COMMISSIONERS APPROVE UNIFIED DEVELOPMENT ORDINANCE

By Jon Mayhew

LINCOLNTON – In one of their last official acts as the current Lincoln County Board of Commissioners, county leaders took the planning board’s recommendation and unanimously approved the Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) during Monday night’s commission meeting.

Randy Hawkins, zoning administrator with Building and Land Development (BALD) said if commissioners approved the UDO to take effect March 31, 2009, there would be a timetable for getting information on the different facets of the UDO to commissioners.

“It’s pretty ambitious,” said Hawkins, “but I think we can do it.”

Commissioner Jim Klein asked Hawkins if it was OK for the current board to approve the UDO or hold off on the vote until the new Lincoln County Board of Commissioners are sworn in on Dec. 1.

Hawkins replied it was OK to approve the new ordinance at the Monday night meeting.

“Another reason for implementing the new ordinance on March 31 of next year is to work out all of the bugs before the ordinance takes effect,” said Hawkins. “There may be amendments to the UDO before it takes effect.”

Outgoing county commission chairman Tom Anderson praised the efforts of Building and Land Development for working more than 14 months on the UDO.

“I can recall about nine years ago that we didn’t have planning and zoning,” reflected Anderson. “I think the UDO is a culmination of a lot of work to have a document that addresses current and future zoning issues.”

The UDO is designed to replace the Lincoln County Zoning Ordinance and the Lincoln County Subdivision Ordinance. Grice said originally, engineers had to deal with more than 500 pages of documents.

“Besides the public meeting, engineers studied the land-use and all existing plans and regulations,” said engineer Frank Grice. “We also toured the county and conducted various interviews.”

Denver Area Business Association (DABA) representative John Anderson said a well-written UDO is something Lincoln County needs.

“The UDO will develop a base line for how Lincoln County will be developed in the present and future,” said Anderson. “Serious thought went into the development of this document.”

One group active throughout the UDO process was the Lincoln County Land Use Board. Representative Cheryl Burgess said in no way does her board oppose the UDO.

“We support the ordinance, only if it meets present and future needs,” said Burgess.

Home