Council reviews long overdue update

The Kimball City Council received and reviewed the updated Comprehensive Plan from Hanna:Keelan and Associates, along with amended zoning maps and a housing study at their regular meeting on Tuesday, June 21.

“Our last comprehensive plan was updated in 2001 if I am not mistaken,” Kimball City Administrator Daniel Ortiz said. “There are a couple of changes incorporated with the comprehensive plan including the energy elements but we also combined the housing study as part of this comprehensive plan and it has been updated to conform to new legislative updates that have been implemented since 2001, as well as updating some of our zoning categories and definitions. This has been probably a year in the making.”

While the document is complete, Ortiz added that changes could be made by the council.

Lonnie Dickson a planner for Hanna:Keelan and Associates, a community planning and research company, reported to the board via Skype that half of the funding for the ten-year plan/study as well as the zoning regulation update came from Nebraska Investment Finance Authority (NIFA).

“The rest of it was matching funds from the City of Kimball,” Dickson explained. “The comprehensive plan is intended, in the state of Nebraska, as basically a requirement for any municipality that utilizes zoning and subdivision regulations through the ordinance process.”

Dickson further explained that the plan, which is broken into six sections, is not a legally binding document, but rather is a resource document to be used by city boards when making decisions for the next 10 years.

The first section, is an overview of the planning process, according to Dickson, as well as a review of the corporate limits (city limits), the planning boundary (an area one mile beyond city limits) and the authority to make a comprehensive plan.

“(Section one) has an overview of the components of the process that the public participation procedure went through in completing the comprehensive plan,” Dickson said. “Likewise the stand-alone housing study that is basically an amendment to this plan.”

Dickson continued to explain each section of the plan, touching on the community planning and development in section two, population decline and economics in the third section, land use, growth and annexation in section four, public places, utilities and transportation in section five and ending with the new energy elements in section six.

“The last section of the comprehensive plan is in fact the energy element in section six. That’s an overview of general trends in utilities and energy usage for the state as a whole and likewise the information we were able to (garner) from city staff in terms of consumption and revenue generated from the municipal utility system. Giving us an overview of the trends that have occurred from 2011 to 2015,” Dickson said. “We utilize those trends to compare and contrast and lastly to devise a series of energy conservation policies if you will. Roughly talking about working with the state in terms of allowing alternative systems – wind, solar, geothermal cooling and warming exchange, biomass, and things of that nature singularly or in combination with one another to address the reduction of energy use by the community.”

The council will hold public readings of Resolution 2016-06, to adopt the comprehensive plan, at the next two meetings. Public is encouraged to attend.

That plan can be viewed on the City’s website at http://www.kimballne.org, under the planning and zoning tab.

Along the same lines, the board reviewed the amendments to the local zoning ordinance and map. Recommendations included combining the two, R-1 and R-2, into one residential district.

“The big overall changes is that we have two separate residential zoning districts with not much difference between the two,” Ortiz began. “The main difference between the two was lot size.”

Additionally, zoning changes were considered for some heavy industrial districts near the downtown business area, but ultimately that zoning remained unchanged on the new map.

Zoning near the bypass, which is outside of the city limits but within the one-mile planning jurisdiction, has been changed to multi-family residential, a designation that has caused some concern for families currently residing in those areas.

“In some of those areas where zoning has changed, it doesn’t limit or eliminate the current use,” Ortiz explained. “Those would become a non-conforming uses and would revert only if the property would change its use.”

Dickson further explained that it is often seen higher density residential districts near highway corridors and then one would see a step-down into single-family dwellings.

For those living in a neighborhood currently zoned rural residential, zoning changes will not affect their ability to keep livestock.

Likewise, if property zoned rural residential was sold, no change will be effected as long as the property is used for the same purposes within one year after purchase and if no structural alteration of such building is proposed or made for the purpose of such extension, according to state statute.

The council will read this ordinance at the next two meetings. Anyone who wishes to discuss this issue is invited to attend those meetings.