In a split decision, the Grants Pass City Council has directed city staff to prepare changes to land use public noticing. The decision came in a 4-3 vote during Monday's workshop session, with Councilor Dwight Faszer, II, absent.
Councilor Brian DeLaGrange made the motion to direct staff to increase noticing from 100 feet to 200 feet from subject properties in Type 3 and Type 4 land use decisions, hold neighborhood meetings for Type 4 decisions, use on-site property postings and social media to notify affected parties, and notify both property owners and renters within the new noticing radius. The noticing changes will first be reviewed by the Urban Area Planning Commission before returning to Council.
The vote came after a presentation from Community Development Director Brad Clark who said that state law sets distances for various types of proposals such as Legislative, Quasi-Judicial and Ministerial. He said a comparison of local cities shows the current 100-foot noticing in Grants Pass is less than the 200 feet utilized in Medford and Ashland and the 250 feet used in Central Point.
Clark added that the most recent example of people claiming not to have received proper notice of a land use decision was the appeal of the Jantzer RV Park on Lincoln Road near SW Bridge Street. He also said a recent study by the Pew Research Center shows public noticing to digital devices is now being used three times more than newspapers, radio and television.
According to Clark, enlarging the noticing radius will increase public awareness -- but it will also increase the potential for appeals to land use decisions.
