10-14-2020 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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STAFF REPORT TO: Mayor Keis and Members of City Council FROM: Corrin Wendell, AICP, Community Development Director DATE: October 14, 2020 RE: Contract for Zoning Code Amendment ACTIONS TO BE CONSIDERED: Consider approval of a Contract for a Zoning Code Amendment in the amount of $22,500, which will utilize fund balance and does not impact the budget. BACKGROUND: For the past few years, the City has been considering an update to the Zoning Code. With the 2040 Comprehensive Plan in the final stages, this is an ideal time to create changes within the Code that will align with the vision of the Plan, adhere to the Metropolitan Council guidance of updating local controls within 9 months of adopting the Plan, and the City’s Strategic Plan. Staff has faced difficulty in using the current Code because it has been amended multiple times throughout the last couple decades and has resulted in inconsistencies. The new amendments will reduce these redundancies, provide better readability and accessibility to the community and developers, meet current state statutes, and state and federal regulations. This will certainly give City staff increased efficiencies in interpreting and using the code on a daily basis. The need for requesting consulting services to carry out the changes to the Code has an incredible benefit verses completing this process in-house. While I have written full zoning code updates in the past and have the ability to do this work, it is extremely time consuming, I did have two full-time staff as well as a consultant review of the code which helped with that process. For this process, it would help immensely to work in tandem with the consultant as the Project Manager, provide my zoning code expertise and lead community engagement and meetings, as well as ensure the changes proposed are in alignment with other areas of the City Code. In addition, as we are waiting on the hiring of the Code Enforcement officer in April 2021, these duties have taken a substantial portion of my time and will continue to do so during the second quarter of 2021. It is also critical that I lead the proposed site plan review and subdivision process for the Skully property, development proposals related to the Heinel property, redevelopment projects along the Rice Street corridor, manage the Rental Housing Licensing process, as well as continue day-to-day operations of land use applications and answering daily inquiries. Also, the onboarding and training of the Rental Licensing and Zoning Code Enforcement position in 2021 will take time as well. Zoning code amendments are often a collaborative process given the intricacies of the language and coordination with all chapters of the code.