Commissioners argue draft’s parking code

Continued from Page 10 whereas non-accessory housing is defined as housing near the employee’s place of work.

Proposed changes in the draft’s supplemental regulations section introduce elevated housing standards for employees and a tiered system that dictates the approval process for employee housing based on the number of occupants.

Tier 1 includes employee housing with 16 or fewer residents and would require only a building permit and rental license process. Tier 2 includes housing with 60 or fewer residents and would require a site plan approval on top of the building permit and rental license. Tier 3, housing with more than 60 residents, must go through the zoning code’s conditional use process along with all other processes required in Tier 2.

A separate section assigns unique approval processes to building types like commercial buildings, apartments, condos, or one-to-two family homes that have been converted into employee housing.

Employee housing will continue to be prohibited in R-1 single-family residential and MH mobile home districts under the proposed changes.

Its proposed that no more than four employee occupants would be permitted in the same room, and no more than eight would be allowed to live in the same room for housing that falls under conditional use.

Code changes would also expand the minimum living and dining room space provided for seasonal employees, requiring these rooms to be a minimum of 250 square feet for six or more residents, 500 square feet for twentyfive or more and 750 square feet for fifty or more people. Past 60 occupants, the minimum square footage remains at 750, but the choice of increasing the space will be at the discretion of the city council and OCPZC.

“This is a framework that can encourage the private market provision of an adequate supply of seasonal housing. We feel that this is a good first step to open other opportunities for housing to be developed in town,” Neville said.

Neville told the commissioners that the City Council offered three suggestions on April 11.

First, council members suggested that the proposed ordinance should reduce the amount of required parking in employee housing so there is more incentive for developers to create housing.

The council also suggested a clearer definition of employee housing so density incentives aren’t taken advantage of by other non-employee projects that get classified into employee housing.

The third recommendation asked for changes on the code that dictates the timing of deed restrictions that would obligate a property to be used for employee housing purposes. Neville said the council wants to ensure a deed restriction doesn’t hinder a project before developers know they’ve been granted site plan approval.

Zach Bankert, executive director at the Ocean City Development Corporation, told the commission that the housing shortage is a big problem for the Ocean City economy and that any shortfalls in the code could be revised at a later date so projects could start moving forward.

“We (the OCDC) on the whole endorse these changes. The only hang-up that we might have is with the parking. We actually feel that it’s a little too high of a requirement given the intended use and the intended tenants that we expect to go into these projects,” Bankert said.

Glenn Irwin, who had run the OCDC up until this spring and who has been involved with employee housing for over 20 years, told the commission that eight occupants to a room seemed too high of a limit and also recommended that any non-interior rooms should have windows.

When the board closed the hearing and began their discussion, parking codes became the hot-button issue.

Commissioner Palmer Gillis suggested that the next draft should expand conditional use to the Tier 2 housing category, so the council would have to be part of the approval process for the parking.

“We get in a lot of trouble because as we have been reminded many, many times we can’t overturn, or comment, or supersede a BZA (Board of Zoning Appeals) approval, so with that said, it puts us in the hot seat, they’re (City Council) out of the hot seat, we’re in the hot seat,” Gillis said in reference to parking.

Planning commission Chairman Joe Wilson argued that any problems they find with the parking code after it passes can be amended later. He also suggested that the BZA could handle most parking appeals.

“I think it’s important that we at least take some sort of action, because I think the worst thing that we could do, the worst action we could take would be inaction,” Wilson said.

Gillis worried that too little employee parking could cause more overflow parking into other streets and neighborhoods.

City Council member Peter Buas addressed the commission in his civilian capacity, asserting that he was not speaking on behalf of the council.

“The only issue, individually with the conditional use is that it lacks predictability, right, so the whole point in our code is that predictable parking measures, density measures that you can bring forward, so if you add the conditional use in the middle tier you might as well get rid of the parking requirements all together,” Buas said.

Neville told the board that he would revise the tier system within the draft and bring them several options for how to handle the parking issue. One option could be another tier of occupancy between Tier 1 and Tier 2. Commissioners thought that leap from 16 to almost 60 occupants in the first two tiers was too great of a jump.