Jacksboro council talks zoning changes

The Jacksboro City Council held a public hearing and discussed overall changes to the city’s zoning ordinance and map during their meeting Monday, Feb. 10.

Only one citizen participated in the public hearing and asked what was the primary focus of the changes.

“This has been about a two, two and a half year process,” City Manager Mike Smith said. “Our current zoning ordinance is somewhat antiquated and it really didn’t fit for what the city of Jacksboro was or wanted to be.”

He said the zoning area has been divided into 11 different classes of districts, two single family areas, two multi-family areas, one manufactured home area, three commercial areas, a thoroughfare commercial-light manufacturing area, a manufacturing area and planned development.

“This is a complete overhaul of what we have today,” Smith said. “It doesn’t significantly change your residential areas, but it does focus more on the commercial more than anything else.”

After Smith’s comment, the city council voted to end the public hearing and Smith further explained the proposed ordinance outside of the hearing.

One of the changes in the recommended zoning ordinance is the reduction of three single family zones down to two.

“The difference in all of them was minimum building size and minimum lot sizes,” Smith said of the three zones. “We all kind of recognized, the difference between SF2 and SF3 was not real great and there were a lot of lots that were in SF3, for instance, that could not meet that minimum building size if you were to tear that structure down and rebuild.”

Smith said the minimum house size for single family zone one will be 1,200 square feet while the minimum house size in zone two will be 1,000 square feet.

“The goal going in this whole rezoning was that we would not have to come back to you a frequent basis to do some rezoning,” Smith said. “The intent was this is it and we hope that it meets our growth and our future growth. That the BZA would have limited variance request and the planning and zoning commission would not meet on as frequent basis as it has the last couple of years.”

The Jacksboro City Council will vote on the ordinance during their Monday, Feb. 24, meeting.

For the full story, see the Wednesday, Feb. 19, edition of the Jacksboro Herald-Gazette.