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Staff outlines draft Article 3 zoning updates for residential districts, including anti‑monotony and ADU clarifications
Summary
Associate Planner Travis Brierley presented proposed changes to zoning Code Article 3 covering district regulations and residential performance standards — decks, lighting, agritourism, home occupations, accessory dwelling units and an anti‑monotony rule for new detached single‑family developments — and commissioners asked for clarifications and redlines; staff will return with edits.
Associate Planner Travis Brierley presented staff's draft revisions to zoning Code Article 3, which sets district regulations and residential performance standards. Brierley said staff has identified roughly 500 items in the zoning code that need review and that Article 3 focuses specifically on residential district regulations, design and performance standards.
"We've identified over 500 or about 500 items or so that we need to review within our zoning code," Brierley told the commission, laying out the scope and the plan to redline and reconcile zoning language with the municipal code. He summarized several topic areas under review: measurement of decks and cantilevers, lighting standards to limit glare, shoreland setback and impervious calculations, agritourism as an interim use in rural areas with a two‑acre minimum, construction type standards for multifamily buildings, home‑occupation limits, accessory dwelling unit (ADU) treatment, and an anti‑monotony standard for new detached single‑family development.
On home occupations, Brierley distinguished between people who work remotely for an employer and people who operate a business from their home: "This is if I wanna start, say, Travis's consulting firm, I could run it out of my home," he said, describing limits on employees and use of accessory structures. Commissioners asked whether in‑home day‑care, group homes and state‑regulated uses would conflict with the home‑occupation language; Brierley said state regulation governs day‑care and the code will not supersede those statutes.
Commissioners raised several detailed points requiring clarification: whether an ADU is treated as an "accessory structure" or a distinct, habitable use (commissioners asked staff to clarify cross‑references where the code now forbids accessory structures being habitable but separately lists ADUs), how anti‑monotony rules apply across R‑1/R‑2/R‑3 zones and whether they apply to townhomes, and where staff discretion will be applied in design review. Brierley clarified that the anti‑monotony provision, as drafted, applies to new detached single‑family residential developments and not to townhouses or infill alterations to existing neighborhoods.
Brierley said staff will provide a redlined draft showing the proposed changes and will bring R‑1A language to the city council workshop for comment; he noted the earliest schedule for potential formal adoption could be in early to late October after hearings, redlines and any necessary public hearings. Commissioners and staff agreed to work offline on several technical clarifications (ADU cross‑references, sidewalk/impervious language carried over from shoreland standards and any ambiguous phrasing) and to reserve time at the next meeting for review of outstanding concerns.
