Council holds work session on tightening RV, trailer and street-parking rules

Plan Director Veil Turpin presented proposed changes to two sections of the zoning ordinance and related changes to the town’s general ordinance aimed at clarifying definitions and restricting where large recreational vehicles, trailers and boats may be stored or parked.

Turpin said the draft combines overlapping definitions, adds a clear definition of "trailer" and adds trailer to the list of vehicles that cannot be stored in yards unless on a legal, hard-surfaced driveway. "So all we did was add or trailer to that, so people can't park trailers in the yards," Turpin said.

The draft would ban RVs from being parked in a front yard and would limit temporary on-premises loading/unloading exceptions to a driveway location rather than "anywhere on the premises." Turpin explained the change: "That legalized putting an RV in your front in the grass 2 days a week. Which is not I think the intent of this. So we changed that from anywhere on the premises to in a front yard driveway."

Council members asked detailed enforcement questions: how to define a "legal driveway" (hard, dustless surface and an access point to the street), how to monitor short-term visitation limits (7 days, not to exceed 14 in a year) and how state parking law interacts with local limits on licensed work vehicles parked on streets. Staff said the changes are drafting proposals and that they will return with clarified language and definitions, including whether to add driveway-surface wording and a mechanism for temporary street parking before publishing.