Ordinance Revision

Community transformation begins through planning and code revision. The first step is creating a comprehensive plan. Comprehensive plans lay out the vision, goals, and objectives for a community’s future development. After the plan is adopted, the community can begin revising codes and ordinances. Codes and ordinances create the legal mechanisms and specifications to ensure development fulfills the vision of the comprehensive plan. The strategies in this report may apply and require updates to several sections, including: zoning, floodplain, streets, subdivision, stormwater management, and landscape standards.

Some communities approach code revision one or two sections at a time. Other communities, like Denham Springs, choose to develop a unified development code and revise everything at the same time. The process to ordinance revision should meet the needs and resources of the community. Ordinances are designed to shift as communities change over time. To strengthen community resiliency, it’s important to address as many pressing challenges as possible in the present, even if it is not feasible to remedy every issue with current codes and ordinances. As communities grow, new planning processes will be needed, and ordinances can be further revised. Additionally, future disasters may provide a window of opportunity to establish changes that require voter support. If a plan exists before a disaster, it can be easier for the city to capitalize on resident sentiments post-disaster to prioritize resilient construction over the pre-disaster status quo.

In order for these processes to lead to community transformation, community members and other stakeholders such as developers and local design professionals need to be engaged at each stage. People need to be aware of the updated requirements as well as why they are necessary. Communicating a clear understanding of how small adaptations can improve community wellbeing and resilience helps ease the cultural shift that may be required. The city can also create programs that provide assistance for residents to retro-fit private property before the next disaster.

It can be very difficult for communities to make changes to the built environment immediately following a disaster, especially on private property. After a disaster, residents request special building permits that allow them to repair their homes quickly. This desire must be balanced with the need to improve design standards in order to increase individual and community resilience. In areas that flood repeatedly, updating building codes and working with residents to implement changes before the next flood-repair cycle begins can help encourage property owners to build back in more resilient ways. Ensuring residents and contractors are aware of new building code standards, how they improve resilience, and when they will be expected to comply with the new standards will ease the process of adaptation for property owners, contractors, and the city.

CITY MASTER PLAN ZONING ORDINANCES

FLOODPLAIN ORDINANCES SUBDIVISION ORDINANCES

BUILDING CODE ORDINANCES