Commissioner urges carve-out in general plan to ease variances in unincorporated towns

Commissioner (speaker 1) used the variance hearing to raise a broader policy point: setbacks and other zoning rules in the county were written for unincorporated rural areas and do not always fit small unincorporated towns. He suggested the general plan rewrite include special language for those communities so that existing, preexisting nonconforming homes are not repeatedly forced to seek variances.

"As we are redoing our general plan, I hate to complicate things, but do we need to carve out a section in this rewrite that would apply specifically to unincorporated towns... that do not have their own planning departments," the commissioner said, naming examples such as Callahan, McLeod and Happy Camp. Commissioners noted they already see repeated variance requests in several towns and asked staff to consider options that would allow common-sense exceptions and reduce processing time for small projects.

The commission asked staff to consider this suggestion as part of ongoing code updates and the upcoming joint review with the Board of Supervisors; staff agreed to include the point in future discussions of the general plan and code edits.