Cleaning up the code

The Town of Saratoga is working on making its subdivision ordinance easier for developers to understand and access.

This is one of the planning commission’s recent set of goals, said Emery Penner, town zoning administrator and public works director.

Rewriting the ordinance in this way will be a lengthy process and involve several public hearings before both the planning commission and the council before the new ordinance can be adopted, Penner said.

The town’s subdivision ordinance is located in Title 17 and 18 of the town’s code of ordinances, which is posted online at http://www.townofsaratoga.org under the Municipal Code tab.

“We are analyzing [the ordinance] and adjusting to make it easier to understand,” he said.

Kristen Stocks, co-owner of Octagon Construction Group, is a contractor and developer in the Saratoga area. A number of small towns do the same thing Saratoga is doing to clarify and make their subdivision ordinance more consistent throughout the code, Stocks said.

Town councils typically change the ordinances in one section of the code and then two years later another council may do the same thing, perhaps in another section of the code, she said. That can create inconsistencies left open to interpretation.

“When towns make everything match, it is a really important process because it helps everybody to have one clear concise set of ordinances that no longer contradict each other,” she said. “Going through the subdivision ordinance and having a clear set of regulations and processes ensures everyone is held to the same standard. If it is a hodgepodge and left to interpretation, you can’t hold anybody accountable if it is not clear.”

“We are 100 percent behind the town putting its processes in place,” she said.

This way before they begin, contractors will know what the processes are and to what they will be held accountable.

Penner said the new ordinance will also organize the information into one place for the developers to access.

Information developers want to access exists in multiple places in the ordinance, he said. The plan is to group all of this information together in one place to make it easier for a developer to find the answers to his or her questions.

A subdivision as defined by the code is two or more lots.

For example, a person who inherits a property but doesn’t want to live there, may decide to subdivide it, he said. That is a subdivision development under the ordinance because it becomes two or more lots.

The ordinance as it is written contains all the information a developer needs to know, but it is “very chopped up,” he said.

For example, under Section 17.16.010 General Procedure at the top of the ordinance, the language is not as detailed or comprehensive as the town would like, he said.

17.16.010 General Procedure currently reads as follows:

“The planning commission shall receive all subdivision applications and shall, after evaluation, make findings and recommendations to the town council concerning an application for a final plat within thirty days from the date of the filing with the administrative official of the planning commission (zoning officer). If no action is taken by the planning commission within that time, the plat shall be deemed to be approved by the planning commission. The governing body shall approve or disapprove the subdivision application and issue a subdivision permit or ruling within thirty days after receiving a report from the planning commission.”

What the planning commission is working on doing is to have the general procedure section describe the entire process from start to finish with references to other parts of the process further down in other sections containing more detail.

The general procedure section would then become a step-by-step description of what the developer needs to know, he said. The town wants developers to understand ahead of time how long it will take to get through the process. They also want the code to be able to answer questions for developers such as the number of public hearings required, development costs, requirements to add sewer lines and/or road access and bond assurances.