05-24-1995 Council Agenda - Laserfiche WebLink

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Alternatives The Little Canada Ordinances are consistent within themselves: all zoning related actions require four votes and all subdivision related actions require three votes. Rationale for this structure is generally based on the thinking that a variance from the Ordinance should be no easier (nor more difficult) to obtain than an amendment to the Ordinance itself. Under this view, zoning variances and conditional use permits should be made difficult to obtain, and should be supportable by clear findings that a departure from the basic standards of the Ordinance is justifiable. Requests which can pass only on a 3 -2 vote could be questioned as to whether there was clear justification. Subdivision variances should be able to meet the same level of scrutiny. However, it would be illogical to require a four vote majority for a variance, when the Ordinance itself could be amended by three votes. In fact, it is extremely rare that the City faces a variance request to its subdivision standards. Issues regularly encountered such as setback and lot sizes are zoning regulations. The street width and cul -de -sac radius issues raised in the Tina request are unusual, having come up only a few times since the adoption of the current Subdivision Ordinance. The City's discussion of this issue has centered around whether the vote counts for variances from both the Zoning and Subdivision Ordinances should be the same. Using the simple majority for both would reduce from four to three votes needed for a zoning variance. A weighted majority would require an increase in the subdivision variance to four. If this alternative is chosen, the City should consider raising Subdivision Ordinance amendments to four votes as well, to avoid the paradox noted in the previous paragraph. CONCLUSION Although the issue of vote requirements caused some confusion when it was raised in the Tina case, we believe that Little Canada's Ordinance structure is logical and consistent. The City must think about how it uses and variances and conditional use permits in the applications Little Canada faces on a regular basis. Does the City want to make these permits easier or more difficult to obtain? The content of the Ordinance should reflect the City's approach to land use management. Finally, the staff has collected information which indicates a strong tendency in the northeast suburbs to utilize simple majority votes for many of these issues. Little Canada is by no means "out of step" on a metropolitan wide basis, however. Numerous combinations of vote counts are utilized in other parts of the Twin Cities. In our view, consistency over time is the single factor most likely to reduce confusion. pc: Kathy Glanzer Tom Sweeney Page 13