Woodland Park planners review rewrite of UDC 'Administration' chapter, flag PUD, zoning and procedural clarifications

At a work session on the city’s ongoing Unified Development Code rewrite, staff and a consultant presented an updated Chapter 6—renamed “Administration”—and asked the Planning Commission for targeted edits and direction on procedures governing rezones, planned unit developments (PUDs), site-plan reviews, variances and appeals, and right-of-way vacations.

The draft chapter consolidates process language now scattered across multiple titles and the charter and aims to make review steps, noticing and pre-application thresholds easier for applicants and staff to follow. Consultant Jen said, “Just another work session on our, ongoing, patrol through all of our code and regulations, looking to restructure these into a much more usable format.” Karen, a city staff member, told commissioners the project is near completion but that the PUD section needs a “wholesale rewrite” for clarity.

Why it matters: the Administration chapter governs how the city accepts, reviews and notices development applications. Changes to definitions, review criteria and procedural cross-references affect who must be notified, what level of review (staff vs. public hearing) an application triggers, and how future appeals or charter conflicts are handled.

Most substantive items discussed

- Chapter title and review language: Commissioners and staff agreed to adopt “Administration” as the chapter title and to change many instances of “approval criteria” to the narrower term “review criteria” where staff is reviewing an application and a separate body makes the approval decision. That change is intended to clarify the difference between findings a reviewer must consider and…