Public hearings held on dock lease, landscape and zoning amendments; commenter urges clearer tree and landscape rules

The Havre de Grace Mayor and City Council on March 3 held public hearings on three ordinances: a proposed dock lease (ordinance 11-76) and two code amendments (ordinance 11-77, sustainable landscape; ordinance 11-78, zoning height/lot/yard). Council closed all three public hearings without taking final passage votes; the mayor said the ordinances had been read at first reading previously and were likely to appear on the next meeting agenda for passage.

Chip Place, who identified himself as serving on the Planning Commission and gave his address as 301 Cigar Loop, spoke at length during the public hearing on ordinance 11-77. Place said the proposed changes to chapter 102 (Sustainable Landscape) and the city's forest conservation law can be confusing in their current draft. He recommended tying the ordinance's definition of "redevelopment" to the city's site-plan and subdivision approval thresholds and cross-referencing site-plan controls so that landscape and tree-preservation reviews occur as part of site-plan or subdivision review rather than as separate, subsequent approvals.

Place told the council: "I found [the proposed language] actually to be pretty confusing" and suggested that landscape plans and tree preservation approvals "should be integral to site plans and subdivision applications" so the public and Planning Commission review those elements together. He recommended that smaller redevelopment projects under 5,000 square feet remain under Department of Planning review, while projects requiring Planning Commission site-plan approval should have landscape plans considered by the Planning Commission as part of that approval.

During the public hearing on ordinance 11-78 (zoning amendments regarding height, lot and yard requirements), an unidentified resident who read prepared remarks criticized the proposed language as weakening numerical setback requirements and replacing clear distances with subjective terms such as "adjacent" and "abutting." The commenter urged the council not to pass the ordinance on second reading, calling it "another assault on the city's zoning ordinance by weakening certain setback requirements" and noting the Planning Commission voted 4–1 to return the proposal to council.

The council closed the public hearings on all three ordinances and recorded the times in the minutes; no final votes were taken on 11-76, 11-77 or 11-78 during the March 3 meeting. The mayor said ordinances read at first reading previously would likely be on the next meeting agenda for passage.