The Board of Orange County Commissioners moved for an updated timetable for reviewing an ordinance that aims to compact six county land-use documents into a single cohesive one at Monday night’s meeting.
Board Chairwoman Valerie Foushee said she believes that the time line for the Unified Development Ordinance originally outlined should be amended to give both commissioners and the Orange County Planning Board more time to review the ordinance.
“We want to get this time line figured out by the end of the fiscal year,” Foushee said. “It is clear to us that once we start on our budget negotiations, our focus is going to be on that budget.”
County Planning and Inspections Director Craig Benedict said he and his staff have made the effort to update and clarify the document without deleting whole sections after they introduced the first draft in August.
“We didn’t streamline the language,” Benedict said. “We’d like to do that someday, but anytime you make deletions, you may lose some of the content that was intended.”
The ordinance plan was originally designed in phases — phase one clarifying the ordinance itself, Benedict said, and phase two discussing any possible amendments needed to encourage development in the area.
After further reviewing the ordinance, the planning board is expected to present an updated time line to commissioners at their next meeting on Dec. 14.
“We’re going to sit down and review,” Planning Board Chairman Brian Crawford said. “Then we’ll propose a new time line in which we can address the comments and give the public more time to voice their concerns.
“I think the planning board knows they have some work to do. We know the UDO is needed, but I think there’s a balance we need to strike between what we should be pushing in phase one and phase two.”
