Council hears about Zoning Code Thursday

Resolution 110448 authorizes the Committee of the Whole to hold public hearings to review the Zoning Code Proposals of the Zoning Code Commission. If adopted Thursday, a very tight schedule of events will ensue.

The city charter requires council to hold a public hearing on the proposed code within 45 calendar days of adopting the resolution. It gives council 30 days after the hearing ends to make its recommendations back to the ZCC. The ZCC will use those comments and the public’s comments to refine the document. The commission has 60 days from the end of the hearing to send the finalized code back to council for a vote.

But unless council wants to come back to session during its summer recess – a step very rarely taken – the time frame is actually much tighter than that. Council’s break begins after its June 16 session.

ZCC Executive Director Eva Gladstein said council may either make its recommendations formally, through a resolution, or informally. To take the resolution route under the normal scenario, council would have to schedule the hearing between the afternoon of June 2 and the afternoon of June 8. Its recommendations could then be put into a resolution that would be introduced at the June 9 hearing, and voted on during the last session on the 16th.

Hypothetically, council could suspend the rules and introduce and adopt the resolution with its recommendations on the same day, but that means the item would not appear on the agenda ahead of time, which gives anyone in the public who wishes to comment advanced notice that it is coming.

If council fails to provide comment within 30 days after the hearing, the ZCC can finalize the document without their input, and send it back for a vote.

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