Palmer passes Central Business District ordinances

PALMER — The Palmer city Council passed two ordinances at their Feb. 23 meeting enacting changes for downtown Palmer’s zoning, creating a Central Business District and approving a commercial land use matrix for the CBD. Ordinance 21-001 established the central business district after a lengthy process that was presented to the council by Community Development Director Brad Hanson on Jan. 5.

“What we came to a conclusion through the course of looking at the comprehensive plan, the review from [Planning and Zoning], the review from the [Board of Economic Development] was that considering the compatibility of certain land uses in downtown, if we just went with a downtown district it would solve the issue of a highway commercial because we could leave Commercial General in the same basic format that it was, allowing those higher intensity of uses for vehicles and that kind of thing that’s more vehicle oriented on the major roads and kind of isolate the downtown district to be a little less intense,” said Hanson.

Only one member of the public spoke on the pair of ordinances during public hearings, applauding the possibility of Accessory Dwelling Units in Commercial Limited and Commercial General districts. Council Member Richard Best asked to clarify the amount of vetting the ordinances had gone through.

“I just want to make a clarification that there was a process followed, that we had been working on it for sometime and that there’s not a large clarmoning against this,” said Best.

Ordinance 21-001 passed unanimously. Ordinance 21-002 was amended twice at the suggestion of staff. The amendments permitted automotive repair within the CBD and large retail establishments and both passed unanimously. Deputy Mayor Sabrena Combs questioned Hanson about the definition of schools and noted the school facilities within the proposed CBD.

“Typically public schools are in the public zone. They’re financed by public dollars and that’s always where they have been and really schools in commercial general and commercial limited and these other areas now is absolutely a new concept because they’ve always been in just the public zones so what happened here is we kind of updated schools in general to include religious type schools, online schools,” said Hanson.

Not included in the Central Business District code added to Title 17 was information on the zoning for marijuana facilities, which were legalized by Palmer voters last October. Councilwoman Julie Berberich asked Hanson about the omission, who clarified that the code changes for regulation of marijuana business are still being discussed by the Planning and Zoning Commission.

“We’ve rescheduled the Feb. meeting to March 4 and at that meeting we’ll take up the title 17 marijuana enacting part of the ordinance. Also included as an attachment to that ordinance for 17 is our idea of the regulation of marijuana which is in licensing and regulations in chapter 5. So rather than put it in 17, it’s going to be in chapter 5 so the PNZ gets to see what is being proposed as far as the regulations of marijuana and their businesses but basically the chapter 17 will just say which respective zoning districts these types of licensing would be permitted but the actual regulation would be in chapter 5 of licensing and regulations,” said Hanson.

Councilman Best asked about the process that the ordinance had gone through and questioned the timing of the amendments brought forward at the meeting.

“I guess I will kind of put it to council as to whether we postpone this for one meeting, kind of a cooling off period to kind of take one last look at it because it is so large and it is I think it’s good stuff but I just want to be sure,” said Best.

The vote on the motion to postpone Ordinance 21-002 failed with only Best and Councilman Steve Carrington voting in support. The vote on Ordinance 21-002 passed unanimously.

“This was an exhausting process. We went through that matrix about five times at a number of different meetings with the PNZ and BED,” said Hanson. “We tried to make sure that we had everything that was existing in the central business district that we thought were compatible and appropriate uses.”