- Palmer Township's Planning Commission held a public comment meeting for their new zoning ordinance Thursday night
- The ordinance is four years in the making, simplifying a bloated, outdated document that lacked many modern considerations
- Only a few people attended the session, expressing a few concerns which the commission and planners offered to address outside the meeting
EASTON, Pa. — A special Palmer Township Planning Commission meeting to review a new zoning ordinance and map went off with few controversies or issues Thursday night, paving a path for the plan to move forward in the process.
Changes to the township’s zoning have been in progress for about four years now, with delays experienced due to the COVID-19 pandemic and extensions to allow new staff to review changes. But the planning commission was able to approve the updated ordinance with little commentary from the public Thursday evening, pushing the momentum onto the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission in the next step of the process.
According to Planning Director Kent Baird, rounding out the “exhausting” process was well worth the effort, as it will allow citizens to more easily navigate the formerly complex path associated with making changes to their properties.
“We know it's never a done deal. It's a living document, and we have 22,000 residents who live here, so there's bound to be somebody who wants to talk more about their zoning."Palmer Township Planning Director Kent Baird
Baird said Thursday’s meeting was to allow for one more review of the zoning ordinance, hearing out Baird and Assistant Planning Director Craig Beavers’s suggestions for changes and providing the public with one last opportunity to raise any questions or concerns.
“And so what we found was that generally speaking, the planning commission and the public are supportive of moving this new document,” Baird said.
Suggestions from Baird and Beaver largely amounted to refining language in certain sections throughout the document though there was a concern for historic district overlays. The board opted to hold a list of supposedly historic properties from the ordinance so that the designations could be reviewed at a later date.
While one individual did express explicit support for the ordinance as it stood, two people did have some concerns over how the document would impact their properties in particular.
“We're always careful to not create a spot zoning situation where we are identifying one person's property and negatively impacting that property by virtue of an island of zoning,” Baird said.
“And so sometimes broad changes to the ordinance can be tricky for individual landowners, and we have to attend to the broader idea of creating transitions between heavy industrial uses and residential uses. We have to create areas and buffers for protecting conservation areas, and we have to identify schools and government as a different type of use than a shopping center. So it can be complicated, and it can be emotional.”'
Resident Harry Graack expressed worries over the change in designation for areas surrounding his properties, particularly those set to be labeled as planned office and business zones. Interested in conservation, Graack also said he felt the designation for his own property could prove problematic for him.
“I just don't want to go into another zoning category at this point, because I've been through a roller coaster here with [commercial/residential], then [rural agriculture], then [planned office/business]. Now, I can't keep going to meetings. I can't keep going round and round when I'm actually making no changes on the property,” Graack said before agreeing to meet with planning officials to discuss the matter “offline.”
Another individual raised concerns over details on the mapping of a lot adjacent to the border of the township though Baird reassured the man those details could be addressed as well.
The ordinance was approved by the planning commission, with the intent to send it off to the township’s board before it was sent back to the commission and the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission in its final form.
Baird said he was pleased with inching one step closer to finalization, as it would simplify the previous document, which he called “wildly outdated and hard to use for any land development.”
Now, he said it will be far simpler for landowners to navigate the process of making changes without dealing with a document that has little to no consideration for historic preservation, warehouse regulations and other modern issues.
Most importantly, the ordinance will be malleable for future development, Baird said.
“We know it's never a done deal. It's a living document, and we have 22,000 residents who live here, so there's bound to be somebody who wants to talk more about their zoning. And throughout the year, people can pitch their zoning district interests onto next year and the following years, as they want to as well,” Baird said.
“So there's no stopping somebody from coming in and talking about their zoning once this is adopted, but we feel pretty good that we've cleaned up an old document and made it current and made it easier to read, and we hope people can attach to it and get working on their projects.”
