Arlington zoning chief Melinda Artman hopes to update the county's zoning code, at long last. (Photo: TBD Staff)

Arlington zoning chief Melinda Artman describes herself as “thick skinned." She has spent more than two decades in the world of municipal zoning, and she understands that someone in her position doesn’t win many popularity contests.

But she and her staff are working on a gargantuan task that she hopes will win her a few more fans: updating the county’s zoning code.

“Coming out of this, I’d love to see the headline ‘zoning administrator not completely evil,’” she says with a laugh.

By many accounts, Artman hasn’t been a favorite person among property and business owners. The zoning department’s enforcement of the sign law, as well as a decision regarding live music permit under Artman, have gotten negative responses.

And her reading of the code has been more literal than that of her predecessor, Terry Russell, which has at times resulted in a rather “black or white” approach to the county’s zoning rules, notes Arlington Chamber of Commerce president Phil Keating.

Russell had been with the county for more than 20 years, and businesses were able to navigate the code more easily under him, Keating says. “People were used to each other. There was probably some more flexibility in the system.”

Artman is sympathetic to the difficulties the code creates. When she came over to head up Arlington’s zoning division from Loudoun County two years ago, she found some laws that hadn’t had an overhaul since 1950.

“One of the things I notice as an outsider, is that the book is tremendously user-unfriendly,” she says. “The way one district builds upon another, you often cannot find in any one place in the ordinance what the rules are regarding your property.”

Sure, there are lots of “cutting-edge” parts of the ordinance that have been added as Arlington has pursued various growth strategies over the years. But there are others that have remained largely unchanged.

Examples of things that could use updating include the fact that taxidermy shops and something called dreying (which is defined as hauling goods on a horse-drawn cart) are still permitted land uses in the code; alternately, “you wouldn’t find the word deck anywhere in the zoning ordinance, so how can you find out if you are allowed to build one on the back of your house,” Artman says.

She has also heard the frustration of business owners who perceive Arlington’s zoning as anti-business, and acknowledges that her interpretation of the code is not based on unspoken agreements, but rather, what it says.

“Sometimes our practices, which have evolved over time, are not what the strict words of the ordinance say, and so, some in the industry are upset, and say ‘That’s not how your predecessor did it,’” she says. “I will respond, 'that may be true, but this is what the ordinance says.'”

The business community will likely be guarded in its views on the rewrite, at first, Keating says. “I think intent is good, and that this is overdue,” he says. “But obviously, when you’re changing things people are always concerned. The devil you know is better than devil you don’t know, that kind of thing.”

Artman says the she believes the process would work to allay people’s fears. “We’re trying to take the scary factor out of it, and emphasize right now that the effort is to make the document user friendly and understandable.”

And so she’s been “quietly building momentum” for a large-scale modernization of the zoning code for the past two years. The project would be a heavy lift, and it’s one that would go in phases.

One of the first priorities would be to identify the inconsistencies and other provisions that need to be updated, and sort them into shorter-term things that can be settled with a “quick hit” and larger items that will need more discussion. This sorting would be part of Phase I, which would take 12 months. Phase II, which would include the restructuring and reformatting of the code, as well as repairs to those minor, “quick hit” items, is estimated to take another 18 months. Phase III would take on the larger changes, and no time line is outlined for that at this point.

The zoning staff has drafted a plan for the rewrite that will be reviewed by the Zoning Commission tomorrow night. Artman would like to see staff get the go- ahead from the county board by the end of the year, although she acknowledges that competing priorities could affect the schedule. “They’ll need to understand all of the planning efforts that may be ongoing and how staff resources would be allotted,” she says.