Growth and Planning
As additional industrial announcements continue to be made and more people move to the area, Bowling Green and Warren County continues to try and best position itself for the ongoing and projected growth in the region. This involves kicking long range planning efforts into high gear. The community recently completed a housing study mentioned in the last newsletter. Current efforts are under way with our local utilities on coordinated infrastructure planning for electric, water and sewer. Warren County has kicked off a Vision 2050 process to help define the future of the community and build consensus among citizenry. Our Chamber of Commerce partnering with our office on efforts to improve communications throughout these processes along with refining population projections for our community. The Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) is doing a new transportation study starting this summer/fall. Once these activities are completed we will be looking to build upon the information gathered and put it into land use policy with a new Comprehensive Plan and possibly new zoning regulations and subdivision regulations in the next few years.
Alternative Zoning Process Gets Approved
The Planning Commission staff proposed and received approval for an alternative zoning process. This process is intended to simplify and shorten the time for a zone change to be official, and improve the efficiency of legislative body agendas and overall staff time. The application and public input process are the same as in the past and no changes will occur. Once a hearing is made at a Planning Commission meeting, the board’s decision is final in 21 days, unless a request is made for the legislative body (City Commission or Fiscal Court) to hear the zoning change case. Anyone can made this request by filling out a form within the 21 days. The majority (95%) of applications through the Planning Commission have no opposition. Where opposition does occur, this new process will reduce approval times by up to 41 days. And to our taxpayers – this process reduces the number of ordinances published which in turn saves some dollars. See the flow chart below for more information. As always, if you have any questions, please reach out to us at planninginfo@bgky.org.
