The Wayland City Planning Commission Tuesday evening had three public hearings on zoning text amendments and eventually voted unanimously to recommend them to the City Council.
Perhaps most satisfying was the amendment for the sign ordinance to make it compatible with the 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling insisting all local ordinances be content neutral.
Chairman J.D. Gonzales noted the commission has been dealing with signs, with varying degrees of success for 19 years.
City Manager Josh Eggleston said the commission’s action was needed “because basically our ordinance did not follow the law.”
Zoning Enforcement Administrator Lori Castello of Professional Code Inspections walked commissioners through the provisions of the text amendments and commented, “We reorganized the sign ordinance because it wasn’t very user friendly” and it was important to follow court guidelines of being content neutral and protecting freedom of speech.
The other two text amendments recommended for council approval dealt with accessory units and what is and isn’t permitted in residential districts (R-1 and R-2) to allow for more flexibility for single-family housing and with regulations for converting single-family housing into duplexes of multi-family dwellings.
Eggleston told commissioners that Thursday there will three finalists for firms to guide updating of the master plan and he invited members to sit in in via Zoom is they so wish.
The city manager also said it would be wise to start thinking about the possibility that the virtual meetings will morph into in-person sessions as early as next month.