City Council to continue efforts in revising zoning codes

EL DORADO — The El Dorado City Council has agreed to continue efforts to clean up language in the city’s zoning codes that regulate parking.

The matter is part of an ongoing conversation that raised tensions months ago when Mayor Frank Hash ordered a resident to stop work on a project to build a concrete, horseshoe driveway in the front yard of his residence on East Main.

Hash issued the order in February, sparking weeks of discussions, some of which grew heated and brought accusations, some of which came from current and former city officials, of harassment and bullying against Hash.

In April, the council voted for the city to reimburse the resident $651 that he had spent on concrete and to allow him to complete the project.

At the time, Hash cited city ordinance 1773, 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 one of the collector streets listed in the ordinance.

Further, the ordinance says that citizens may not “pave or gravel a yard to the extent that such paving or graveling violates” the city’s zoning ordinance.

The council enlisted the help of the El Dorado Planning and Zoning Commission, whose chairman, Michael Rogers, previously told aldermen that ordinance 1773 was not part of the zoning code.

The ordinance was a 2008 initiative of the city council, not the planning and zoning commission, Rogers said at the time.

He also said then that the commission has been running into such issues all around town, and the problem stemmed partly from inconsistencies between city zoning classifications and zoning usage.

For instance, Rogers said the man’s house is located in a commercial zone on East Main, but usage in the area is mainly residential. Alderman Vance

Williamson had also pointed to a section of the zoning code that deals with parking and unloading, saying that the code does not specify how much concrete or how much paving can be done in a residential development.

While city officials and the planning and zoning commission concluded that the East Main driveway project did not violate any city codes, they agreed that language in city ordinances and zoning codes need to be cleared up.

On Thursday, Hash reminded aldermen that they had agreed to meet with the planning and zoning commission, and he asked the council how they wished to proceed with the matter.

“This parking on the lawn on city gateways, is it tabled, are you working with planning and zoning? What’s the deal? Do you want to refine it or do away with it?” Hash asked.

“We need to discuss it. If it’s not working we need to discuss it. I want to discuss it. I certainly don’t want to dispose of it,” Alderman Billy Blann replied.

Aldermen learned that the monthly meeting of the planning and zoning commission has been canceled for July. The commission had been scheduled to meet on Tuesday, but the group will next meet at noon on Aug. 8.

Council members agreed to attend the August meeting, and Alderman Vance Williamson asked if City Attorney Henry Kinslow could also attend the meeting.

Kinslow made statements indicating that he could.

“It was a question of what’s the legality of people parking in their front yard and us giving them a citation,” Hash said last Thursday. “It’s one of those hanging chads. We need to move it or fix it. I don’t want to end up in another hairball.”