At a meeting on Oct. 1 at the Canyon Community Center, the Springdale Planning Commission discussed draft regulations that would require enhanced buffering and screening where commercial properties abut residential uses in town.

The issue matters because the commission is trying to reduce visual and nuisance impacts on neighbors while balancing the property needs of small commercial parcels. The staff report presented three options — a narrow continuous fence, a wider discontinuous fence with berm and a large vegetated buffer — and commissioners spent the bulk of the meeting debating where fences must sit, who maintains landscaping and how to encourage neighbor-to-neighbor negotiation.

Planning staff contact Nile Connolly summarized the options: “this item is just carrying forward or carrying over from the last discussion, that you had, starting a conversation on how to create a group buffer between commercial uses and residential uses in town,” and explained that the staff report offers three alternative treatments with photographs and diagrams. Option 1 is a narrow buffer centered on a contiguous fence placed at or next to the commercial property line with about a 10-foot landscape zone. Option 2 is a discontinuous fence with a berm and a wider average buffer (the staff diagrams use a 15–25-foot range with a 20-foot average) and a combined berm-plus-fence height target (the draft text calls for a minimum combined height of about 7 feet). Option 3 is a large landscape buffer (examples in the packet suggest widths up to about 35 feet) without a continuous fence.

Commissioners raised repeated concerns about maintenance and placement. One commissioner asked how the code would prevent a commercial owner from placing a continuous fence several feet inside the commercial lot so that a narrow planted strip sits inside the residential parcel and is effectively inaccessible to the commercial owner, leaving the resident responsible for maintenance. Commissioners discussed prescriptive-easement problems if residents treat unmaintained planted strips as their own over many years. They also noted that trees would be planted at small sizes (staff noted new plantings would commonly be about 4 feet tall) and that visual and acoustic benefits grow only as vegetation matures (street comments referenced mature tree heights of about 15 feet).

Several commissioners favored keeping all three menu options available so property owners can choose a solution that fits lot size and use. “I actually personally like option 3 because I like the idea of trees and rocks and flowers and ground cover,” one commissioner said, while others said option 1 is the least land-intensive and therefore may be the only feasible choice on small commercial lots.

On placement the commission coalesced around two drafting changes: require that a continuous fence (option 1) be placed on or immediately adjacent to the commercial property line so it does not create an inaccessible planted strip on the residential side, and change the option-2 wording so the fence must be discontinuous (allowing landscaping on both sides and access for maintenance). Commissioners also discussed adding a predevelopment notification step so neighbors receive the landscaping plan before construction and have an opportunity to comment or negotiate an alternate, written agreement.

No ordinance was adopted at the meeting. Commissioners directed staff to return with revised draft language that: clarifies that option 1 continuous fences must be on or next to the property line; changes option 2 wording from “may be discontinuous” to “must be discontinuous”; preserves option 3 as an encouraged, wider vegetated buffer for appropriate sites; and proposes a simple resident-notification or coordination process for buffer plans. Staff were asked to bring back draft language and possible template language for negotiated agreements and to check legal risk areas such as prescriptive-easement consequences.

The commission did not take a recorded vote on any code change; the item was tabled for staff revision and future review.