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By Judy Stiles

The Kill Devil Hills Planning Board reelected Howard Buchanan to serve another term as chairperson for the board during the first new business item its Oct. 18 meeting.

Assistant planning director Cameron Ray presented a proposed amendment to 153.076 (A)(9)h and 153.076(D), Off-Street Parking and Loading, as the second new business item. This amendment would create parking and driveway requirements for emergency services facilities and provide adequate standards for the emergency service uses.

During the site plan design process for the proposed Kill Devil Hills Fire and Dare County Emergency Medical Services joint facility, it was discovered that the town code provisions do not address off-street parking and loading requirements for the land use. The proposed amendment requires emergency services to have one parking space per employee and an additional space per 200 square feet of training facility and customer service areas. Additionally, the proposed amendment creates special requirements to serve the needs of emergency services, including a maximum entrance width of 115 feet.

Kill Devil Hills planning staff members recommended the Planning Board review and forward the proposed amendment and consistency statement to the Board of Commissioners (BOC) with a favorable recommendation. The board voted in favor of sending the proposed amendment forward to the BOC.

The final new business item was a report on Kill Devil Hills’ new contract with Stewart Engineering Community Planning Group. Planning director Meredith Guns and Ray will work with the Stewart Engineering project team to focus on revising and updating to Chapter 153 zoning code of the Kill Devil Hills Code of Ordinances. The previous update was done in 1999.

The updated zoning code is intended to improve overall structure readability and composition of the ordinance. Additionally, the update will focus on revisions to reflect existing practices and revise regulations to meet the town’s goal to remove conflicts among all the revisions and create a user-friendly document while incorporating the best practices on topics such as nonconformances, commercial site plan review and redevelopment standards.

The Planning Board will serve as the steering committee tasked with reviewing materials, providing reactions to proposed revisions and keeping stakeholders informed.

The next steps are for planning staff members to refine the scope and proposed revisions with Stewart Engineering, meet with stakeholders on Oct. 24 and begin the work of revising the ordinances. The final revised code is scheduled to be reviewed and adopted by the Kill Devil Hills Board of Commissioners in March 2023.

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