The town council unanimously approved opening public comment on possible changes to the Ephesus-Fordham zoning district in their meeting Monday night.

Planning manager for sustainability John Richardson said these changes were introduced after the town received petitions from multiple advisory boards.

“The eight changes are being described as ‘potential short term modifications,” he said. “These are things that we the staff have developed in hearing from these boards.”

Some of the eight possible changes include enforcing a maximum building-block length and width, a minimum building height and requiring green spaces to be visible to the public.

“There’s a lot of things in the code that are unclear,” mayor Pam Hemminger said. “Some of these points were made to help make it more clear so we didn’t have confusion, which is what we’re hearing from the development world.”

The form-based code was approved by the council in 2014. It is intended to foster mixed-use developments and pedestrian-friendly districts by specifying building characteristics for potential developers. The form-based code is meant to attract certain types of development in a predictable way.

“This was an effort to move some smaller items that would yield us some better feeling results without compromising the form-based code,” Hemminger said. “I’m a big proponent of the form-based code, I think it’s great.”

The public hearing is scheduled for the next council meeting, which will be on March 14. The council will not make any decisions regarding these changes to the code until the following business meeting March 21.

The public will have a chance to speak at both meetings.

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