Last year, the village passed a rewritten zoning ordinance, beginning the process to redo all of Volente’s land use ordinances, he said.
Beck said that when Volente was incorporated in 2003, the village’s first leaders created land use ordinances by gathering those from nearby communities and combining them together. He said this meant the ordinances did not necessarily integrate well together.
“We did the best job possible,” he said. “It definitely was a very compressed time frame for that.”
The original ordinances were strict, Beck said, and the village got the reputation among builders and property owners as being difficult to work with.
Volente City Council discussed amending zoning and site development ordinances at the council meeting June 20.[/caption]That’s why Volente’s elected officials and appointed committees are working to rewrite the ordinances.
“It’s going to take a lot longer than I ever anticipated,” Beck said.
One example of potentially restrictive language in the village’s current ordinances is the requirement that building permits only be issued to people developing platted lots.
A final plat, according to Volente’s site development ordinance, is an official map of a lot surveyed by an engineer or surveyor and recorded by Travis County. Beck said historically, lots and sublots in Volente were deeded but never platted, and platting is an expensive process.
At the Volente City Council meeting June 20, council members discussed having all unplatted lots in Volente platted at the village’s cost, which would allow the lots’ owners to get building permits, Beck said.
However, after discussion, council members decided to ask planning and zoning members to amend the zoning and site development ordinances to allow building permits on unplatted lots within the next two months, as long as the lots have been deeded and surveyed, Beck said.
“Little by little we’re trying to make things easier for our residents to use their land,” he said.
