The Chattanooga City Council on Tuesday began discussing how to combat erosion and protect steep slopes and low lands in the city, while also protecting citizens’ private rights. The council discussed the lack of regulations currently in place as it pertains to building in those environments.
When shown a presentation by Emily Wood and John Bridger of the Regional Planning Agency, certain council members expressed a desire for patience before they approved or disapproved of any particular plans.
One such member was Chip Henderson, who wished to personally see areas the new regulations and methods would affect before he voted on anything.
“I had, from the beginning, asked for a field trip. I was told we couldn’t take a field trip because of the logistics of all of the people (from the City Council) being on a bus,” said Councilman Henderson, “I’m not going to vote on an ordinance that is going to affect as many pieces of property as this until I can look at the properties this ordinance affects. So whatever we can do to work out a field trip, we need to work that out.”
Councilwoman Carol Berz agreed. She said the council can pass as many regulations and laws as they please, but the problem is enforcement, or the lack of it.
She said, “We keep passing these rules and regulations, and we do it because very often we’re not enforcing what already exists. There’s a lot of good players who are being taxed and punished because of guys who try to get out of behaving properly, and our lack of enforcement allows them to get out of it. I’m just tossing this out there. This is big, and I think we need to have very serious discussion about this.”
After the council members voiced their opinion to hold off on a vote, Ms. Wood began the presentation. She went through each slide, and stopped any time the council members had a question about the topic.
“Develop recommendations for and an ordinance and other zoning tools that would provide development standards that address development activity in natural resource areas such as steep hillsides and floodplains,” said the first slide, laying out the point of the proposed changes to how slopes and floodplains.
“We’ve examined development trends over a 10-year period, and analyzed steep slope and floodplain data,” said Ms. Wood. The creators of the PowerPoint also spoke to an advisory committee and technical committee, and looked at a variety of sources such as FEMA and TEMA.
“Question is how do we accommodate growth in Chattanooga without compromising the city’s scenic assets and natural amenities,” said Ms. Wood.
“The staff is recommending the ordinance. We already have several plans and policies in place, so additional policy is redundant,” said Ms. Wood, and assuaged Councilwoman Berz’s concerns about enforcing this ordinance, saying, “Regulations will address public concerns and ensure the Scenic City will remain scenic. It will still allow development. We’re not trying to take away development rights.”
One thing a new ordinance would do is define what constitutes a steep slope. In some municipalities, a steep slope is 15 degrees, while others have it at 25 percent or even 30 percent. Another role the ordinance would do is regulate how land is developed in terms of erosion. One proposed change would be to allow only five acres of land to be disturbed at a time. If a developer would want to develop more land, they would need to stabilize the five acres before moving on to the next piece of land.
Because of the in-depth nature of the presentation, Ms. Wood was unable to address everything in the meeting. The presentation will continue on Nov. 12 and will address any questions the council may have. A public forum on the proposed plan to change steep slope and flood plain development will take place next Tuesday. It will last 45 minutes, and any interested speakers will have three minutes to share their thoughts. The order of speakers will be on a “first come, first served” basis.