Chapel Hill’s effort to rewrite its Land Use Management Ordinance (LUMO) is now behind schedule, and the Chapel Hill Town Council recently heard an update on the plan to revise it at a work session on May 28. The council also discussed the need for more public input during the process.
The LUMO, which establishes rules and uses for all constructed elements of the town, has not been updated since 2003, and the rewrite aims to progress the current and future Chapel Hill plans created since.
According to Principal Planner Tasmaya Lagoo, staff planned to present a draft to the council in the spring of this year, but he said the document created at the end of last year failed to meet town expectations. While there is not a determined timeline for the new document, he said the next draft will likely not be in front of the council until 2026, with staff recommending an adoption that spring.
“The lead contractor of this project brought on new talent,” Lagoo said. “And we’re really excited [for them] to carry the baton and get us to the finish line of this project with a product that we know is going to meet staff standards and ultimately give us something we’re going to be proud of.”
In light of the delay, the council expressed interest in proposing text amendments to the current LUMO in the fall to help address high-priority areas more quickly, sharing potential topics during the session.
Many council members said they want to streamline the conditional zoning process, explore innovations in housing types, and maximize multifamily for-sale housing in town. Most also emphasized how the amendments should address tree protections and preserving natural greenspaces.
“It could be a year, year and a half, two years before anything gets really implemented out of our upcoming LUMO,” Council Member Melissa McCullough said. “I would like to get some protections in place before that.”
Lagoo also shared the design standards town staff are hoping to include in the rewritten ordinance, focusing on build-to-zones, transitional building heights, and street trees.
“Ultimately we have a real opportunity to modify some of our expectations in terms of design, in terms of building, and in the site layout in the new LUMO,” Lagoo said. “[We want] to make it a less subjective process, so when [developers] are coming into the process, they know exactly what the town expects from them in the delivery.”
Council Member Elizabeth Sharp emphasized how the standards should be closely tied to functionality to create a space the public will want to engage in, while also asking what the fallback plan is for when those standards are not financially viable.
“In my time on council, we consistently see developers coming before us saying this project is economically infeasible if we follow your standards, and therefore we need your permission to not follow your standards,” Sharp said. “I would really hate for us to set yet more standards that we’re going to constantly be asked to ignore, and I want to know how we get creative about what those standards are so that we don’t feel like we’ve set the wrong rules yet again, and yet we can still get successful spaces.”
But one of the biggest points of confusion for the council centered on how and when the public will help inform the upcoming LUMO rewrite.
In response to Council Member Adam’s Searing’s question about what text amendments the public wants to see, Lagoo said public engagement over the past year has focused on identifying problem areas with current users of the LUMO data, as well as making sure the community is informed about the rewrite process and the council’s priorities.
“I do not at all want to suggest that the community input isn’t a critical part of the LUMO rewrite,” Lagoo added. “There has been community input at every step of the multi-year process that weeds into the ordinance revision — the Comprehensive Plan, the Future Land Use Map, the Complete Communities [Strategy]. All those processes, they’re part of the bigger ecosystem that is the rewrite.”
He said the biggest LUMO-specific opportunity for public input will start with the legislative process to include public hearings and opportunities for community members to speak directly to the council.
But most council members expressed a desire for wider public feedback sooner. For example, Mayor Pro Tem Amy Ryan said the town has gone “too far” in cutting the community out of the conversation by only hearing them at a date closer to the council’s vote.
“It sounds to me that the community has been informed, which is great,” Ryan said. “But there hasn’t been opportunities to let them tell you what they’re interested in. And I think that’s a mistake.”
However, Council Member Paris Miller-Foushee said she does not share that sentiment of how the town has not been conducting “robust” public engagement, while also explaining why the process can be confusing for the council.
“I’m not really understanding what the pushback is in terms of what’s not being seen, what’s not being heard, and how it’s being incorporated in the process,” Miller-Foushee said. “But what I’m hearing from [town staff] is that there are stages to this, and there’s stages along the way in which that input is being incorporated, it’s just not clear to [the council] how it is.”
To view the full work session, click here.
Featured photo via the Town of Chapel Hill.
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