CULLMAN – In October, the City of Cullman undertook a year-long project to make a major update to its subdivision regulations and zoning ordinances, contracting with KPS Group, a Birmingham-based architecture and urban planning firm that provides services to clients across the country. On Wednesday, The Tribune and other media sat down with KPS Principal Planner Jason Fondren; City Building, Planning, and Zoning Director Rick Fulmer; Deputy Director Brian Lendreth; Cullman Mayor Woody Jacobs; Cullman Economic Development Director Dale Greer; and new City Engineer Erica York to talk about the plan.
Fondren likened the regulations to a computer operating system that may be fine when it comes out but has to receive periodic updating patches to address one issue or another, until the system reaches a point that it becomes more logical to develop a new system rather than continuing patchwork fixes.
“And so, that’s really what we’re doing,” said Fondren, “is we’ve got two sets of regulations that there have been little tweaks and patches that have been made over time, and there have been city policies and standards and ordinances that have been adopted and put in place outside of that, but have a connection to the subdivision regulations and the zoning ordinance that put us in a place where it’s necessary to just start back at the beginning and build that new operating system.
According to Fulmer, the current regulations and ordinances were put into place in the 1980s. He explained that, when developers look at Cullman’s current development policies, they can’t just look at the basic policy statements, but must also search for more recent ordinances that may override and contradict earlier policies. The new plan will bring all the pieces into one place to create what Fulmer termed “one-stop shopping” for city planning and development.
Subdivision regulations will be updated first and are scheduled to be ready for planning commission review in March 2019.
A traditional neighborhood regulation update is scheduled to be presented in April 2019.
Cullman’s new zoning ordinance is scheduled to be presented in October 2019.
The traditional neighborhood regulation update will include recent popular trends in housing development, including accessory dwellings (often called in-law cottages) and “tiny houses.” The new regulation should provide more flexibility and options for builders and property owners.
The City’s current regulations are mostly in hard copy form, with many available online as PDFs. This means that online documents cannot be searched, and that some documents might not even be available. According to Fulmer, the lack of accessibility results in developers having to place call after call to his office, often over the course of several days, tying up department staff to answer multiple questions and cover all the issues that the various patch ordinances can create.
Fondren said that the overhaul in progress will include consolidating all regulations into simpler forms and also digitizing them and making them fully searchable online. Developers and property owners alike should be able to visit a city website and locate specific zoning and regulation information quickly, with less need for direct assistance from the Building, Planning, and Zoning Department.
Not only will average city residents be able to access the new policies, they should also be able to read and understand them.
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