Last week, the Huntingdon County Planning Commission used a portion of its regular monthly meeting to review and comment on the latest draft to a proposed Warriors Mark Township Zoning ordinance.
The effort of the county planners is just one of many steps in a process leading to the possible adoption of a zoning ordinance by the Warriors Mark Township supervisors.
The idea of zoning has been in the works for quite awhile in the growing community of 1,600 in the northwest part of Huntingdon County. For the last several months, township planners and supervisors have worked on the document prepared by consultants Thomas R. Deans Associates. Public hearings have been held by both the township planning commission and by the supervisors. Written public comment has also been accepted.
County planner Richard Stahl said his board reviewed a second draft of the Warriors Mark Zoning ordinance in compliance with the Pennsylvania Municipal Planning Code requirements.
“Under the state planning code, the county planning commission is required (to make a review and offer comments) whenever a zoning ordinance is proposed,” said Stahl.
“In this case we have had a couple of drafts,” said Stahl. “So, when they make a substantial revision in the draft, they send that revision back to us. We are not interested in typographical or incidental changes.
“The changes here were pretty substantial,” explained Stahl. “It (our comments) are sent back to the supervisors and a copy is sent to the township planning commission, consultants, (etc.)
“We made note that most of our previous comments had been taken into account in the revised draft,” said Stahl.
He expressed that county planners were pleased with the changes the township had made from the first draft.
“We noted a couple of technical comments dealing with certain language in the ordinance,” said Stahl. “On the zoning map, we noticed they have gone from one extreme to the other. The first map, we had commented it had too much room for development. (On) the present map, we thought it might have gone too far the other way,… perhaps too much planned development area had been taken off the map.”
Stahl explained the comments this time around aren’t nearly as substantial as after the review of the first draft by county planners in May.
“This is a fairly short letter, regarding technical language,” said Stahl. “Our first letter was several pages long, this is a page and a half.”
The Warriors Mark supervisors have continued to receive feedback from the public on the proposed zoning ordinance. Recently, a group of citizens mounted a postcard campaign regarding residential growth zoning in the village area of the township. The card also asked supervisors to deny approval to a 253-unit Raspberry Ridge subdivision. It also indicated opposition to a sewage treatment facility.
As of the supervisors’ regular October meeting earlier this month, 675 cards had been mailed with 531 being returned to the township.
