17.05.010 Purpose | Stanwood Municipal Code

17.05.010 Purpose.

The purpose of this code is to establish standards, procedures, and minimum requirements to achieve the following general intentions and purposes for the city of Stanwood:

(1) To establish regulatory procedures and standards for review and approval of all proposed development in the city;

(2) To foster and preserve public health, safety, comfort, and welfare, and to aid in the harmonious, orderly, aesthetically pleasing, and socially beneficial development of the city, in accordance with the Comprehensive Plan;

(3) To adopt a development review process that is:

(a) Efficient, in terms of time and expense,

(b) Effective, in terms of addressing the natural, historic, and aesthetic resources and public facility implications of any proposed development, while also protecting and improving the quality of life in the city, and

(c) Equitable, in terms of consistency with established regulations and procedures, respect for the rights of all property owners, and consideration of the interests of the citizens and residents of the city;

(4) To implement the Comprehensive Plan of the city by:

(a) Establishing regulations and conditions governing the erection and use of buildings and other structures and the uses of land planned for the future as specified in the Comprehensive Plan,

(b) Securing safety from fire, panic, and other dangers,

(d) Providing for adequate light and air,

(e) Preventing the overcrowding of land,

(f) Avoiding undue congestion of population and facilitating the adequate provision of transportation, potable water, wastewater disposal, schools, parks, and other public requirements of the city,

(g) Dividing the city into zoning districts, defining certain terms, designating the uses and intensities thereof that are permitted in the different districts, and providing lot size and other dimensional and density requirements,

(h) Establishing performance standards that apply to all new development as well as the redevelopment of all lands in the city,

(i) Continuing a planning commission, including the composition of its membership and powers and duties of said commission, and

(j) Defining the functions of the planning department and city council and other relevant agencies with respect to the administration and enforcement of this code;

(5) To regulate the subdivision of land to ensure that adequate drainage facilities are provided in developing portions of the city; to promote coordinated land development; and to require uniform monumenting of land subdivisions and conveyance by accurate legal description;

(6) To regulate the division of land into nine or fewer lots, parcels, sites, or short plat subdivisions;

(7) To be consistent with the city of Stanwood’s Comprehensive Plan by ensuring that all development in the city will be served by adequate public facilities;

(8) To require that all new land development activity contribute its proportionate share of the funds, land, and/or public facilities necessary to accommodate the impacts that such new development has on public facilities and services having a rational nexus to the proposed development and for which the need is reasonably attributable to the proposed development;

(9) To provide for a penalty for the violation of this code;

(10) To minimize and/or avoid public nuisances by preventing incompatible uses from locating adjacent or within close proximity to one another, and/or by conditioning certain uses in particular circumstances, thereby restricting those aspects of the uses that may be incompatible. (Ord. 1398 § 10, 2015; Ord. 929 Ch. 1, 1995).