Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Ketchum PUD law up for review


By REBECCA MEANY
Express Staff Writer

Ideally, when a developer creates a project through a planned unit development, or PUD, the community as a whole gets something out of it. So if more PUDs were allowed in Ketchum, theoretically there could be more community-wide benefit.

The Ketchum Planning & Zoning Commission held a discussion on the city's PUD ordinance during a meeting Monday, Nov. 27.

The City Council directed staff to come up with possible changes and have the P&Z review them before being sent to the higher body.

Proposed amendments include modifying minimum lot requirements—from 3 acres to .5 acres—and allowing hotels in the Tourist zone to ask for waivers through the PUD process.

The proposed half-acre minimum would not apply to the General Residential-Low Density zone.

The purpose of a PUD is to encourage flexibility and creativity in land development, said Planning Director Harold Moniz.

"There's a benefit to the community because it allows you to do things you couldn't if you string four lots together," said Commissioner Greg Strong. "The whole idea is to come up with something better than standard zoning. It gives the opportunity for the community to get something."

With that flexibility comes added scrutiny.

"It certainly is a higher standard, in my opinion, in terms of getting something approved," Moniz said.

One of the community benefits envisioned is affordable housing.

City Attorney Ben Worst said it is up to cities to set criteria such as minimum lot size.

"There is no fixed acreage in Idaho code," he told commissioners.

Strong said he wanted to make sure the PUD-allowable lots didn't shrink to the point where it would be easier to decide everything on a case-by-case basis.

"At some point it just gets too small to be practical," he said. "If it's too small, let's just throw it all out and decide everything as it comes in the door."

While most commissioners were satisfied with staff recommendations, commission chair Jack Rutherford pressed for more.

"We need a top-to-bottom rewrite," he said. "Our language in the existing PUD document is inadequate. It doesn't have enough meat to it to regulate what we want to be (done)."

He advocated clearer criteria and standards for PUDs to ensure they fulfil city goals, and said that allowing more development through that process could catch the city unprepared.

"Fundamentally, a PUD has to balance out the benefit for the immediate neighborhood versus other interests of the city," he said. "Immediate neighbors need to know they're going to get some benefit, and it has to be a tangible benefit."

Rutherford said he was not philosophically opposed to lowering the minimum lot size to .5 acres, but he wanted an overall review of the ordinance first.

"We should look at how PUDs are used in other communities and really research it. And let's look at how our ordinance integrates with state law."

The P&Z may schedule a workshop on the matter before making recommendations to the council.




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