Agenda - Council Work Session - 05/04/2010

Home

~i CITY COUNCIL WORK SESSION Topic Report: Highway 10 Performance Standards By: Amber G. Miller, Planning Manager Background: Several times over the past several years, the City Council has discussed the appearance and aesthetics of the Highway 10 Corridor. Most recently, last summer, the Council instnrcted City Staff to conduct a photo inventory of all of the properties along the entire corridor and inventoried the.existing conditions. with each property. At the same time the Council appointed asub-committee of Councihnembers Dehen, Wise and Mayor Ramsey to work with Staff to review the issue and come back to the Council with recommendations. There is standing direction from previous Council action to not enforce performance standards in the highway 10 corridor. Observafions: City Staff, in coordination with the sub-committee, sent a letter to property owners around the middle of July 2009 to inform them that City Staff would be beginning a photo inventory of all properties along the Hwy 10 corridor. Staff then began the photo inventory in August and September. This was a fairly time consuming. process. There are approximately seventy-three (73) properties in the corridor and numerous photos were taken of all properties from every angle. The inventory was finally completed near the end of October. Once that was completed, the photos were reviewed to determine what, if any, code violations existed on the properties. Staffnoted several varying conditions along Highway 10. Ofthe seventy-three (73) properties, thirty- two (32) had no violations at the time we were on the property. Of the remaining forty-one (41) properties, all had at least one non-conformity and most had several. The top six violations were: 1) vegetation over one foot in height; 2) inadequate paving for off-street parking requirements and maneuvering; 3) accumulation of waste; 4) parts storage or salvage; 5) violation of temporary sign regulations; and 6) abandoned or inoperable vehicles. It should be noted that some of the non-conformities exist as legal, non-comfomuties. The best example of this is the 20 foot parking lot setback. The violations that aze occurring on these lots aze not always the result of "new" or recently implemented regulations. In fact, the paving of display and/or parking areas has been a requirement since the late 1980's and has been included.as part of the