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Council invites planning consultant to rewrite land‑use rules, focus on conditional‑use procedures
Summary
Council agreed to engage planner Jim Spung to begin rewriting parts of the town's land‑use code, starting with conditional‑use permit procedures and code organization; Spung proposed itemized scopes and said he would prepare a fee agreement with termination provisions.
The Fairfield Town Council opened a discussion about hiring a planning consultant to address gaps in Title 10 and to craft clearer conditional‑use permit procedures.
Council members said the town's current code has holes that make conditional uses difficult to administer and that the planning commission had already narrowed provisions in the landscaping ordinance. Brad and other council members had earlier reached out to a planner identified in the packet as Jim Spung. Spung described his background in code rewrites with Clarion Associates and said he currently serves as the community and economic development director for Cottonwood Heights.
"For the more complicated code consulting work, it would be $250 an hour," Spung said, and he offered to produce an itemized scope and budget for the council to review. He also said more routine site and plan review work would be billed at a lower hourly rate. Spung told the council he would provide a standard fee agreement and said there would be a 30‑day termination provision so the town could end the contract if needed.
Why it matters: Council members highlighted conditional‑use standards they said previously had been unclear and flagged the need for review criteria so that both staff and applicants know what the decision criteria are. Placing enforcement language in a single code section and creating a clear procedures table were among the proposed first steps.
Next steps: Spung will return a scoped proposal and a fee agreement for council review, and staff indicated they will bring a contract for approval once the scope and budget are finalized.
