New Year and New Codes for 2024

With the New Year upon them, the Saratoga Planning Commission is examining a variety of goals for 2024. One of those is to review Title 18, the zoning code for the Town of Saratoga, to determine where, if any, changes need to be made. The discussion took place during the commission’s January 9 meeting.

“I think that this should be one of the top priorities for the board to go over the zoning ordinance and how we look at things,” said Mayor Chuck Davis. “Not only will this help the town out but it will also help out on how affordable housing can come into play and it needs to be updated.”

According to Emery Penner, director of public works, reviewing the current code also means taking into consideration work done by previous planning commissions and town staff.

“A lot of people have spent a lot of time working on this code for the last 40 years by building and modifying it by making it better,” Penner told the Saratoga Sun in an interview. “It is a living document, it’s evolving over time.”

A living document is one which can be updated and edited over time as needed. The process for doing this with the Saratoga Municipal Code is through the ordinance process. Similar to pieces of legislation, ordinances either add, remove or amend language in the municipal code. Ordinances then must pass three separate readings in a meeting of the Saratoga Town Council—and published in a newspaper—before the changes are formally accepted.

Penner said certain things always come up where someone finds a loophole in the code. Some of those, he said, can be found in the definitions where some words could be better clarified.

“Some of the grandfathered uses, clarifying some of that language would help,” Penner said.

Indeed, under Title 18, the only mention of continuing—or grandfathered—uses is under section 18.03.060. Under this section, it reads any legal established use of a building, structure, lot or land which constitutes a nonconforming use—one that does not conform with current code—may be continued.

Penner also said clarifications could help with housing densities in the various residential districts found within Title 18.

“So as we go through these different scenarios such as mobile homes and multi-family housing, we could identify densities a little bit better,” said Penner.

Housing density is a real estate term that is used to describe the number of housing units per land unit in a given area. This relates to low housing density for single-family homes, condos, and apartments.

“Indirectly zoning can have an effect on affordable housing depending on how restrictive the building ability can be when going through your code,” Penner said. “So we want to make sure that we have density available that will allow for apartments and that nothing is restricting someone’s ability to come in and provide housing in a density that could be more affordable to people.”

Each residential district has different codes that set criteria such as specific minimum square footage standards and building standards. RD 6000, for instance, has a minimum requirement of 6,000 square feet for an individual lot. RD 7200 requires a minimum of 7,200 square feet for an individual lot, and so on. Each district also has permitted and non-permitted uses. RD 6000 and RD 9000 allow for both single-family and multiple-family dwellings while RD 7200 and RD 14000 do not.

Those districts which allow both single family and multiple-family dwellings also include regulations for how the dwellings should be built. In RD 6000 and 9000, for example, detached buildings that are one story must have a distance of 10 feet between them while two story buildings must have a distance of 20 feet between them.

Penner said the process of reviewing and updating the code would take some time. It all depends on what part of the code the planning commission chooses to take on, plus meetings only take place once a month. He added that, even when the reviews and updates are done, that doesn’t mean that in the future a different commission or different staff might also go through a similar process.

“When we are done with this review, someone else will come along and find things that could be more clarified because people are good at finding loopholes,” said Penner.

The next meeting of the Saratoga Planning Commission will be at 5:30 p.m. on February 13 at Saratoga Town Hall.