Agenda - Planning Commission - 04/07/2011

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A Post - Krummenacher world —life without variances T hese are curious times for community planners across the state. Budgets are tight, development activity is down and the Legislature is back in session faced with a defi- cit budget. Life in the overly cliched, "new nor- mal" right? We are all adapting to what this brings. Another "new normal" began June 24, 2010. Everyone remembers that day — the day the Minnesota Supreme Court turned 20 plus years of variance statute interpretation on its head. The day the variance died? Maybe. But for some, it was the day the 1980's statute was reaf- firmed, or revived. Nonetheless, the proposed variance bill (House File 52 / Senate File 13) which was supported by APA -MN, intends to clarify variance language and provide definition to "undue hardship." Although the bill gained many initial supporters, more recent events at the capital have caused some to pull their en- dorsement. Certainly nothing unusual as far as political drama, but it is telling about what a new statute might mean for cities. Despite the current uncertainty, communities can take charge of their regulatory approach to bring local control and flexibility. So how is your community addressing variances and gen- eral regulation post - Krummenacher? Since June, the city of Minnetonka has taken three important steps to address the need for flexibility in zoning and land use regulation, two of which were new ordinances to address the need for flexibility in zoning and land use regulation: The first ordinance developed an approach to address the expansion of non - conforming uses. This ordinance was important for our built -out planning minnesota March, 2011 Loren Gordon, AICP City Planner for Minnetonka suburban community. In researching city vari- ance history, we found that nearly half of the requests were for projects with aspects that fall under the non - conforming use statute. The ex- pansion ordinance provided a necessary tool for the city to address property redevelopment and reinvestment. The second ordinance moved lot standards out of the zoning and into the subdivision code. This provided a procedure for varying the regu- lations under the subdivision statute which is not subject to the court decision. Finally, as a third step, we have identified a few dozen zoning provisions that are candidates for flexibility. Many of these are community accepted standards previously approved by vari- ance. In many regards, the court decision, as in- convenient as it has been, has forced us to look differently at our regulations, policies, and com- prehensive plan. In doing so, we are finding that we need to be more in tune with our code and more open to out -of -the -box thinking about regulation. Approaches such as form -based regulation are no longer as difficult to imagine implementing. 7