Occupancy, water conservation ordinances head to council

CHENEY — The Planning Commission is advancing two ordinances, one dealing with residential occupancy and one with water conservation measures including landscaping limitations, to the City Council for consideration at upcoming meetings.

Both ordinances were subjects of several meetings and public hearings held in 2019 and 2020, but tabled after COVID-19 pandemic health and safety protocols limited public governmental meetings.

Occupancy has generated the most repeat complaints from Cheney residents. These stem mostly from the number of unrelated individuals living in a home in what is referred to as the “functional family” in city codes and how that definition impacts such things as parking and noise complaints in neighborhoods and ultimately whether or not the codes on the number of unrelated persons allowed is enforceable.

Senior planner Brett Lucas reminded the commission at its Feb. 8 meeting that proposed changes recommended to council removed the functional family language from the current code. Instead, the city will adhere to federal and state fair housing laws while adopting the International Property Maintenance Code standards for minimum per person area requirements for bedrooms as well as overcrowding.

Those codes require every living room to contain not less than 120 square feet and every bedroom not less than 70 square feet with every room occupied by more than one person not being less than 50 square feet of floor space for each occupant. They also address minimum area requirements where allowing occupancy below the minimum would be considered overcrowding and subjecting the residents — or landlords — to some form of penalty.

The changes also make failure to follow the occupancy codes punishable by penalties already established by the city. Those state that each day the violation is not remedied is considered a new violation, with the first violation carrying a $250 fine, the second separate violation $500 and a third separate violation $1,000.

“The commission recommended approval at the March 9 (2020) meeting,” Lucas said. “It does not need to come back to the commission unless you want to revisit it.”

As with occupancy, municipal code proposals dealing with water conservation and landscaping was discussed at meetings in late 2019 and 2020. Changes center on conservation measures derived from encouraging use of low-water-demand foliage, irrigation requirements and a push to utilize the practice of xeriscaping, a type of landscaping that requires little or no irrigation and often incorporates local dryland vegetation.

Information previously presented indicated 90-95 % of Cheney’s single-family neighborhoods have traditional grass lawns, according to satellite imagery, while the city’s water conservation plan anticipated an 11-foot decline in Cheney’s water supply levels by 2026. Implementation of a water conservation plan would shave about four feet off this decline, with the remaining seven feet needing to be addressed via other methods.

The proposed ordinance calls upon water conservation methods that first limit the amount of water-intensive foliage such as turf grass to “no more than 50 percent of the project’s landscaped area if non-drought resistant grass is used” and no more than 75 percent if drought-resistant grass is planted. Low-demand foliage “well-suited to the climate, soils and topographic conditions of the site” would be encouraged, with plants having similar irrigation requirements grouped together in “distinct hydrozones” irrigated on separate system circuits.

Lucas told commissioners on Monday that homeowners had expressed concerns about these measures with regards to existing lawns.

“This only applies to new construction and new homes,” Lucas said. “Anybody that has an existing home, their landscaping would be grandfathered in as part of this ordinance.”

To get residents to buy into the conservation measures, the city would institute a rebate program to cover some of the costs of either replacing existing landscaping, if desired, or using the practices in new development. The money would be allocated through the annual budgeting process, with discussions revolving around using the city’s tiered water billing system as a source for those funds.

The conservation requirements also meet some water conservation measures being considered by council. Like the occupancy ordinance, Lucas said the water conservation/landscaping ordinance would be presented to council for passage at an upcoming meeting.

John McCallum can be reached at jmac@cheneyfreepress.com.