Commission opens UDC review: directs staff to draft ADU language for single-family lots, requests joint workshop with council

Commissioners spent a substantial portion of the Aug. 19 meeting reviewing the city’s Unified Development Code and how it changed long-standing zoning patterns in Dickinson.

Travis, a planning staff member, summarized staff concerns and identified recurring procedural and policy issues in the UDC implementation. “This is one of the ones where we're kinda like, this fits in the planning goal, this fits in the staff goal, but does this fit for Dickinson? That's a hard call for staff to make,” he told commissioners. The conversation that followed focused chiefly on accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and the Urban Transition zoning district.

Under the UDC as explained by staff, ADUs are prohibited in the Urban Transition district even though the previous municipal code allowed ADUs in several residential districts (with a common size cap of 600 square feet). Commissioners and members of the public described real-world examples: resident Yvonne De Leon said she has an ADU at 3525 Elm Drive that began as an efficiency unit and after later work is roughly 950 square feet; she said the structure functioned as a mother-in-law suite for her family. Several commissioners said they have denied ADU permits when the lot in question was newly assigned to Urban Transition by the UDC despite long-standing single-family use.

After extended discussion about density, neighborhood character and the practicalities of building ADUs, the commission reached informal consensus on a narrow policy direction: allow ADUs for lots that already contain a single-family dwelling located in Urban Transition areas (but not permit ADUs on multi-family or newly created multi-family lots such as quadplexes), and ask staff to prepare proposed ordinance language and to research appropriate size limits (commissioners discussed raising the existing 600-square-foot cap and staff noted other jurisdictions have used larger limits such as 900 square feet). Commissioners also asked staff to prepare a proposed change for the commission to consider at a future meeting.

Commissioners further requested a joint workshop with the city council to review the UDC and the city’s comprehensive plan, with several commissioners saying the UDC implementation affected many existing residential neighborhoods and merited a coordinated review. Staff agreed to arrange a joint session with council on scheduling that work. No formal ordinance changes were adopted at the meeting; the direction was to have staff return with proposed language and options for the commission and council to consider.

The discussion included policy and historical context: commissioners noted the UDC increased the number of parcels labeled Urban Transition compared with the prior zoning map and that the comprehensive plan and UDC were developed externally and emphasize increased density — a direction some commissioners questioned for much of the city’s historically single-family neighborhoods. Staff said they would draft proposed code language, collect comparative ADU size limits from other cities and return with a recommendation for the commission to consider.