ORANGE : Council Delays Vote on Setting Design Standards for Old Towne

City Council members came close to adopting revised design standards for the Old Towne historic district this week but at the last minute postponed a vote when opponents protested that they had not had time to study the new proposal.

The council had been set to vote in April on the revised standards, which were eight years in the drafting. They deferred action then, however, until an ad hoc committee of council members and a planning commissioner could rewrite the document, removing esoteric terms and making it more “user-friendly.”

The document presented at Tuesday’s council meeting had “12% less jargon,” community development director Jack McGee wrote in an accompanying memo.

But specific questions from the audience about the meaning of terms such as “dominant color” and technical references to building materials led the council to conclude that the document was still not quite friendly enough.

The original standards, adopted in 1988, focused primarily on commercial buildings and the “core downtown” area, said John Godlewski, zoning enforcement officer. The revisions add more specifics about residential properties.

The group of two dozen property rights advocates has opposed adoption of the new document, objecting in principle to putting restrictions on what they can do with their property.

The council voted to consider the issue again at its June 13 meeting.