City of Thibodaux Zoning Review - South Central Planning ...

2010 Thibodaux Zoning ReviewMr. Breaud stated Kevin in your recommendations, you’ve got some short term recommendationsand you’re given Option 1 and Option 2, are you all looking at input from the public and from thecommission on which direction to select Option 1 or 2 or just general comments and you are goingto put something together, when you come back on the next one you’re going to be giving optionsagain or they’re going to have… Mr. Belanger replied no, we’re going to give you arecommendation and you know the sentiment has to be what is the views of this planningcommission, do you want to be lenient or do you really want to shape this City into a zoningmecca, If you want to continue to fight the challenges 20 or 30 years from now, continue on thepath that you are on, you’ll continue to have them but if you want to delineate those, I mean thegentleman that spoke earlier about the issue on LA 1 I can’t agree with him more but that is whyyou have zoning reviews, that is why you flush out the needs of what the City is envisioning itself todevelop as and without that course of action and I would stand to say that if he, if that would havebeen done and it would have been changed to his preference he may not have had the challengeshe is facing today but the fact is you have a zoning plan and without it being changed you’re kind ofbound to be consistent and not arbitrary and capricious to those other neighbors adjacent to him,so. Mr. Breaud stated you know I think that has been the position of this Board, that we have notbeen arbitrary and capricious, we’ve been pretty much following you know and that is not to say Idon’t think this Board would like to see some leniency because we hear the sentiments of thegroups that come in and I think we are open to do it but I think we all kind of agree that if we’regoing to have zoning in the City of Thibodaux there has to be some guidelines to follow. We can’tjust give up on zoning after we’ve been having zoning for 30 years, people have inherited, youknow their whole inheritance and to build a facility, they know what zone they are in , they knowwhat they are living so I don’t think they want to give up all of the zones right now. I think there is alot of work like Ms. Cathy said that can be done, we can do this comprehensive study and makesome changes and those changes don’t have to be spot zoned where we are just changing one ortwo spots, we can change blocks. I’ll go back to Mr. Lafaso’s deal, I think that if he would havecame to this Board with a request to rezone all the batture like he said, of all the commercial areason LA 1 he may have gotten a different result but I think it came in with more of a spot zone type ofdeal and I think that was the denial and I see I woke him up again. Mr. Lafaso came forward andstated I don’t mean to disagree with you but I have again tons of records and we did ask, we askedfor a lot more, we weren’t asking for a specific property, we were asking for a ton of differentproperties to be rezoned because it was all a bunch of different zones all impaled in it, it might nothave been a perfect square, it might not have been a circle, it might of made kind of a little zig zaghere and there but it was more, a lot more than one piece of property. That being said that isagain, what five years ago, under the recommendations Number One, we kind of skipped ahead tothe zoning study and the comprehensive planned zoning update, page 66, number one, I agreewith that as well that we need to re-look at everything that there is of the City zoning from what anR-1 is to what a C-3 is, what it allows, what it doesn’t allow. There are a lot of things in there thatreally are pretty much outdated and I think all of that needs to be reviewed, she made the commentduring her presentation, that to me is a very big deal because you could get a good laugh atreading some of the stuff that is so outdated that doesn’t apply to either residential nor commercialbusiness today. I think the whole, the zoning as a whole needs to be reviewed, everything andagain as Mr. Harang pointed it out, it needs to be done now, business is suffering, the gentlemenmentioned about businesses leaving the City and it is pretty tough if we start loosing all of ourbusinesses within this City what are we going to be left with. Property taxes from residents helpfund some of these lights, they don’t fund it all, I know I got a pretty hefty tax bill that comes theend of the year that comes to the City and most commercial businesses owners as well have heftytax bills and that is money that comes in, that is funds that come in, they create jobs, they helpgenerate the City and we can’t run the businesses out of here. If we want to we’re going to loose alot more than just the businesses, we’re going to loose a lot more than that little bitty piece of realestate sitting at 711 East 1 st Street that is falling apart now because it is a blighted property, we’regoing to loose a lot more than that and that is what we have to consider in this zoning plan. It isnot just about that, again real estate is my business, commercial real estate is what I do andzoning filters into that 100% but there are a lot more issues that just that, I mean this gentlemansaid he was looking to do an ice cream shop, well what does that hurt, an ice cream shop. Iunderstand zones are there but if he is going to move up a zone and can’t do it and he is goingfrom one to the next, there’s issues all the way around not just in specific zones within specificareas but from the start to the end of that big thick zoning plan, thanks again. Mr. Breaud repliedok, are there any other comments on modular homes, Errol do any one of these options resolveyou issues on the moratorium. Mr. Price replied the definition does, that was always myinterpretation of the definition, it doesn’t make any difference how the modular home comes in, if itis a modular home, it meets all the inspection reports, it meets all of the building codes we’re notlooking at the cosmetics of it, the interpretation should be no issue. Mr. Kearns stated does thateffectively end that issue. Mr. Price stated the Council has to end the moratorium - that is up to theCouncil. Mr. Kearns replied but I mean this information, does… Mr. Price replied if the Councilaccepts the definition, keep in mind now, no matter how it looks, if it meets the definition of amodular home it can be put in any zone. Mr. Kearns replied right and that is kind of what I’masking the question, in lieu of the clarity of that definition does that put that other issue to rest. Mr.Price stated I really can’t answer that, I can’t say what the Council is thinking, as far as going intothis it was a lot of how it looked and not how it was built. Mr. Belanger came forward and statedMr. Chairman I think the real concern about people having modular homes being located in aresidential area is the way it looks similar to a manufactured home because you would think that1289