MARFA — The City of Marfa will hold a final public hearing at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 25, at the Casner Room at City Hall to hear any citizen feedback about six proposed changes to its zoning ordinance. After that, the City Council will likely vote to adopt the ordinance, signing it into law, after making any final changes and performing required readings.
The six changes — proposed by the Planning and Zoning (P&Z) Commission and first presented to council this fall — include restricting the construction of more than one kitchen in houses within the R-1 single-family residential district, making allowable home occupations less restrictive, reducing setbacks for corner lots, clarifying buildable lot sizes to match the existing plats within the city, allowing residential use of properties zoned industrial and allowing co-use of commercial properties as both businesses and residences.
The first public hearing was held on Monday, with a handful of citizens attending. The only person to speak publicly was Tony Georges, a citizen currently vying for a seat on the City Council, who asked council members to consider how the ordinance changes could positively impact city finances — a discussion he felt was overlooked.
In a follow-up with The Big Bend Sentinel, Georges explained the way the current ordinance is drafted it essentially doesn’t forbid co-use, but also does not explicitly allow it either, and recommends those using industrially-zoned properties as residences or commercial properties as both businesses and residences request a variance.
He asked council to consider adopting ordinance language so that those co-use properties “conform to the ordinance,” therefore bringing in additional revenue for the city.
“There is an aspect to adding conforming uses that is good fiscal policy for the city, because you can tax them, you can add trash uses, commercial and residential, you could add two of them to the same unit because it’s a co-use,” Georges said.
Councilmember Travis Acreman then gave a detailed slide presentation about the six proposed changes to the ordinance. He recommended a few additional tweaks to the ordinance language, to which other council members, including Raul Lara and Eddie Pallarez, felt it was best to defer to their attorney on the matter. That issue is set to be revisited on Thursday.
P&Z Chairman Stephen “Chick” Rabourn said he was supportive of the ordinance’s current form and felt like it achieved the commission’s six primary objectives.
The P&Z report and draft zoning amendments can be found on the city’s website, cityofmarfa.com/bc-planning