Champaign on Smaller Houses and Cannabis Fines

In a follow up on the City of Champaign's struggle with big houses on smaller lots, it looks like how the city plans to address it has been decided. What comes next will be the specific language to be drafted. From the News-Gazette yesterday:

Champaign council OKs creation of zoning amendment on house-to-lot ratios
...
The plan is to replace "floor-area ratio" rules with new ones called "maximum lot coverage." City staff say that the latter is a more commonly used standard.

The city defines floor-area ratio as a building's gross floor area — excluding attached garages, utility areas and underground living space — divided by the lot area it sits on.

Maximum lot coverage, on the other hand, is defined as a building's footprint area — including attached garages and utility areas inside the home only — divided by the lot area. The most a building could have is 35 percent lot coverage...

Several Clark Park residents heavily criticized the maximum lot coverage idea at a public meeting last week. They don't like how, as written now, it would allow for a house that's upward of 6,000 square feet...

Other new requirements are bundled in with the maximum lot coverage proposal:

— Limiting single-family homes to being two-and-a-half stories high.

— Reducing house-side setbacks from six feet to five.

— Having setback flexibility that allows access to detached rear garages.

— Creating context-sensitive front yard setbacks that take into account the current 25-foot regulation and fitting in with the aesthetic of a neighborhood.

More details on that at the full article here. And on City of Champaign cannabis fines from the News-Gazette today:

Champaign council to study lowering fines for pot possession
The Champaign City Council is putting in motion a process that could lead to lower fines for adults in possession of cannabis, similar to an initiative launched in Urbana two years ago.

It made no sense to council member Clarissa Nickerson Fourman — who received support from all of her colleagues for a study session on the subject — why a person could be arrested on one side of Wright Street, and receive a fine of just $50 on the other, for the same crime.

"This is affecting low-income and minority people in my district," Fourman said. "If we want this twin cities thing to be easy and seamless, then you can't have this difference."

Initially, Fourman wanted the city to lower the fines for people 18 and older, but after some pushback from council members, she rewrote the language asking for a study on marijuana fines and how they compare to similarly sized cities elsewhere in the country.

The amended request was that the study session focus on adults over the age of 21 and take place sometime in the next three months.

When Urbana lowered its penalty for possessing less than 30 grams of cannabis — from $300 to $50 — misdemeanor charges for cannabis possession went down while the number of tickets issued for state civil and city-ordinance violations reached a 10-year high.

Now, felony charges for cannabis possession in Urbana are rare.

More at the full article here, including more council member statements.