Jackson County planning staff on Wednesday presented what they described as the near-final draft of a comprehensive rewrite of the county zoning ordinance and asked commissioners to sign off on several remaining edits before a public hearing scheduled for Sept. 15 at 7 p.m. The draft reorganizes development rules, incorporates references to state and federal regulations, and adds diagrams and tables intended to make day-to-day permitting clearer.

Staff said the rewrite moves technical guidance out of scattered definition sections and into procedural chapters so administrators and applicants can find measurement rules, setback calculations and development standards in one place. The draft also consolidates conditional-use provisions into a single chapter, proposes renaming “special exceptions” to “conditional use permits,” and cross-references applicable Iowa code and administrative rules where possible.

Planners highlighted several practical changes that staff and the county’s technical reviewers recommended: adding minimum-lot-area and lot-width tables for each zoning district; clarifying how to measure lot depth and setbacks on irregular, flag or corner lots; relocating rules about off-street parking and driveway design into the development-regulations section; and adding diagrams to show how to measure features such as porches, eaves and stairs so applicants and administrators use the same method.

The draft brings several external references into the ordinance as general checkpoints for staff review rather than fixed citations likely to become outdated. Staff pointed to Iowa administrative rules on private sewage and wells as examples and said those references will be hyperlinks in the ordinance so administrators can follow current state rules without updating the county text every time the state amends standards.

Engineering and public-health input is reflected in the draft. Planning staff said the county engineer asked planners to add a note about potential right-of-way acquisition when roads are paved and suggested a 30-foot setback reference along public roadways so structures would likely be far enough from future road improvements. Staff explained the county’s right-of-way line commonly extends 33 feet from the roadway centerline; the draft’s note was intended to flag projects for engineer review so any future road work can be identified early in the permitting process.

Accessory dwelling units (ADUs) are folded into the rewrite to conform to the new state law staff cited by section number during the meeting; planners said they used the state definition and size limits where possible while keeping local development standards for site planning and utilities. The rewrite also pulls conditional-use criteria into one chapter and standardizes references back to administration, permitting, and enforcement chapters to reduce repetition across district-specific sections.

Staff said the county attorney’s office is reviewing the full draft and that planning staff intends to present a clean copy for the public hearing in September. Commissioners directed staff to bring any Board of Adjustment feedback into the final packet; planners said the BOA has a meeting next week and staff will incorporate its input before the hearing.

Next steps: planning staff will finalize edits after the BOA meeting and county-attorney review, then publish the clean draft and notices for the Sept. 15 public hearing at 7 p.m.