Planning Commission to vote on large ZOTA mandated by State Government
This Thursday, the Planning Commission will hold a public hearing for a Zoning Ordinance Text Amendment (ZOTA) that will bring Lexington’s planning and zoning regulations into compliance with House Bill 443 (HB 443).
HB 443, passed by the State legislature and signed by the Governor last year, requires that cities’ planning and zoning regulations must be “objective” and “applied ministerially”. Essentially, the goal of the bill was to make regulations clear for developers and limit the Planning Commission’s ability to interpret regulations in a wide range of ways.
While this ZOTA is formally called the Ministerial Review of Development Plans ZOTA, we’re going to call it the HB 443 ZOTA for simplicity’s sake. The HB 443 ZOTA makes a lot of changes throughout the entirety of Lexington’s zoning ordinance. For this newsletter, we will break down the changes into two categories: process changes and regulatory changes.
Process Changes
The HB 443 ZOTA makes one major change to the zoning and development plan processes. Under the ZOTA, Final Development Plan will not come before the Planning Commission for a vote of approval.
Typically, a developer will submit a Preliminary Development Plan as an initial step in a new development, when the development is essentially a first draft.
This preliminary plan will show the proposed use of a property, and it must be approved by staff members in various divisions of LFUCG like Streets and Roads and the Fire Department, and eventually, the Planning Commission.
Under the current rules, once the Preliminary Development Plan is approved, the developer must make revisions and then submit a Final Development Plan.
That Final Development Plan then goes through the same process of approval as a Preliminary Development Plan.
Once House Bill 443 takes effect and this ZOTA is passed, a Final Development Plan will not need a final vote of approval from the Planning Commission.
A Final Development Plan will only need approval from the various staff members who sign off on the development based solely on whether it meets the new regulations, not the Planning Commission.
There are two exceptions that would send a development back to Planning Commission:
If a development has a a waiver from some aspect of the city’s regulations.
If LFUCG staff identify some part of the Final Development Plan that negatively impacts the health, safety, or welfare of residents.
This change will have significant implications for public engagement in development plans and the development process.
Currently, members of the public can give public comment to the Planning Commission at both the Preliminary Development Plan and Final Development Plan stages.
However, if this ZOTA is passed, the public will no longer be able to engage with the Final Development Plan because it will be approved by staff based on whether it meets the new objective regulations, not by the Planning Commission in a meeting with public input opportunities.
Since the public typically learns about developments late into the process, this may lead to less formal public engagement in Planning Commission meetings on new developments.
Regulatory Changes
The regulatory changes made throughout the HB 443 ZOTA are extremely granular, detailed, and exist throughout the entirety of Lexington’s zoning ordinance. We can’t touch on all of them, but we can show some examples of changes and explain where the new language is coming from.
Almost none of the regulatory concepts in this ZOTA are new. Most of them have existed within the zoning ordinance or other LFUCG documents, but until now, they have been closer to strongly suggested guidelines than rules — they haven’t been used or adopted as regulations that developers must follow.
Because HB 443 requires Lexington to have clear standards that developers must follow, the HB 443 ZOTA compiles many of those previously existing guidelines and adds more enforceable language to them.
The ZOTA also revises language that has existed in the zoning ordinance to make it more objective, as required by HB 443.
Here is an example:
Currently, the design standards for commercial centers (e.g. strip malls) require developers to add a bench or shelter when the building is located along a bus route. Here is how the current language reads:
“For all commercial centers located along a transit route, a transit shelter and seating shall be required and indicated clearly on the development plan to the approval of the local transit authority. Adequate pedestrian facilities to serve the required transit infrastructure, both along the right-of-way and internal to the site, shall be to the approval of the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO). It will be strongly encouraged that the development plan afford appropriate facilities and accommodations for additional ridesharing services.”
Here is the new language proposed in the HB 443 ZOTA:
For all commercial centers located along a transit route, a minimum of one (1) transit shelter with seating shall be provided on such route, and shall have sidewalk connections a minimum of five (5) feet in width to both the internal and perimeter pedestrian circulation systems.
This elimination of “wiggle room” is a good example of the changes made throughout the ZOTA:
Words open to interpretation such as “adequate,” “strongly encouraged,” “appropriate facilities,” etc. are removed and replaced with specific dimensions and definitions that developers are required to meet.
This example also removes approval for a bus shelter from the Metropolitan Planning Organization, again complying with HB 443 by removing a step that would add subjectivity to the approval process.
If developers feel they are unable to meet some aspect of the new regulations, they have two pathways to request exceptions for their plan:
Developers can request a variance, which adjusts a certain regulation for a development but does not eliminate it entirely.
Variances frequently relate to distances. For example, if a developer wants to build a townhome in a zone that requires a 10-foot front yard, but the property’s lot is extremely small, they can ask for a variance to give the townhome a 5-foot front yard instead.
Developers can also seek a waiver, which eliminates their requirement to meet a certain regulation.
Another example: if a developer is required to add a sidewalk along a street next to the property, but there is a large ditch along the entirety of the street with nowhere to add a sidewalk, a developer can ask for a waiver that would prevent them from needing to build a sidewalk entirely.
The Planning Commission will host a public hearing this Thursday at 1:30pm in Council Chambers on this ZOTA. After hearing comments from the public, Planning Commission members will be able to amend the ZOTA as they see fit and will vote to pass the ZOTA or reject it.
If passed, the ZOTA will go to Council for deliberation and a vote. HB 443 takes effect on July 1st, 2025, so the ZOTA must be passed before then for Lexington’s regulations to comply with the law.
The Planning Commission’s public hearing will be held on Thursday, March 27th at 1:30pm in Council Chambers. You can attend in-person or watch live on LexTV.
