parking structure would be different because it is a structure that would enhance the ability to have a dense urban core, so that’s why. And there’s facade requirements for those structures,” Taylor said.
Owens said it felt like spot zoning, so if a special exception is needed for a parking lot in C-4, why not make it a special exception in the other zoning districts.
Taylor said there are a number of examples where things are permitted in other zoning districts and not in C-4. He said there are differences between the zones so he wasn’t following Owens’ comment about spot zoning.
On the sign ordinance amendments, Plan Commission President Rick Keeven said signs have been a thing for him for years. In his opinion, he said there are two areas of concern: one is signs placed along U.S. 30 and other popular intersections and roadways (off-premise sign on public right--of-way) and the other is mobile vendors putting their signs in people’s yards and leaving them there beyond the 14-day limit.
“My concern is that we have repeat offenders,” Keeven said, and he’d like for the city to consider fines for them.
Once the commission decided to table the ordinance amendments, some of the members - Owens, Councilwoman Diane Quance and Keeven - decided to meet with Taylor before the next meeting to discuss the changes more. Owens made the motion to table them until their next meeting with the caveat that the two issues would be presented as separate requests. The motion passed unanimously.
Earlier in the meeting, Taylor presented the city’s request for the commission to approve the dedication of approximately 1.6 acres of land at Oakwood Cemetery to establish a public right-of-way to overlay Arthur Street. Keeven asked if the right-of-way extended from the bridge to the Fireman’s Building, and Taylor said that was correct.
“What it does, is it adds this to our road mile inventory. That allows the Public Works Department to seek funding for these road miles and get funding so they can be maintained,” Taylor said.
City engineer Aaron Ott said, “Our Public Works has been maintaining this road for some time, but we’re not getting counted as in our road mileage system, which, with some of the new legislation that passed, our road mileage factors into how we might receive an allotment of funds that might be available through a program at the state. So it’s important that we’re capturing all of that, just as we do. It probably doesn’t change how we effectively maintain that road right now, but it ensures that we can count it.”
Taylor said he had intended to present the matter to the Oakwood Cemetery Board of Regents first, but they delayed their meeting from last Thursday to this Thursday. He asked if the Plan Commission approve it, they approve it contingent on the Cemetery Board’s approval, which is what they did.
Also Monday, the Commission started out their meeting Monday by remembering commission member Jim Gast, who died April 30.
