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Chapel Hill Planners Corey Liles and Alissa Rodgers explain recent changes made by the NC General Assembly to uopdate the NC General Statutes containing rules for how local municipalities and counties regulate development.
Chapter 160D and various related provisions were established under Session Law 2019-111, enacted in July 2019. Previously, the statutes were divided into two sections – Chapter 153A contained rules for counties and Chapter 160A addressed towns and cities.
The General Assembly consolidated these statutes under a new chapter heading so that the rules for local jurisdictions could be organized in a more logical and coherent manner. The law called Chapter 160D also clarifies some areas of authority for local governments and modernizes the state rules for planning and development. This modernization of the state statutes is what creates the need for the Town to update its policies. These changes are on the September 30 council agenda at this week’s Council meeting.
One practical consequence of the changes is that the quasi judicial special use permit that was previously paired with conditional use district will be phased out. Instead large projects will use the conditional zoning legislative process.
Here is the Town’s information page on the subject.