The Ordinance

My first project that I have been working on was an Ordinance to designate the historic “main street” section of downtown Nocona as well as the modern thoroughfare along Highway 82, since that is where most visitors and passersby get their first real taste of Nocona. 

The City Council passed a similar ordinance trying to protect the original Clay Street block (essentially “Main Street”) a few years ago.  However, the original ordinance never had any “bite” to it.  There were no penalties, no strict guidelines, and no way to enforce the ordinance.  We also wanted to expand the area covered by the ordinance to include the streets and blocks surrounding Clay Street, as well as include the Highway 82 area within the city limits.

I began by researching similar projects undertaken by other cities.  There are different levels of the idea of creating a district that can be enforced by an ordinance that forces property owners to upkeep and use their properties for specified uses, and to protect existing structures.  While the buildings in the Clay street area are historical, many of them are being completely rebuilt instead of restored to their original shape, and the highway 82 area is not historically significant.  This makes it difficult to create a traditional Historic District as recognized by the Texas Historical Commission.  Plus, a historic district has much stricter guidelines than we wanted to impose on the property owners in Nocona. 

Instead, I found what are called Conservation Districts.  The City of Dallas uses them to conserve housing neighborhoods that exhibit certain architectural styles and have a certain character or cultural heritage that the city wants preserved.  I decided that a Conservation district – or in my case, two – would give me the ability to set some guidelines over what the owners of property in the districts could do with their buildings and property without having the requirements be too stringent.  So I created two different Conservation Districts:  The Downtown Nocona Conservation District, which goes along Highway 82 from city limit to city limit, and the Nocona Heritage Conservation District, which covers the Clay Street area and the surrounding blocks. 

It was a little difficult to write the ordinance because instead of creating a separate committee to overview applications for construction within the Conservation Districts, we decided to us the building Permitting Committee.  However, Nocona, being a small town, has never passed a building permitting code or process or a zoning ordinance.  The City Council is looking into passing the International Building Code, but has not yet.  So basically my ordinance is referencing a permitting committee that doesn’t exist yet.