At the April 17, 2025 meeting of the Narberth Borough Finance & Administration Committee, Planning Commission member Todd Gressey described a months‑long effort to recodify the borough’s zoning code into a clearer, more usable format without introducing new policy.

Gressey said the project is intended to be “a policy neutral rewrite of the codes” that reorganizes definitions, measurement rules and nonconforming provisions so property owners and applicants can find requirements more easily. “Policy neutral means we are not trying to slip in new ideas or new policies, but we’re really just trying to organize it for clarity’s sake,” he said.

The planning commission described the work as a housekeeping and readability project, not a venue to adopt substantive land‑use changes. That said, commissioners and staff expect the rewrite to surface specific items that will require council direction — for example, whether certain design standards should remain in the zoning code or move to the borough’s subdivision and land development ordinance, and whether some conditional‑use processes could be simplified.

Gressey said early tasks include consolidating scattered definitions (for example, what the code means by “school” or “store”), standardizing measurement rules (how to measure building height or primary facade), and organizing multiple nonconforming‑use provisions into a single section. He told the committee that Montgomery County Planning Commission (MCPC) staff — engaged under an existing three‑year contract — will be part of the team but that borough staff, council and the planning commission should lead the work to avoid introducing errors or unintended policy shifts.

“Because they don’t know Narberth and there’s a new planner who doesn’t know our code, there could be a lot of errors introduced,” Gressey said, adding that MCPC could be assigned discrete tasks such as gathering and alphabetizing definitions or consolidating nonconforming provisions.

Council member Michael Gaudini, who provided an earlier memo to the commission, framed the project as separate from more substantive policy initiatives. “There’s a bucket of things that need to be kind of elevated, then that gets put in its own bucket so that we can see what were things that were flagged for us to be aware of versus what things are just kind of like a structural reorganization,” Gaudini said. He warned that public concerns may arise if the exercise is seen as a vehicle to fast‑track larger policy changes.

Planning commission and borough staff said they will flag new or substantive items as they appear and bring those topics to council committees for separate review. Gressey said staff already maintain lists of desired substantive code fixes; the commission’s stated aim is to keep the recodification distinct from that work so council can clearly see what was reorganized versus what would be a policy change.

The committee was told borough staff will meet with MCPC staff the day after the committee meeting to assign discrete tasks and to bring the new MCPC planner up to speed. Gressey offered to return to the committee with regular status reports.

Next steps: staff and MCPC will split discrete tasks (definitions, measurement consolidation, nonconforming provisions), the planning commission will continue monthly briefings, and council will have an opportunity to review the draft before any adoption decision. If the draft identifies substantive changes, those items will be segregated and returned to council as policy decisions rather than folded into a single administrative rewrite.