From the Free Lance Star..
City Council to revisit limiting sizes of new homes
Council to revisit housing size rules
BY EMILY BATTLE
Date published: 2/8/2010
BY EMILY BATTLE
How big can a new house be before it’s too big for the neighborhood, and who should be the arbiter of that kind of decision?
Those questions were hot topics for Fredericksburg’s City Council three years ago, when a lot more home-building was going on.
Despite all the talk, council members never took any action on what has come to be known as the “out-of-scale houses” ordinance when it was on the table in 2008.
But the proposal hasn’t gone away.
City residents can tell the council what they think about it at a public hearing at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow at City Hall.
Councilman Matt Kelly asked at a recent meeting that the proposal be brought back up for action.
The last time the council had any public discussion of it was at an August 2008 work session with the Planning Commission.
A majority of council members said at that point that the proposal should be brought up for a vote the following month, but it never resurfaced, and the council hasn’t discussed the rules publicly since.
“I don’t like it when we just hope something goes away and we don’t have to deal with it again,” Kelly said. “It’s an important issue in the city, and I think it needs to be brought forward for discussion and a vote.”
There is no indication that the rules are any more likely to be acted on this time around.
The proposed rules would reduce the maximum allowed height of new homes from 35 to 27 feet in all residential zoning districts.
They would limit builders from filling more than 30 percent of their lots with a structure’s footprint, although that standard would be 40 percent for lots less than 40 feet wide, and 25 percent for those more than 80 feet wide.
Property owners could seek special-use permits to go beyond those limits.
Vice Mayor Kerry Devine said the issue has faded to the background as building in the city’s older neighborhoods has slowed. She said the council needs to develop rules to protect neighborhood character at some point, but she’s not sure there’s an immediate need.
“The issue will come back when the market comes back, but right now I don’t think it’s an issue that’s on anybody’s front burner,” she said.
Both Devine and Councilman George Solley want to explore a more neighborhood-specific approach that would take into account the different housing sizes and scales around town.
Developing rules like that would take more time and might require a different mechanism than just changing the citywide zoning ordinance.
Solley said the council still needs to address the issue, but he doesn’t like the idea of one set of rules for every neighborhood.
Kelly said he thinks a neighborhood-specific approach is “unworkable.”
The rules on the table now came out of the Planning Commission, which the council tasked with finding a solution a few years ago.
Council members were poised to vote on them in March 2008–in the midst of the at-large and mayoral election campaigns–but sent them back to the commission for further “study,” without really specifying what needed to be studied.
The Planning Commission sent the same rules right back to the council, although support for the proposal is not unanimous among commissioners.
Councilman Brad Ellis, who joined the council after it had already sent the issue into bureaucratic limbo, said he’s not sure this particular proposal is the right one, but he’d like to see the council debate and act on the issue without much more delay.
“I think you can make a great case either way,” he said, adding that he hopes affected parties will use tomorrow’s hearing to help council members understand the potential effects.
“I would like to have that debate,” he said. “Then let’s make a decision and move on.”
Emily Battle: 540/374-5413
Email: ebattle@freelancestar.com
Just a few questions…
Why would you want to be the biggest home in a community?
With the rising costs of… well, just about everything… unless you’re planning on living with multi-generations in one home, how many families need 3000-4000 square feet on a quarter of an acre in the City of Fredericksburg?
How will building a larger home in a community affect your resale value?
And if you did want to have a home larger than the others in a particular community, why should someone tell you otherwise?
What would happen to the property values of the other homes?
I love considering both sides of the coin!
