Goldsboro City Council to look at Stoney Creek Park plans
By Anessa Myers
Published in News on November 30, 2008 2:00 AM
Goldsboro City Council members will get to take a look at the final site plan for Stoney Creek Park Monday at their work session.
Members are expected to give their approval so that the Stoney Creek Park Alliance can move forward with applying for the Parks and Recreation Trust Fund grant.
The alliance selected a final site plan for Stoney Creek Park nearly two weeks ago, voting unanimously on a draft that includes a dog park moved closer to Durant Street and farther away from residences in that area, a disc golf course, a children's area and a monument honoring donors to the park.
After discussing the plan, the alliance is expected to ask the council to decide how much it wants to commit to the project -- an amount that will affect the PARTF grant application since all funds received, a maximum of $500,000, must be matched.
The City Council will decide on the plan before the Recreation and Parks Advisory Commission will have the opportunity to do so on Dec. 9.
Council members also will discuss lifting the voluntary water restrictions that have been in place for most of the year. Wayne County has been in the abnormally dry category on the U.S. Drought Monitor scale since Sept. 30, showing that it had the least amount of drought problems.
Recently, however, the county has moved out of any drought categorization.
Goldsboro Public Utilities director Karen Brashear said coming off the drought list is good news, and said she expects the council to remove the voluntary restrictions.
"I expect that the city will go back to normal, without any water restrictions," Mrs. Brashear said last week. "Meteorologists are saying that we are going to have a colder and wetter winter, so we should be OK."
The council will also discuss an animal ordinance amendment to allow those in annexed areas to keep horses, mules, ponies, donkeys, cattle, sheep, goats or domestic fowl within the city limits without meeting the city's distance requirement of 200 yards from any dwelling, hospital, school, church or eating establishment. The ordinance would not allow swine in the annexed areas, and any property with swine would have to be brought into compliance with the ordinance within 90 days of the official annexation date. If the animal or animals were removed from the property for a period of time longer than 180 consecutive days, the animals could only return to the property if the property meets the 200-yard distance requirement.
The council also is expected to take action on a site plan for the Isler House, a group home facility that would serve children, on South Franklin Street. Goldsboro Planning Commission members denied the plan Monday for the facility, stating that the facility would be too close to another facility of that type. The spacing requirement is 1,320 feet from one such facility to another, and Isler House would be 550 feet away from meeting that requirement.
In addition, council members will likely set a public hearing date for a sign ordinance amendment that would allow illumination of signs in the office-residence zoning district. The planning commission set a public hearing on the subject for Jan. 20.
In the past, businesses in that district, mostly along Ash Street that border residential neighborhoods, weren't able to have a backlit or internally lit sign. Signs had to be lit by ground lighting in a way that would not detract from traffic.
Planning staff said that a business owner in that area asked for a free-standing, illuminated sign, and to allow it, the zoning ordinance needed to be amended. The amended ordinance would allow for business owners to have illuminated signs, but ones with changeable copy will not be allowed.
In October, the planning commission and the City Council both approved the increase of the maximum sign size in that zone from 10 square feet to 32 square feet.
In other business, the council will discuss budget amendments, a site and landscape plan for retail stores at 601 E. Elm St. and rescheduling of City Council meetings due to holidays.
The council meeting will begin at 7 p.m. in the council chambers at City Hall.