2025.07.21 CC Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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Memorandum To: Bryan Bear, City Administrator From: Max Gort, Associate Planner Date: July 11, 2025 for the City Council meeting of July 21, 2025 Re: Ordinance Amendment, Fences 1. PLANNING COMMISSION MEETING UPDATE At its meeting of Thursday, July 10, 2025, the Planning Commission held a public hearing and considered the request. No one spoke during the public hearing. The Planning Commission voted unanimously to recommend that the City Council approve the proposed amendments to the fence ordinance. 2. BACKGROUND: Section 90-227 of City Code outlines requirements for fences, and requires approval of a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) for placing a fence within a drainage and utility easement. New residential developments in the City of Hugo are required to dedicate easements for drainage and utility purposes around the perimeter of single-family lots. Some of these easements have public improvements, such as underground utilities, or provide access to a public outlot for maintenance purposes. When a resident is constructing a fence on their property line, they are almost always going to be locating the fence within the easement. Staff has been requiring that residents constructing a fence within an easement request an Encroachment Agreement from the City Council instead of a CUP, whether or not the easement has any public improvements. The Encroachment Agreement request lengthens the approval process for a fence, and the proposed amendments are intended to streamline the process for residents. The purpose of requiring the Encroachment Agreement is to allow for the city to access an easement and remove the fence if necessary. In most cases, where there are no public improvements located in an easement or an easement isn’t providing access to a public improvement, there will not likely be a need to remove the fence. However, in the cases where an easement is used for public improvements, the city has an interest in dictating the fence’s location with respect to the improvements and requiring that the resident request an Encroachment Agreement to be approved administratively by the Public Works department. In addition to items relating to placing fences within easements, staff identified a number of items within the ordinance that should be updated to better reflect administrative practices. The ordinance states that fences require a permit issued by the city building official, but the cit y has not been requiring or issuing fence permits. The ordinance also has a table that outlines setback and height requirements for fences that could be simplified, including removing requirements for zoning districts that no longer exist. G.X