05/12/2010 P&Z Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Search

• • AGENDA ITEM V B STAFF ORIGINATOR: Jeff Smyser P & Z MEETING DATE: May 12, 2010 TOPIC: PUBLIC HEARING: Amendments to Zoning Ordinance and Subdivision Regulations Chapter of City Code Regarding Development in Environmentally Sensitive Areas, Tree Preservation, Landscaping, Planned Unit Developments, and Platting BACKGROUND Since the late 1990s Lino Lakes has been pursuing a more environmentally sound means of handling new development. The city's Handbook for Environmental Planning and Conservation Development was printed in 1999. We followed that with the 2004 Parks, Natural Open Space /Greenways and Trail Plan. The I -35E Corridor Alternative Urban Areawide Review in 2005 established a "conservation design framework" for all development within the study area. The draft new Comprehensive Plan further promotes the conservation design principles laid out in all these documents. Chapter 2 creates the Resource Management System Plan, establishing an open space system that corresponds with Environmentally Sensitive Areas created by plans and rules of the Rice Creek Watershed District. Now the City is creating and amending official controls to implement the ideas and plans. The subjects of the public hearing tonight are sections of the zoning ordinance and subdivision regulations, the primary controls for regulating new development. (A new stormwater management ordinance also is in the works.) All the different ordinance requirements need to work together toward the goals of preserving and creating a city wide greenway system through the identification and protection of Environmentally Sensitive Areas. The Rice Creek Watershed District is the governmental entity that regulates wetland impacts and the public drainage ditch system. Extensive environmental research by the District and Lino Lakes resulted in the creation of an overall Environmentally Sensitive Areas (ESAs) map for Lino Lakes. The District's new rule RMP -3 is designed to identify and protect ESAs on individual development sites. The District's rules protect wetlands and include requirements for stormwater design. The Lino Lakes ordinances are intended to provide standards for aspects of development that are beyond the scope of the Watershed District's authorities. In this way, the City and the Watershed District's actions are partners in creating the citywide greenway system of ESAs. City staff have worked with Bonestroo to prepare draft new site layout performance standards and landscaping and tree preservations standards. All of these are intended to apply to all new plats, site plans for commercial /industrial /institutional uses, conditional use permits —in fact, all new development in the city. The site layout performance standards are new. The landscaping and tree standards would replace the existing sections of the zoning ordinance.