Table of Contents

Complete Streets

The city’s boards, commissions, and committees code establishes a complete streets committee (§320-53). Provisions address composition, duties, staffing, and reports.

Green Stormwater Infrastructure

The city’s code of ordinances promotes planning for the design, implementation, and maintenance of green infrastructure. It requires sites that submit a stormwater management plan must also provide a green infrastructure plan, which describes the project’s design, implementation, and maintenance (§120-7.6.5). The code of ordinances also promotes green infrastructure as an approach to reducing urban heat island effects, benefiting human health, beautifying the city, and protecting coastal areas (§120-1.1.g).

Rethinking Off-Street Parking Requirements

The city’s zoning code includes multiple types of policy-driven off-street parking requirements. It exempts all uses in downtown and redevelopment districts from minimum off-street parking requirements (§295-403.2). It exempts many uses from minimum parking requirements citywide and establishes maximum parking requirements for many others (§295-403.2). And it authorizes parking reductions for elderly housing, on-street parking, transit proximity, and shared facilities (§295-403.2.b).

Solar Energy

The city's zoning ordinance defines the terms "solar array," "solar collector," and "solar farm" (Secs. 295-201-615.5, -616, -616.5).

The ordinance's sign provisions exempt signs on solar arrays from regulation but limits signage to one 6-square-foot sign per array used only for warning, educational, or acknowledgment purposes (Sec. 295-409-8-n).

Solar farms are permitted uses in all residential, commercial, and industrial zoning districts but are special uses in downtown zoning districts (Tables 295-503-1,295-603-1, 295-703-1, 295-803-1). Solar farms and arrays are exempt from building height limitations (Sec. 295-505-2-h-2-i). Solar arrays more than 20 feet high must comply with principal building setbacks; if less than 20 feet high, they must comply with front setback requirement and be set back at least 1.5 feet from side and rear lot lines (295-505-4-o).

Food Systems | Urban Livestock

The city code's animals chapter addresses the keeping of honey bees within the city (§78-6). A permit is required; neighborhood notification is required and written objections will trigger a public hearing. Beekeeping standards limit hive numbers to 2 per lot and address hive condition, flyway barriers, water sources, setbacks, location, queens, and nuisances.

The city code also addresses the keeping of chickens within the city (§78-6.5).  A permit is required; neighborhood notification is required and written objections will trigger a public hearing. The code allows the keeping of up to 4 chickens on a residential premise subject to standards addressing water and feed, enclosures, coop construction and size, sanitation, setbacks, location, and public health requirements. Roosters are prohibited.

City websites summarize bee-keeping and chicken-keeping regulations and offer links to permit application forms and supplemental information.