SCRANTON — Officials held a workshop with a planning consultant Tuesday on updating the city’s antiquated, 26-year-old zoning ordinance.
The goals are to get a completed draft to the planning commission in February for review and recommendation, city Planner Don King said.
A version coming out of the commission would go to city council in spring for its consideration, toward implementation of a new zoning ordinance by June, Mayor Wayne Evans said.
Noting he was on the planning commission in the early 1990s when the current ordinance was adopted, Evans said the update is necessary and overdue. As time has passed, new uses have come along, such as sharing-economy ventures, communication towers and brew pubs.
A zoning revision would recognize new uses and hopefully put them in zones where they make the most sense, while minimizing impact on neighbors, Evans said.
It’s important to get the update right, because the city will be living with the changes for some time to come, he said.
“This is a great exercise. I’m excited about,” Evans said. “I know what the long-term impact is.”
The Lackawanna County commissioners in January approved a $160,000 contract with Pittsburgh-based Environmental Planning and Design LLC to update by June 2020 zoning maps and ordinances for nine individual municipalities that make up the regional Scranton-Abingtons Planning Association, or SAPA. Those include Scranton, Dunmore, Dalton, Clarks Green and Clarks Summit boroughs and Newton, South Abington, Waverly and West Abington townships. During Scranton’s workshop Tuesday, EDP Managing Principal Andrew Schwartz worked with officials on refining preliminary lists of principal permitted uses — from single family homes to bars and banks — they deem appropriate for the city’s 15 different zones in an updated ordinance.
The same process will play out in the other SAPA municipalities, with uses varying among the members.
“This is all good stuff,” Evans said. “This is why we joined SAPA.”
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