Monroe City Council adopts code-cleanup ordinance to amend Unified Development Regulations

Monroe City Council on Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2025, voted 6-0 to adopt Ordinance 0012025, a Phase 1 code-cleanup amending Monroe Municipal Code Title 22 (Unified Development Regulations) and MMC 5.48 on licensing and zoning of "******** oriented businesses," and providing for severability and an effective date as stated in the ordinance.

City planning staffer Miss Barr told council the ordinance package corrects scrivener errors, moves definitions and a downtown-commercial chapter into recently updated chapters, and restores a footnote to a bulk-standards table that had been lost in a page break. "I am here respectfully asking counsel to waive their rules and procedures and allow for first and final reading of the ordinance," Miss Barr said, noting the changes had previously gone through public hearing and earlier briefings.

The request to waive the council rule requiring two readings drew a question from Council member Kevin Hanford, who said he did not usually favor waiving rules absent a time constraint. Miss Barr replied that one time-sensitive item added preschools to the mixed-use zone; in prior drafting the use had been listed without a permit condition because of a copy-and-paste error, and a local preschool was ready to submit its application. Hanford moved to waive the two-reading requirement; the motion was seconded and passed 6-0.

Following the waiver, Hanford moved to adopt Ordinance 0012025; the motion was seconded and passed 6-0. The ordinance text included edits such as removing the word "applicable" where staff said it was unnecessary, inserting the missing footnote in the bulk standards table, and relocating chapters 2212 (definitions) and 2222 (downtown commercial) to updated chapter numbering resulting from last year’s code update.

The council did not specify any changes to the ordinance’s effective date during the meeting; the ordinance record states an effective date within the ordinance language itself.

Effects and next steps: staff said the corrected mixed-use zone language will allow a preschool operator to file its development application. No public comments were recorded on the item during the hearing portion on Jan. 14.