Title
Consider a public hearing regarding, and a resolution giving preliminary approval to the draft amendments to create the Round Rock Zoning and Development Code and to authorize the City Manager and City Attorney to prepare an ordinance for the Council’s consideration.
Body
The purpose of this resolution is to authorize the city attorney to work with the city’s online code vendor, Municode, to codify the Round Rock Zoning and Development Code. Preceding this resolution were several code amendments regarding some of the most important policy items contained within the Development Code. The adoption of those amendments allows them to take effect immediately instead of waiting for the completion of the codification process, which is expected to take several months. Upon completion, another item will be brought to Council to formally adopt the new Development Code in its entirety.
Planning and Development Services staff, with help from other city departments and the city attorney’s office, have been working diligently since 2013 to craft the new Round Rock Zoning and Development Code, which is an update and consolidation of all the city’s regulations pertaining to land development. Currently these regulations are scattered about the Code of Ordinances, creating confusion, conflicts, and inconsistencies. The Development Code will create a more streamlined, user-friendly set of regulations, keeping with the city’s development philosophy of “making it happen.”
This process also brought about the opportunity to evaluate how Round Rock stacks up to its peer cities with regards to various development standards, and subsequent research showed that Round Rock’s base standards had fallen behind in many areas. The new Code contains regulations that ensure Round Rock will maintain its prominent reputation among developers both locally and nationally and will provide a durable, high-quality built environment for years to come.
Many of the proposed changes serve to ...
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