Changes to planning regulations proposed

The Spokane Valley City Council is considering changes to its planning regulations that would ensure that vehicles parked in driveways wouldn’t jut out into road and that would only require houses to be built five feet from their side property lines, regardless of their height.

The amendment also would clean up some clumsy portions of the city’s interim comprehensive land-use plan, which Spokane Valley adopted from Spokane County when it incorporated. The code includes regulations that don’t apply to urban areas and there are some redundancies and ambiguities in the law, Community Development Director Marina Sukup said.

“(The amendments) would make it much simpler for us to enforce and for our customers to understand,” she said.

The proposed changes include:

• Reducing the minimum amount of space between the front property line and the front of a house to 15 feet from 25 feet.

• Reducing the minimum amount of space between the side of a house and the side property line to five feet, regardless of the home’s height. Currently, builders must go in five feet from the side property line for every story of height the house has. For example, a two-story house must sit 10 feet from the side property line.

During a Planning Commission meeting last week, one commissioner objected to this proposal because he “felt only having a 5-foot setback between houses would create canyons,” Sukup said.

• Requiring at least 20 feet between garages and the right of way. Currently, there aren’t specific rules for the distance between roads and garages.

“The real purpose of that setback is to see that the cars don’t overhang the street,” Sukup said.

• Increasing the length of backyards to 20 feet from 15 feet.

“People used to sit on their front porches,” Sukup said. “Since (the famous 20th century architect) Frank Lloyd Wright took America by storm, now people put more value in spending time in the backyard.”

The council is expected to vote on the proposals at its Aug. 10 meeting.