The city of Round Rock will soon have an updated development code as the city’s planning department prepares to submit the revised document to City Council for approval this month.
“Each city is set up differently in how they have their development regulations. Right now, we have a code of ordinances, which includes every type of regulation the city has, from traffic regulations all the way to new development. So when you open up our code of ordinances, all of the provisions related to development are scattered throughout the code,” said Brad Wiseman, Round Rock director of planning and development. “So what we are doing is developing what is called in many places a unified development code. We are reviewing our entire code of municipal ordinances and pulling all of the provisions out of the code of ordinances and placing them into one development code.
“It will be much more streamlined. You will be able to access all of the rules related to developing a piece of property.”
The decision to revise the code began in mid-2013 when City Council approved a decision to update the development code, something that had never been done before, according to Wiseman. That decision initiated a massive project in which members of the city’s planning department combed through more than 500 pages of ordinances and regulations, deciding what needed to be kept, consolidated and revised—something that took more than three years to complete.
