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Leesburg kicks off zoning ordinance rewrite; staff to release draft Feb. 20 and use ENCODE Plus for public comment
Summary
Director David presented a work plan for a full zoning ordinance rewrite aligned to the 2022 town plan and the recently adopted Crescent District Master Plan; staff will publish a clean draft in ENCODE Plus on Feb. 20, open a 60-day comment period and plan a planning commission hearing in August with council action in fall 2025.
David (director) opened the planning commission’s discussion on the comprehensive zoning ordinance rewrite, outlined the staff work plan and said the first formal deliverable will be a clean draft posted to the ENCODE Plus online platform on or about Feb. 20.
"Tonight, we're gonna kick off our zoning ordinance rewrite," David said, describing the project’s inputs (the 2022 town plan, the recently adopted Crescent District Master Plan, consultant code audit and the annotated outline) and a tentative timeline that aims for a planning commission public hearing in August and council consideration in fall 2025.
David and staff said the rewrite will consolidate and reorganize the ordinance (the proposed crosswalk reduces district articles from 18 to 9), align district names with town-plan character areas, develop form-based codes for the Crescent District activity centers and produce a legislative draft and a clean ENCODE Plus version. Staff said the first clean draft will be posted online Feb. 20, followed by a 60-day public comment period and supplemental focus groups; staff urged commissioners to use ENCODE Plus to comment so staff can track, reply and print a public comment summary for future packets.
The meeting included a live demonstration of the ENCODE Plus platform. David demonstrated search, linked definitions, a tooltip preview of definitions, a document export function and an archival versioning tool. He said the platform will host existing regulatory documents (the 2022 Legacy Leesburg town plan, the current zoning ordinance, the design-and-construction standards manual and subdivision regulations) and enable users to toggle between the existing and proposed text. He described the comment workflow: users select a section, enter a comment and the system tags the comment to that section for staff review.
Staff emphasized process matters: the consultant’s code audit and annotated outline are available to assist commissioners, staff will post cover memos that highlight the biggest changes for each meeting, and the staff core team (including the town attorney and the zoning administrator) has reviewed consultant drafts to reduce the workload for commissioners. Staff also offered to provide exported PDFs or a tracked legislative draft on request for commissioners who prefer offline review.
Commissioners discussed workload and review strategy. Some asked whether the body should form subcommittees; staff recommended full-commission review but said subcommittees focused on articles 2–4 (districts, uses and development standards) could help. Staff said it will supply page assignments and a public-feedback matrix; commissioners divided up comment-review pages at the meeting and asked staff to circulate materials and an Excel extract of comments.
(Ending) Staff requested commissioners review the posted draft when it is released, submit questions and comments via ENCODE Plus, and return items for the March–August work-session schedule; staff said they will summarize public feedback and provide focused cover memos for each article when it is discussed.
