What does it mean when the Planning
Department representative or the Town Manager reports to the Town Council that a proposed change in
zoning or conditional use permit meets the criteria for the
Comprehensive Plan Map or the Comprehensive Plan? These two terms are very different and are not interchangeable!!
All to often, I have seen this applied
solely to the Comprehensive Plan Map. The Map is but one small
portion of the Comprehensive Plan. Meeting the specification of
Zoning according to that Future Land Use Map DOES NOT mean that the
proposed change is consistent with the Comprehensive Plan. In recent
months, I have gone through a lot of the documents that I have posted
online. Many of the cases where a proposed change has been initiated
do appear to correspond to the Future Land Use Map, but over and
over again I have found that the written portion of the plan was NOT
consistent with the proposed change. In some instances, it was in
direct opposition to the written plan.
The Future Land Use Map does provide a
useful tool to augment the written specifications of the
Comprehensive Plan, but it is not the final word. The written
Comprehensive Plan is what provides information to support the Codes
and Ordinances established. It provides the legal intent of those
Codes and Ordinances therefore 'putting the legal teeth' in Codes
enforcement. In situations where the Map is used for rezonings,
conditional use permits, etc., and the written Plan gives a contrary
determination, guess which one the Court is going to go with. It will
not be the Map!!!
Every request for a change of this sort
comes through the Town's Planning Department. It is up to those
individuals to provide information to the Town Council as to
consistency with the Comprehensive Plan. The Planning Department
should be providing a staff analysis for each and every request to
the Town Council. Those reports should include the pros and the cons
of requested changes. In particular, those reports should note the
specific areas of the WRITTEN Comprehensive Plan with which the
proposal is either in or out of compliance with the Plan. These
documents become a matter of public record and 5, 10, or 20 years
from now, when someone tries to go to Court over something there is a
clear documentation of the intent and legal basis for the response to
the request. A little bit of work on the front-end of things could
save a lot of work and expense in the future.