Numerous “deficiencies” in Oxford Township’s Zoning Ordinance prompted officials Thursday to form a committee to “look at the implications of revising” it and the Master Plan.
The “Plan to Plan Committee” – which consists of planning commissioners George Herring, Don Silvester and Sam Liberto, township trustee Pat Fitchena and Zoning Administrator Mike Darling – was charged with the task of developing a “comprehensive work plan” and “cost estimate” for accomplishing the above tasks.
At a Sept. 18 joint meeting of the township board and planning commission, township planner Don Wortman, of the Ann Arbor-based Carlisle/Wortman Associates, Inc., noted his firm identified 16 “deficiencies” in the current Zoning Ordinance.
“Since we began serving Oxford Township nearly two years ago, a number of deficiencies in the Zoning Ordinance have been identified. . .the Planning Commission has successfully addressed many of these through amendments to the Zoning Ordinance. However, we believe that the number and extent of deficiencies that remain warrants the preparation of a thorough update of the Zoning Ordinance,” Wortman wrote in a Sept. 4 memo to the planning commission.
“Over the past two years, I feel like we’ve been doing patchwork of a flat tire,” Wortman said referring to the Zoning Ordinance. “It might be time to throw away the tire and get a new tire. The Zoning Ordinance has been certainly problematic.”
“I think it’s time to take a hard look at this,” he said.
Some of the main “deficiencies” listed in Wortman’s memo are:
n Complexity/Redundancy – “Many of the requirements and/or processes set forth in the Zoning Ordinance are overly complex and burdensome to both the township and applicants. Furthermore, the use of cross-references, while generally valuable, seems to be misapplied in portions of the Zoning Ordinance, making interpretation of the Zoning Ordinance more complicated than necessary.”
n Readability/Clarity/Graphics – “In some cases, the text of the Zoning Ordinance is unclear, making it subject to multiple interpretations. Overall, the format and syntax of the Zoning Ordinance could be improved for ease of use. Additionally, a greater use of graphics would help in clearly expressing zoning requirements.”
n Condominium Procedure – The section “which addresses the standards and procedures for condominium procedures is unclear, leading to confusion over the correct process to be followed for condominiums.”
n Essential Services – “The current language addressing the review and approval procedures for essential services seem to be unreasonably strict, unnecessarily slowing the development of municipal infrastructure.”
n Concurrent Review Options – “In many cases, the Zoning Ordinance does not allow steps in the various review processes to be consolidated or reviewed concurrently if a project does not warrant a full-blown four-step review. This unnecessarily lengthens the development review and approval procedures.”
n Impractical CAD Standards – “In some cases, the strict applicant of the CAD (Central Area Development) provisions is impractical and should be subject to some amount of discretion on the part of the planning commission.”
Wortman cited an example of the last deficiency listed involving the Stony Lake Village condominium project in Waterstone, where impractical CAD standards resulted in driveways that were “almost undesirably short.”
“We had a developer saying that they needed to have a greater setback than what the CAD regulations required,” Wortman said. “The CAD regulations on the residences up front didn’t allow them enough room to put a car in the drive. So it forced them to go to the (Zoning Board of Appeals).”
Regarding the “concurrent review options” deficiency, Wortman referred to problems with the Flagstar Bank project to be located on M-24, next door to the POH Medical Center.
Wortman said the Flagstar Bank project from a few months ago, which “should have been a relatively simple site plan” review, “involved four separate steps.”
“The developer was exasperated,” he said. “I think even the planning commissioners wondered why did we have to keep seeing this. The four steps could have probably been boiled down to two or three steps.”
However, before the Zoning Ordinance can be revised, Wortman recommended officials first update the township’s Master Plan.
The Master Plan was adopted in November 1995 and has not been updated since.
“In a lot of our communities, typically that is the proper procedure,” he said. “First, you look at your Master Plan because your Master Plan is going to set the stage for your Zoning Ordinance.”
“You want to make sure your Master Plan is consistent with the ordinance amendments that we make,” Wortman added.
Planning Commission Chairman George Herring agreed the Master Plan must be updated.
“What we have in place right now, currently on the ground, built, does not necessarily match our Master Plan,” Herring said. “We need to update our Master Plan with current documents. So when a developer, resident, anybody comes into the township office, they know which direction we’re going. Right now, go into our office, they don’t know where we’re going, we barely know where we’re going and we’re struggling.”
“What I believe we should be doing is taking a look at our Master Plan, updating it, get it in line with what’s already in the ground. Get that solid,” Herring said. “And we’re not talking a long time in order to do that. We know what’s out there, we’ve reviewed the plans. So that shouldn’t take a lot of time to do that.”
“With that in mind and that in place, we start looking at the hole we’ve been putting patches on. We go through it systematically and make sure they’re (Master Plan and Zoning Ordinance) intertwined together. That’s our biggest problem. We have a hole here. We patch that hole, but we create another hole,” Herring added. “What we do want to do is put a new tire on, put a little air in, make sure it doesn’t leak and move on. And by that time we’ve reviewed our Master Plan, we’ve updated our (Zoning) Ordinance and we’re good to go.”
Wortman said the Plan to Plan Committee will “identify the work plan” for revising the Master Plan and Zoning Ordinance, which includes determining “how many meetings do you have, what is the time allotment, what is the general budget and what are the primary areas that you want to focus on.”
“Keep this effort targeted to specific work tasks and specific issues” such as whether this will be viewed as an “update” or “rewrite” of the Master Plan, Wortman told officials.
The committee’s formulation of a work plan would help determine how much this project will cost the township, Wortman said.
“We can develop a price for you based on what your needs are,” he said. “Once you know what you want, then we can give you that price. I think we can keep the cost down, if we could have come consensus as to what is needed.
Supervisor Bill Dunn advocated including Oxford Village representation and input – in the form of either a village council member or village planning commissioner – on the Plan to Plan Committee.
“We are one community and whatever we do affects them (the village),” Dunn said. “I’d like to see them participate because what happens out here is going to affect them.”
Planning Commissioner Kallie Roesner agreed with Dunn, but said village involvement should come after the committee’s developed the work plan and the township is ready to begin the actual revisions.
“It seems to me we’re just trying to figure out how we’re going to write the plan now, not actually putting data into it,” she said. “This doesn’t seem like the place (for village input) because the township should choose how it’s going to redo it, if its going to redo it.”
“At the point that we start to incorporate what (the committee) states, I think that’s the time for the village” to join in, Roesner said.
In response to Roesner’s comments, Dunn said when the committee feels it’s “appropriate” for the village to participate, the members should notify him and he’ll “pre-warn the village that an invitation is coming.”