June 15, 2021–9:27 p.m.
STAFF REPORTS
A kickoff meeting was held Tuesday to mark the start of the process to update and simplify Rome and Floyd County’s Unified Land Development Code.
The current code is nearly 20-years old.
During the process, consultants from Town Planning & Urban Design Collaborative, LLC will be assisting the City and County with the project.
Brian Wright, the team leader with TPUDC. said modernizing the code would protect the most-loved parts of the city and county, enhance areas that need improvement, create something for everyone and more predictable outcomes, balance all modes of transportation, enhance the economic vitality of the area, and be easier to use and administer.
“So you come in, maybe you’re a developer, and ask what you can do with your property, and maybe you don’t get the most direct answer,” he said. “It’s not because someone in the office is trying to be vague, it’s just that there is room for improvement in the document. So, we are going to seek to really sort it all out to where there is not a bunch of subjectivity and things that are not clear. We want to make it to where anyone can understand it, not just the developers.”
Wright spoke about the next steps in the process.
“We are going to set up our office here for a number of days,” he said. “We are going to live here, submerse ourselves, and understand this place as best we can. The whole thing is going to be open. You can come in at any time, and we are going to have meetings with different topics, and we’ll have experts there from different departments of the city and county. It’s just going to be open.”
You can sign up for website updates at unifiedrfcode.com, visit the “get involved” section of the website for interactive activities that will be posted soon.
Most importantly, share your ideas and feedback with the team.