Updating city’s zoning code takes initial steps
NORWALK — One of things Planning and Zoning Director Steve Kleppin said he wanted to do when he first took the job in 2016, was update the city’s zoning code.
This year, his department received $20,000 to begin the process. Last week, the Planning Committee voted to approve Planimetrics, a landuse consulting firm based in Simsbury, to conduct an evaluation of the zoning regulations.
Glenn Chalder, president of Planimetrics, has begun preliminary work, Kleppin said, including some staff interviews.
“He already came in today and met with staff for two hours to talk about the issues that staff sees on daytoday basis when they look at the regulations and their interactions with the residents and folks that come in and do business with the city,” Kleppin said last week.
One of the issues Kleppin said they’ve already identified is how some of the regulations are laid out in the code.
“There's structural issues within the zoning regulations themselves, where you don't just go to the section on signs to find out everything you need to about signs — you might have to look at a separate section of the regulations,” Kleppin said. “So if you don't know to look in that other section, you may come up with a design or a plan for something that may not meet the regulations because it's not all formatted in simplistic fashion, so he's going to look at those structural issues.”
Another area Chalder will tackle is how the regulations will align with the city’s new master plan that is slated to be adopted by the full Common Council at the end of the month.
“He's also going to look at the new POCD and see what that does to realigning things, because obviously the new POCD recommends rezoning certain areas, changing zoning in other areas so he's going to look at that, and also help us come up with a budget number and so the next operating budget cycle, I'll have a firm number to put in for that request,” Kleppin said.
Planimetrics has worked with a variety of Connecticut municipalities, including Darien, New Canaan, Ridgefield, Westport, Simsbury, and Bristol, most of which are smaller than Norwalk, something Councilwoman Barbara Smyth pointed out at the committee meeting.
“One of the things that I noticed is most of the towns the firm has experience with are small not nearly as diverse as Norwalk is,” she said.
Kleppin noted that he had worked with Planimetrics at his previous jobs and praised Chalder for his ability to work with the public.
Kleppin said the goal is to get the recommendations from the company by December to allow for funding requests in next year’s operating budgets.
The plan for the next few months includes “meetings with developers, attorneys, surveyors, engineers, all folks who do business with the city,” Kleppin said.
“We're going to set up groups with smaller developers so they can come on and form a different group because they also have different issues and also made a couple different open houses where the public can come in and talk about their issues with this,” he said.