Havre de Grace officials encourage residents to make their thoughts on the city's ongoing comprehensive rezoning known, as they will figure prominently during the shaping the first major overhaul of the zoning code since it was established 33 years ago.
"We are very happy to hear what you have to say," City Council President Bill Martin said before a public hearing on the zoning ordinance Monday. "We will take notes, and everything you say will be put into consideration."
Another public hearing is scheduled for the March 16 council meeting, and council members plan to hold several work sessions on the matter.
Martin said council members will consider public comments as they discuss rezoning during the work sessions.
"Your comments are not only welcome, but your comments on this are very important, so please feel free to speak on anything that may concern you, and this will not be the last public work session," Martin stressed. "We will have many more."
Monday's hearing was the second since the rezoning ordinance, Ordinance 966, was introduced by the council earlier this year.
Two people spoke Monday about aspects of the sweeping ordinance.
Dr. Dahlia Hirsch, who said she was also speaking on behalf of her sisters and Allen Fair, local real estate developer, said properties "up the hill" along side streets off Route 155 in the northern end of the city, as well as those along select blocks of Stokes Street and Revolution Street, should be "zoned in accordance with the adjacent and nearby current uses."
"We're asking to actually be zoned in accordance, and there's a flexibility in the future to be useful to those [surrounding] properties and to be meaningful to the city and add to the city's tax base," she said.
Havre de Grace attorney Robert Carson said he was speaking on behalf of clients who own waterfront property throughout the city, except for the parcels along Water Street that have been purchased by Harford County.
Duplexes and townhouses can be built along the waterfront as "a matter of right" under the current zoning code, and Carson said his clients want it to stay that way under the new code, rather than the language in the proposed code that permits duplexes and townhouses only as a conditional use.
He asked city officials to "permit duplex and townhouses as a matter of right rather than have it go through a conditional use application, go through two hearings and maybe the Circuit Court."
"This deters development and is not good for my clients, and they would prefer as a matter of right in the RB-1 and in the waterfront overlay district, these uses," Carson continued, citing the Residential Business-1 and waterfront districts, which are among the new districts proposed as part of the zoning overhaul.
The schedule for work sessions on the rezoning has not been finalized, and dates must be coordinated with council budget work sessions and meetings of the citizen advisory board on the replacement of Amtrak's Susquehanna River Rail Bridge, Councilman Fred Cullum said.