Gloucester supervisors held a pair of public hearings at its meeting Tuesday night in the T.C. Walker Education Center Auditorium. The hearings were held to consider a revised zoning ordinance and amend the county’s budget for FY25.

Senior Comprehensive Planner Carol Rizzio discussed the changes to the zoning ordinance that were endorsed by the Gloucester County Planning Commission last month. The goal of the zoning ordinance revisions is for clarity and ease of use, Rizzio said.

One of the changes included reducing dwelling units from 12 to eight by right in the Village Mixed Use District (B-2).

During the public comment period, there were comments about removing the part of the draft ordinance that included cluster development from the ordinance.

Supervisors approved the amended zoning ordinance 7-0 with one change made to the recommended ordinance, removing the verbiage in 5.20.1-5.20.2 that included the intent for RC-1–RC-2 cluster development.

The board also appended and reenacted appendix B zoning of the Gloucester County Code and to adopt an official zoning map depicting the current zoning districts in the county, with the exception of one parcel of land, 10.65 +/- acres in total, located in the Gloucester Point Magisterial District, and currently zoned RMX, residential mixed use, that will be changed to B-2, Village Mixed Use since the RMX district was not included in the amended ordinance.

The board further moved that the county sponsor a rezoning application for the subject property (tax map #51-58, RPC #40099) from B-2 zoning district to B-1 zoning district.

There was also a resolution to remove all fees from the zoning ordinance and adopt the official Gloucester County fee schedule. The board approved it in a vote of 7-0.

The entire zoning ordinance final draft (with changes in bold) can be found at https://gloucesterva.gov/planning-zoning/zoning-ordinance-update.

There also was a public hearing to amend the FY25 budget to which the board approved in a 7-0 vote.