BENTONVILLE — Benton County officials continue reviewing planning regulations, but said the process won’t be complete for some months.
“Late summer or early fall, that’s what we’re looking at right now,” said John Sudduth, general services administrator.
The county has reviewed and revised its planning and development regulations, commonly called “the Blue Book,” since 2012. The Planning Department staff worked with the Planning Board to simplify and clarify regulations and submitted their suggested changes to the Legislative Committee of the Quorum Court. The committee reviewed the revisions at several meetings before sending the material back to the planning staff for more work.
“We’ve taken the Legislative Committee’s issues on to the Planning Board,” Sudduth said. “We’re going through those items with the Planning Board and trying to make the necessary changes.”
The Planning Board discussed some of the major questions at its May 15 meeting and will continue the process through the summer. Among the items being discussed are procedures for splitting property within a family group, how to classify and regulate in-home occupations and the formation of an appeals board to handle cases when applicants are dissatisfied with Planning Board decisions.
Mark Curtis, Planning Board chairman, said the board will discuss revisions as they are completed by the planning staff. He said the process has been slowed by the recent resignation of Chris Ryan as planning director, but planning division manager Rinkey Singh has taken the lead in rewriting the regulations.
The county intends to develop a second draft of the planning and development regulations and submit them to the Legislative Committee for an additional review, Sudduth said. After that review, he said, the county plans to do some public outreach to seek input from developers, builders, surveyors, businesses and property owners.
Tom Allen, justice of the peace for District 4, thinks additional review by the committee is needed before the full Quorum Court is asked to consider the regulations.
“We’d like to see what changes they’ve made since we saw it last,” Allen said.
Allen thought the review would be completed sooner than the schedule it is now on, but said the Quorum Court won’t rush the process.
“That’s a little longer than I thought,” Allen said. “But we’re in the middle of the EMS and courts building discussion. We’ve got plenty to talk about.”