By JOAN McCOY
Leader staff writer
The Beebe City Council passed ordinances Monday night that will make it easier to redevelop the downtown area but did so without the emergency clauses that have become customary for city ordinances.
Mayor Mike Robertson and Clerk-Treasurer Carol Crump-Westergren said after the meeting that emergency clauses, which make an ordinance the law immediately, have been successfully challenged in court.
The council action that let the city clean up the dead blackbirds on New Year’s Day was an emergency, Crump-Westergren said. However, she has attended meetings for city clerks recently where the emphasis has been on the overuse of emergency clauses.
Since 2006, zoning laws have been in place to help give new life to downtown Beebe, largely at the request of the mayor’s father, W.L. Robertson, who said back then that he was inspired by Hardy, Arkansas, where the second stories of downtown businesses are used as apartments like they were when the town was built. He has four buildings in the downtown area that he would like to use in that way, he told The Leader in 2005.
When Arkansas’ towns and cities were built, merchants often operated stores on the ground level and lived on the second floor. That’s what the elder Robertson wanted and what the council approved five years ago.
Then, in 2010 at the request of the planning commission, the council amended the zoning ordinance to allow entire buildings to be used as residences. And Monday night, again at the request of the planning commission, the council removed the restriction against children in downtown apartments.
The following section was removed from the zoning ordinance: “Residential use in C-1 district is restricted to adult use only. No children under the age of 18 years of age permitted as resident. Under no circumstance shall more than two occupants be permitted per rental unit.”
Mayor Robertson said Mon-day night that he believes allowing children to live in downtown Beebe is a mistake because there is little for them to do there. But the planning commission recommended it and the council approved, so he will go along with it.
The council also approved ordinances that will make it easier to build churches in any zone and to use those downtown buildings as residences. Before, both required a conditional use permit which had to be approved by the planning commission and the city council. Now all that is required is a special use permit that can be approved by the city’s code officer.
And coming soon, the mayor said, is an ordinance that will allow antique stores and flea markets in the C-1 areas of Main and Center streets.
Leonard Fort, the city’s code enforcement officer, said there are currently two such businesses on Main Street, which is why the mayor says the zoning law should be changed to allow them.
Antique stores and flea markets are found in every downtown area in the country, Fort said. They bring people in.
In other business, the council passed an ordinance establishing a city department of parks and recreation and a seven-member parks and recreation committee to help run it. The members of the committee will be appointed by the mayor and approved by the council.
Committee recommendations for the parks must be approved by the city council.
