Planning Commission to consider modifications to UDC Tuesday
News August 12, 2021
FORSYTH COUNTY, Ga. — The Forsyth County Planning Commission will consider a number of modifications to the Unified Development Code when it meets Tuesday, Aug. 17 at 6:30 p.m. in the County Administration Building, 110 East Main Street in Cumming.
- UDC modifications related to construction hours;
- UDC modifications related to signage for open storage yards;
- UDC modifications related to performance standards;
- UDC modifications related to exemption for non-residential plat requirement;
- UDC modifications related to dumpsters in residential rezoning districts.
The Commission will also review and discuss the following zoning applications scheduled for public hearing on Aug. 24:
- CP 210008—CK Holdings, LLC;
- HP 210005 – Greg Sample;
- ZA 4001 – Century Communities of Georgia, LLC;
- ZA 4009 – Nitsye, LLC;
- ZA 4010 — McFarland Road Associates, LLC;
- ZA 4013 — OCS Enterprises, Inc.;
- ZA 4015 – Matt Sosebee;
- ZA 4016 – Taylor Morrison of Georgia, LLC
The Planning Commission is a recommending body only. They are delegated the responsibility of holding the only public hearing on rezoning applications, conditional use permits, and home occupation permits. The Planning Commission also holds the public hearing on all variance requests that were filed and scheduled to be considered simultaneously and pertaining to the same property with a rezoning, conditional use permit, or home occupation permit application. The Planning Commission is also responsible for holding the first public hearing on amendments to the text of the Unified Development Code (UDC) and other items, such as the Short Term Work Program, Comprehensive Plan, etc.
Commission recommends denial of administrative variance modification
Featured Stories July 28, 2021
FORSYTH COUNTY, Ga. — Forsyth County Planning Commission approved a series of modifications to the proposed Unified Development Code during Tuesday’s meeting. One that did not get approved, however, related to administrative variances.
The proposed modification would have applied only to residential lots in excess of 25 acres and involved building setbacks capped at 15 percent that could potentially grow to 20 percent and lot width and total lot coverage of 15 percent.
Commissioners wrestled with that issue for close to an hour before Chairman Tim Dineen made the motion to deny. The motion passed 4-1 with Commissioner Jessica Thoreson opposed.
Three Forsyth County residents stepped forward to express their opposition based primarily on the lack of transparency in the process and most commissioners seemed to agree with them.
Les Dobbins told the commissioners, “There is a process to ask for a variance. They can formally do that through the variance process and not have it done without the transparency of an administrative variance.”
Other UDC modifications met with less gnashing of teeth. The Commission unanimousy approved modifications relating to:
- Specialty design standards;
- Residential design applicability with the addition or R2R, CR1, CR2 and LR;
- Timber harvesting;
- Exterior buffer requirements;
- Undisturbed areas of separation;
- Open space and low-impact stormwater design incentives.