Planning and Zoning Commission will review parking ordinance

EL DORADO — The El Dorado Planning and Zoning Commission has agreed to review a city ordinance that restricts parking on certain streets in the city and try to roll it into the city’s zoning code.

City ordinance 1773 was at the center of a controversy that erupted in February when Mayor Frank Hash ordered a citizen to stop work on a project to build a horseshoe driveway at his residence on East Main.

At the time, Hash cited the ordinance, which prohibits the parking or storing of vehicles “on the grass in a yard between the residence and the street right of way” on a prescribed list of main arterial and collector streets.

Main is listed as a collector street in the ordinance.

Additionally, ordinance 1773 says that “no person shall pave or gravel a yard to the extent that such paving or graveling violates the (city’s) zoning ordinance.”

Therein lay the rub for Hash and the planning and zoning commission.

City officials zeroed in on the matter in a special called meeting last month, during which the El Dorado City Council voted to reimburse the citizen $651 for the cost of the concrete to build the driveway and to allow him to proceed with the project.

During the special called meeting in April and a planning and zoning commission meeting last week, commissioners and city officials identified the applicable issue, or lack thereof, with ordinance 1773.

“… it refers to the zoning code, and the zoning code doesn’t have anything along those lines,” said Michael Rogers, chairman of the commission.

Rogers and Alderman Vance Williamson said the city’s zoning code regulates parking issues in commercial zones, including designated unloading areas and the number of parking spaces that are required for a commercial development.

Hash explained that the intent of ordinance 1773 was to prohibit people from parking on their front lawns along some of the city’s more visible corridors.

He noted that an original draft of the ordinance included every city street, but the draft was rejected, and the ordinance proposal was later revised to list certain streets.

Alderman Willie McGhee previously said that the ordinance was also intended to encourage citizens who could afford it to build driveways for their residences and to not penalize families with multiple cars who need space to park, including their yards.

City code enforcement officer Kirby Craig said he has responded to complaints about some residents who have several non-operative vehicles parked in their yards.

“You shouldn’t have to look at a zoning map for that,” Craig said, noting that he enforces applicable city codes when he receives complaints about junked cars in residential areas.

Hash added, “We don’t want to see that type of abuse of property, and it looks bad when visitors come to town.”

Williamson said he would prefer for ordinance 1773 to apply to all streets in town.

“With the way it is now, you can get into legal issues, with ‘ I live on this street, and I can do that’ , and ‘ I live on that street, and I can’t do that’, ” Williamson said.

Hash said an all inclusive ordinance would be difficult to enforce citywide.

“We don’t have that many officers to go down each street,” Hash said.

Rogers said the commission would consult with Jim von Tungeln, a community planning, zoning and land-use management consultant for the Arkansas Municipal League, on the matter.

Von Tungeln crafted the city’s original zoning ordinance and subsequent revisions.

He has also worked on other city projects, including an ongoing effort to establish commercial design standards for El Dorado.

“We’ll go with Jim von Tungeln and explain the intent and how to apply it with our code,” Rogers said. “We need to update our zoning code anyway.”