New residential zoning ordinances approved

KATE GOLDEN/Frontiersman reporter

PALMER-The Palmer city council has finally approved new residential zoning ordinances, updating long-outgrown code.

Council Member Tony Pippel summed up the council's feelings: "This is the one we've been after for three and a half years, and I'm tickled pink," he said.

"Let the record show that council member Pippel is tickled pink," Mayor John Combs said. "I'm tickled, too."

Nobody had more right to be tickled, though, than Sara Jansen, the city's community and economic development director. Jansen has been in charge of the rezoning project since soon after she began her job. It started quickly, she said, but "languished for a while" mid-process.

The two original zoning codes for residences, R-1 and R-2, were so broad that the city's only option was to put restrictions on the zoning class for each individual property. "Every property ends up needing a page or two of restrictions and it just encumbers the property too much," Combs said in November.

The new zones, R-1 through R-4, define classes more specifically. There's R-1, for single-family dwellings; R-2, the low-density residential zone, for up to a four-plex; R-3, medium-density, for up to an eight-plex, and high-density zone R-4 for anything larger.

Few people objected during the public-comment period, the council noted, of the many affected.

Initial objections from the public caused plenty of "tweaking," Jansen said, until almost everyone was satisfied. Of the 311 pieces of property directly affected in the new ordinances, Jansen noted, only four owners consistently objected.

"To me that's a sign that we're getting this mostly right," Pippel said.