By TOM DISTEFANO
Staff writer
CLARION – Clarion County’s subdivision and land development ordinance is ready for review and comment, and a public hearing has been set for Monday in the commissioners conference room.
It’s a big ordinance, maybe the county’s biggest, and the effort to revise, simplify and reorganize it took more than two years.
The SALDO, as it’s called, contains the rules for subdividing land, planning subdivisions and developing commercial and industrial structures. It’s the main document guiding and enabling the county planning commission’s activities.
The current SALDO is 70 pages long and the proposed new SALDO is a few pages longer, but that’s mainly because the revision spreads out the formatting for easier reading.
In general, some regulations are eased and simplified, and a new category of land development for commercial and industrial structures is meant to simplify and speed the approval process for smaller projects.
The new SALDO is reorganized and rearranged to make it less redundant and easier to follow.
Revisions are also meant to keep the ordinance in compliance with the state’s Municipalities Planning Code.
All about planning
It’s all about planning. The county planning department, the planning commission and a committee of stakeholders have been working with a planning consultant for many months to develop the new version.
The purpose of the SALDO is to prevent the problems and conflicts that can arise from bad planning or a lack of planning.
The danger of a SALDO is that it can discourage development if the rules or the approval procedures are too burdensome.
The difficulty of writing a SALDO is there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
On top of that, the county cannot simply do whatever it wants in its SALDO ordinance – the state’s complex and voluminous Municipalities Planning Code govern all local planning rules.
The county hired a consulting firm – Olsen and Associates of Butler – to help it through the thicket and to advise on the best practices and latest recommendations in the land use planning field.
Director of planning and development Kristi Ditz said the effort to update the SALDO started officially when the county hired Olsen and Associates in July of 2014.
The SALDO had been last updated in 2005, and while there is not a mandated schedule for revision, the need for updates become apparent as time goes on.
Ditz said the planning department and commission had made some changes to the approval process over the years and wanted to reflect these in the SALDO.
The commission also saw the need for same changes based on the requests from developers to modify the SALDO rules.
Easier and faster
Many of the revisions grew out of a desire to simplify procedures and make the approval process faster and easier to understand.
The approval process can be slow, with an application deadline set 20-days before the next planning commission meeting, Ditz said little can be done to speed this up.
Applications must be submitted for review and comment by the townships and boroughs where the projects are located, and it is quickest if municipal officials receive the applications before their monthly meetings.
Ditz said the planning staff tries to keep things moving as smoothly and quickly as possible by working with developers to make sure they have their plans in compliance and the paperwork in order so the commission can act quickly on the application.
Ditz said the rewording and rearrangement of the new SALDO should make the approval process more efficient.
“It’s going to make it easier for (developers) to know what they need to do and get it done. It wasn’t possible as much as we would have liked but we felt (the revisions) would speed things up a little.”
The stakeholders
The planning commission set up a committee of stakeholders – local developers, engineers, surveyors and municipal officials to go over the old ordinance and revise it line by line with the help of the consultants.
The committee included the three county commissioners at the time, Wayne Brosius, Greg Faller and Butch Campbell along with Ditz, former planning director Twila Rifenberrick and county engineer Kevin Reichard.
Keith Decker and Kevin Wilson represented the planning commission and Decker the economic development council,
Mike Wise represented the real estate community; Greg Clark, Ron Fox and Marty English represented engineers and surveyors.
Bill Fiscus of Limestone Township, Bob Rawson of Strattanville and Sandy Steiner of East Brady represented municipal government and Pam Moore represented the Clarion County Conservation District.
The committee spent many hours in monthly meetings, developing and reviewing the revisions. Meetings lasted two, three and sometimes close to four hours, Ditz said.
The committee reviewed each line of each paragraph, discussing some paragraphs extensively. Then they reviewed those paragraphs once again when the consultant presented a new draft at the next meeting.
Sometimes the committee did not feel the new draft reflected the changes they wanted, sending the consultant back to the drafting board.
In the middle of the process, the consultant from Olsen Associates passed away, and Ron Olson the firm’s lead partner took over. But it meant significant delays while Olsen worked to familiarize himself with the project.
Public review
The ordinance is now up for public review and comment and Ditz encourages those who have comments or concerns to get them in before the ordinance is adopted by the county commissioners.
“We’re willing to take a little more time to review and consider suggested changes,” Ditz said. “We’re not opposed to changing things if the changes make sense.”
The county commissioners can vote to adopt the ordinance March 29, but they also could decide to consider adoption at a later date.
Comments can be submitted anytime to the planning office by phone or in person but comments in writing are best, Ditz said.
The entire ordinance is on the county’s website at www.co.clarion.pa.us and paper copies are available at the county planning office on the basement floor of the county Administration Building at 330 Main Street in Clarion.