Utility policy brings NPC into city’s planning area
The Hot Springs Board of Directors expanded the city’s planning area Tuesday night to include most of National Park College, allowing the school to connect its new Student Commons Building to city utilities.
The board adopted an ordinance in October that exempts schools, colleges, universities and long-term care facilities in the planning area from regulations limiting utility connections outside the corporate limits. They can apply for higher-capacity water meters, while planning area connections are otherwise limited to a fiveeighths-inch meter per lot of record.
Extending up to 1 mile beyond the corporate limits, the planning area is subject to the city’s subdivision code but exempted
from other city regulations. The city does not assert planning area authority up to the full mile in every direction.
The Student Commons Building is part of the $15 million build-out the college has announced. The city planning commission unanimously approved the amendment to the planning area map last week. About 4 acres at the northern tip of the college’s 108-acre parcel are beyond the city’s 1-mile extraterritorial jurisdiction.
“The college has held their ribbon cutting already for a terrific new student building,” Planning and Development Director Kathy Sellman told the city board last week. “They would like to have water, so for consistency with the city’s adopted water policy, there’s a requirement that this be in the planning area. That is the purpose of this request.”
GTS Heating and Cooling co-owner Joe Gibson referenced the ribbon cutting during testimony he gave last week to the Water Provider Legislative Task Force at the state Capitol. He told the panel his application for another five-eighths-inch water meter for his business on Trooper Drive in Mid-America Industrial Park, just beyond the expanded planning area limits adopted Tuesday night, was denied by the city.
Gibson testified that he applied to connect the warehouse/office he wanted to build to the 12-inch water main between Trooper Drive and Mountain Pine Road, but the city’s policy limits commercial connections outside the corporate limits to one five-eighths inch meter per lot of record in the planning area. He expressed his frustration over the denial, telling the panel the city would connect the college but not his nearby business.
City Clerk/Assistant City Manager Lance Spicer told the board Tuesday night that planning area benefits are not limited to utility connections. Standards for streets, building locations and the parceling of lots dictated by the subdivision code protect property rights and values, he said.
He said the city first adopted a planning area in the 1960s, and its boundaries don’t automatically expand when the city annexes land. The planning area map can only be amended by ordinance.