Sweeping changes are coming to the city’s land use plan, a document that hasn’t been updated since 1989.

One of the components of that was discussed at this evening’s city council work session — proposed revisions to the city’s land use ordinance, which will be the subject of a public hearing at next Tuesday’s regular council meeting.

Dale Holland of Holland Consulting Planners presented an overview of the revisions at the work session.

Updating these ordinances, Holland said, is needed, “To make them consistent with current state statutes. They are text changes only; not map changes.”

One of the key changes in the revisions would make the city’s planning board more active, Planning and Development Director Kelly Lasky said following the work session.

That change is to delete all references to special use permits, which were done without planning board review and use the name conditional use permit, giving the planning board the authority to review what were special use permits and conditional use permits.

“There’s no distinguishing between conditional use permits and special use permits,” Holland told council. “They are used interchangeably.”

Once council approves the revisions the term special use permit will be struck from the ordinance and replaced with the term conditional use permit.

The ordinance will add definitions of solar energy systems and wind farms and will provide guidance on legislative and quasi-judicial procedures for rezoning matters and ordinance amendments.

The proposed revisions delete parallel conditional use districts, more commonly referred to as overlay districts. “They can’t be imposed,” Holland said. “It’s a very demanding thing for a limited size staff. If you have 20 in Roanoke Rapids you’ve got 20 sets of regulations.”

The last proposed revision amends wireless communication facilities to comply with the United States Telecommunications Act of 1996 and clarifies the approval process.

Having these amendments in place, Holland said, will make the land use plan stronger when that revamping is completed.

Lasky said following the meeting she would like to get started on the land use plan by the end of the year. “The current plan was done in 1989 when it projected a city of 20,000 people.”