City to once again tackle zoning
By Barbara Arntsen
Published in News on November 14, 2004 2:08 AM
By BARBARA ARNTSEN
News-Argus Staff Writer
On Monday morning the Goldsboro City Council will once again begin discussions about its proposed zoning ordinance.
The ordinance has hovered at the completion stage several times over the past year and a half, but has never been approved.
Four years ago the council hired Parsons Inc. from Richmond, Va., to streamline the ordinance and to recommend ways to implement the land-use plan.
John Marling, a senior planner with Parsons, compared Goldsboro to five other cities of similar size and looked at what was successful there. He also interviewed representatives of local agencies and city officials.
The firm put together a new document called a "unified development ordinance," designed to eliminate the city's previous piecemeal approach to zoning and make it easier for council review. The city paid the consultants more than $100,000 to put the ordinance together.
In 2003, the document was handed over to the council for review. For four months the council held weekly work sessions, reviewing the proposed ordinance page by page. The council came up with a variety of questions about the 231-page document, which they forwarded to the consultants via the city's planning director.
After the planning director retired in December, the document was put on hold for another few months. Last spring the council reviewed the remaining portions of the ordinance, and the new planning director was directed to make additional changes. The changes were supposed to be ready for the council's review by the end of June, but they weren't.
Instead, the council received the ordinance last month to review. The board will begin its next review of the ordinance at 11 a.m. Monday at City Hall.