The city’s Planning and Growth Department is spearheading an effort to review the portion of the Land Development Code (LDC) that deals with form-based code districts “to determine if all the regulations are performing as anticipated and to ensure compatible development which meets the purpose statements of the code.” Toward that end, they have done two things:
- Established an LDC Review Committee. The LDC Committee is comprised of two representatives from the Heart of Peoria Commission, Zoning Commission, the Zoning Board of Appeals, and the Historic Preservation Commission. I’m one of the two representatives from HOPC. So far, we’ve had two meetings. No decisions have been made yet, but we’ve discussed street wall and parking setback requirements and worked on crafting definitions for “change of use” and “expansion of use.”
- Requested the City Council temporarily amend the LDC while the LDC Review Committee completes its work. This is on Tuesday’s agenda. Basically, they want to make it easier for projects in a form district to get an exception from the regulations. Currently, any exceptions to the regulations must go through the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA). The ZBA’s decision is final; any appeals have to go through circuit court. Planning and Growth is requesting instead that any exceptions be handled as a special use request; that would require the City Council’s approval. Again, this request is just for a six-month period — long enough for the committee to complete its work.
During the Heart of Peoria Commission meeting Friday morning (which wasn’t attended by any media, incidentally), that second point was one of the topics of discussion.
Some commissioners felt the temporary LDC change was a good idea. They argued, like Planning and Growth, that the LDC Review Committee’s recommendations “could include rewriting of certain regulations or removal of them after a determination that they may be too extensive.” Hence, exceptions during this time should be able to be made legislatively (through the council) rather than judicially (through the ZBA). The applicant would still have to make their case either way; it would only change which body has the final say.
Others, like me, were skeptical. I didn’t hear a compelling reason why this change was necessary. First of all, there don’t appear to be a rash of requests before the ZBA (in fact, their last regular meeting was cancelled because they didn’t have a single case). Secondly, the issues that are being reviewed by the committee are limited in scope, so there’s no need to change the exceptions procedure for all form district regulations. Others pointed out that exceptions made under this proposed temporary change could set a bad precedent.
The Heart of Peoria Commission was split on the issue. A motion in favor of the temporary change failed 3-4. That was followed by a motion to make no changes to the exception process while the commission completes its work; that motion passed 4-3.
Why do we have LDC if we’re not going to follow it?
The reason we have the LDC is like Renaissance Park, it becomes a nice window dress like other plans or commissions and the like. It starts out to be a good thing the the powers to be gut the plans or commissions and they fade away. Then the council pays another sutdy to be done and the cycle starts again. Check out there last meeting. http://www.ci.peoria.il.us/resourcesmodule/download_resource/id/3040/src/@random475b136312bd7/
Two $64,000.00 questions and the free answer is …. here we go again — in the cycle of Peoria development — insanity. If nothing changes nothing changes.