by: Lee Weyhrich
Christian Crawford, the young man who made national headlines with his inspired prayer at Clay-Chalkville High School’s graduation ceremony, said the opening prayer at Monday’s Clay Council meeting. In his prayer, he asked that city leaders be guided to do what is best for the community.
The council addressed temporary and permanent solutions to zoning issues as well as community events.
The Clay City Council
file photo by Gary Lloyd
When a bank-owned property went on the market, city leaders realized that an oversight in zoning from 2006 had become a current problem. Several properties that had been zoned “Residential Commercial” did not meet the requirements for that zoning.
City manager Ronnie Dixon suggested a temporary fix until sweeping changes can be made. The property that shed light on this issue was a mini-storage facility near Steeplechase subdivision.
“Neighborhood commercial does not allow for mini warehouses and mini storage, so when the bank that owns that building and has been running it several years found a potential buyer, they wanted me to write them a letter saying it was zoned properly,” Dixon said.
Dixon realized that the property was not zoned properly. Clay-Chalkville Animal Clinic, owned by former mayor Charles Hart, had also been lumped under the same improper zoning.
Dixon suggested the council add these businesses to the residential zoning ordinance under “supplemental use.”
The alternative would be to notice each of those businesses and the surrounding area to rezone the businesses to another commercial zoning, which may be an option down the road.
“There’s nothing about the zoning ordinance that makes sense in the commercial side of it, because you have Town Center Commercial, Neighborhood Commercial, and Highway Commercial,” Dixon said. “Those three zoning classifications in our city ordinance take up about 60 pages to write. Jefferson County’s C-1 through C-7 (commercial zoning categories) is only 14 pages long, so (ours) is all convoluted.”
Monday’s ordinance to amend the current ordinance for supplemental use will add another page to the already complicated ordinance. Dixon suggests the council look into streamlining those ordinances at a later date to make them more in line with the county standards.
The supplement was adopted unanimously by council.
