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Memorandum April 9, 2.003 Page -2.- Changes to the ordinance continue to be made. As discussed above, each community has ~made changes to the ordinance for purposes of grammar, clarification, expdnsion, correction and for policy purposes. Any effective ordinance will continue to have changes for these purposes, particularly to address policy issues. The chancres being made now are for policy purposes. The UDO is more oriented to municipal areas than rural areas. There are zoning districts within the UDO that would not be part of the zoning atlas for the County such as the Center City district. Conversely the Agricultural District in the UDO is primarily oriented to the rural parts of the County. In addition, the County draft of the UDQ is different from that adopted by the cities in relation to road, sidewalks, curb aad gutter requirements. My recommendation is that ~e draft of the UDO remain tabled, but not be abandoned. The number of basic changes to 'the ordinance has dwindled greatly so that most of the changes being made now relate to policy decisions. As mentioned earlier, Concord has appointed a UDO Advisory Committee to address the major policy issues that have been raised and ! have included a copy of some of the minutes of this group as an example (Attachment A). When this group finishes its assigned task, the planning staffs of each jurisdiction will review the recommended changes and 131Tike those forward to the elected bodies for their consideration. At that point, the County draft Will also be updated with the changes highlighted for the Board of Commissioners. Finally, we will continue to work with the staffs of Concord and Kannapolis to identify and catalog differences between the UDC) versions. The issue that will continue te come up as long as the County chooses to not adopt the UDO is the difference in developmenl~ standards. This issue was discussed during a joint meeting of the Board of commissioners and the Kannapolis City Council (minutes attached as Attachment B). Staff was Instructed to wor~ with the municipalities on annexation areas for the purpose of application of UDO developrn~nt standards. The work on those areas has been included in a project that came out of the ~ater and Sewer Master Plan to identify utility areas. A draft map is attached (Attachment C) sh .dwing the utility areas and the next step is to identify five-year annexation areas within thos~utility areas. The intent of defining five~/, ear annexation areas was to create areas to enforce UDO development standards. This .would be accomplished by the Board of Commissioners adopting language in the current Subd!vision Regulations and Zoning Ordinance that would require new development in the defined a~as to meet certain city-specific UDO development standards. This issue seems to have been ad~essed by another policy change, however. The City of Concord has indicated that it will require any development connecting to its utilities to meet its UDO development standards (Attachment D). There has also been indication that the city of Kannapolis will do the Same, and we have met with the Town of Harrisburg about similar issues. Although the City of Concord is still identifying the standards that must be met, staff from Concord and the County have already begun work on the process to implement this for new development.