Efforts to revise Crafton Borough’s zoning ordinance appear to be all but wrapped up, but some residents still aren’t happy with a product that has been more than three years in the making.
The proposed comprehensive revision underwent a review by Allegheny County, and Matthew T. Trepal, manager of the county’s Planning Division, provided more than a dozen comments, several of which focused on language issues.
Trepal also suggested that certain aspects of the revised ordinance might be better off in the borough’s Subdivision and Land Use Ordinance (SALDO). These sections include yard landscape and buffering, parking lot landscaping, outdoor lighting, off-street parking design and building design standards.
But in a memo to borough Manager Jim Price, Mike Tedesco – the borough’s community and economic development director — said he disagreed with the county’s assessment and recommended the provisions in question remain in the updated zoning ordinance.
Tedesco said last week that he agreed with the county’s recommendation in a general sense. “But for Crafton specifically it doesn’t fit because we don’t have lot of SALDO activity,” he said. “Crafton is built out – there’s nowhere really to subdivide.
“Because zoning covers all activities, these design provisions, which are very responsible to ensure quality developments that match Crafton, are better off being in the zoning code.”
The borough is not obligated to act on the county’s suggestions, but if it makes substantive changes to the new revised ordinance, it would need to send it back to the county for another review.
Trepal said it’s not uncommon for communities to send zoning ordinance revisions to the county for review on multiple occasions, particularly if it’s a comprehensive overhaul.
Tedesco said it’s not his responsibility to make a recommendation to the borough council, which meets at 6 p.m. Wednesday, as to whether the revised zoning ordinance should go back to the county.
He said the borough council now has a “clean code that’s ready to move along in the process” if the council is ready to take the next step, which would be to set a public hearing for the revised ordinance.
Some residents, though, are not pleased with the current state of the ordinance and believe more time should be taken to explain to residents the rationale behind some of the proposed changes.
At a Planning Commission meeting in June, Greg Woznak asked the panel not to recommend the borough council adopt the plan, saying additional working sessions were needed. Several other Crafton residents expressed their concerns with the ordinance at that same meeting, but the commission went ahead and recommended the council adopt the new zoning ordinance. That prompted the council to send it to the county for review, which was required before the borough council could actually adopt it.
Cody Sheets, who spoke at that same meeting and has followed the zoning ordinance revision closely, said this week he has several concerns about the proposed ordinance, but the main one pertains to a lack of square footage requirements for residential units.
Sheets said he’s concerned the lack of space requirements would enable developers to build tiny units – as small as 160-square-feet – to get the most bang for their buck, and they could take advantage of people with public housing vouchers.
“It crunches people down to incredibly small apartments,” Sheets said.
Nicole Currivan, another Crafton resident, said she shared those concerns and said dwelling units that are too small would impact the mental health of those living there.
“It’s my personal desire to protect mental heath and quality of life – I’d prioritize that over what a developer wants any day of the week,” she said. “But you shouldn’t have to pick one over the other.”
Currivan said she’s not so much concerned about the amount of development that might be triggered by the new ordinance as she is the types of development.
“We need to ensure that developments are designed in a way to benefit everyone in the community,” she said. “If you build dwellings, you want them to be affordable but also to enhance people’s quality of life. If you have a 200-square-foot jail cell-sized apartment, who is that benefiting? Does it benefit the person who lives there?”
But Tedesco said Monday that providing flexibility regarding square footage requirements “maximizes housing accessibility and is in tune with zoning best practices.”
Tedesco also pointed out that Trepal noted the revised ordinance allows for mixed-use developments in what had been strictly commercial areas and this would result in expanded housing choices. That’s because the revised ordinance would allow property owners to develop residential projects above existing commercial establishments.
Tepal wrote in his review that went to the borough that this would help further implement Crafton-Ingram Thrive, a joint comprehensive plan that Crafton completed with neighboring Ingram.
Sheets said he’s also concerned because the new zoning ordinance does not include any sort of impact analysis study – a look at how new development would impact the community in the areas of public safety, infrastructure, home values, population density, schools and more.
Without such an analysis, Sheets said, the borough might find itself trying to put out fires in these areas 10 years down the road. Sheets circulated a petition and obtained 130 signatures of people asking for an impact analysis to be done, but the Planning Commission did not act on it when it was submitted at the June 24 meeting.
Tedesco said there’s “no such thing as a zoning impact analysis because it quickly becomes a speculative exercise that rests on nothing more than assumptions.”
However, Tedesco said, there are impact analyses that are triggered by specific development proposals. “These analyses don’t rest on assumptions but on the facts of an actual development application,” he said. “Furthermore, our schools and infrastructure already are sized for a larger population than what we have now, so there is plenty of room for absorption.”
Tedesco said because growth doesn’t occur overnight, borough leaders will have “plenty of time” to decide how best to manage potential impacts to public safety in the event that growth does occur.
Tedesco said he thinks it’s important to reiterate that “fears of the impacts of growth are speculative and misplaced” because developers have had the ability to invest in new projects under the current zoning ordinance and that hasn’t happened.
“For instance, a developer can build a 100-foot-tall apartment building in Crafton right now under our current code,” Tedesco said. “The big change from the old code to the new code is the new code requires developers to build more responsibly and in tune with the character of Crafton, as the county’s review validates.”
But Sheets and Currivan are not convinced. Currivan said she also has concerns about potential development’s impacts on things like the borough’s infrastructure – in fact, she said she’s already seen those impacts with the limited development that’s occurred in Crafton in recent years.
“There are new townhouses on my street without a shred of green – no landscaping at all,” she said.
Currivan said that just as important as the specific aspects of the new ordinance, she believes borough residents are concerned about the ordinance revision process itself.
“The trust with the community has been broken with this,” she said. “That’s what’s problematic. The community needs to feel that their concerns are going to be heard, and I don’t think that’s happening.”
Sheets said he did appreciate the public engagement sessions that the borough has held during the past couple years. And he said there are some positive aspects to the revised ordinance, pointing specifically to its business development aspect. And even in terms of impacts, he said he’s not suggesting the new ordinance will trigger a “doomsday scenario.”
But like Currivan, he said he questions whether the public’s input was truly taken into consideration by the decision-makers and pointed to his petition as evidence to the contrary.
“The fact that all that got completely ignored furthers the division between the administrative and elected officials and the residents,” he said. “And it furthers the distrust. It’s an accountability thing. A good faith thing. A listen to your citizens thing.”
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