These regulations are adopted for the following purposes:
A. To protect and provide for the public health, safety and general welfare of the city;
B. To guide the future growth and development of the city in accordance with the general plan;
C. To provide for adequate light, air and privacy, to secure safety from fire, flood and other danger, and to prevent overcrowding of the land and undue congestion of population;
D. To protect the character and the social and economic stability of all parts of the city and to encourage the orderly and beneficial development of the community through appropriate growth management techniques assuring the timing and sequencing of development, promotion of infill development in existing neighborhoods and nonresidential areas with adequate public facilities, to assure proper urban form and open space separation of urban areas, to protect environmentally critical areas and areas premature for urban development;
E. To protect and conserve the value of land throughout the city and the value of buildings and improvements upon the land, and to minimize the conflicts among the uses of land and buildings;
F. To guide public and private policy and action in order to provide adequate and efficient transportation, water, sewerage, parks, open space, recreation, and other public requirements and facilities;
G. To provide the most beneficial relationship between the uses of land and buildings and the circulation of traffic throughout the city, having particular regard to the avoidance of congestion in the streets and highways and the pedestrian traffic movements appropriate to the various uses of land and buildings, and to provide for the proper location and width of streets and building lines;
H. To establish reasonable standards of design and procedures for subdivisions and resubdivisions in order to further the orderly layout and use of land, and to ensure proper legal descriptions and monumenting of subdivided land;
I. To ensure that public facilities and services are available concurrent with development and will have a sufficient capacity to serve the proposed subdivision and that the community will be required to bear no more than its fair share of the cost of providing the facilities and services through requiring the developer to pay fees, furnish land, provide water, or establish mitigation measures to ensure that the development provides its fair share of capital facilities needs generated by the development;
J. To prevent the pollution of air, streams and ponds; to assure the adequacy of drainage facilities; to safeguard the water table, and to encourage the wise use and management of natural resources throughout the city in order to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the community and the value of the land. Further, to establish standards for the development of land within the city which possess natural or manmade hazards, natural resource amenities, or other qualities of benefit to the city. To this end, it is necessary to impose special regulations to minimize vegetation removal, soil and slope instability, loss of designated wetlands, erosion and water runoff, impairment of aesthetic qualities, including scenic vistas, to retain open space, to keep important agricultural lands in production, and to maintain recreational access corridors within linear natural drainage systems. Regulations of this title are designed to prevent the encroachment of developments into sensitive lands which would be contrary to the objectives and characteristics of the city;
K. To provide for open spaces through the most efficient design and layout of the land, including the use of average density in providing for minimum width and area of lots, while preserving the density of development as established in the zoning ordinance of the city;
L. To ensure that land is subdivided only when subdivision is necessary to provide for uses of land for which market demand exists and which are in the public interest;
M. To remedy the problems associated with inappropriately subdivided lands, including premature subdivision, excess subdivision, partial or incomplete subdivision, scattered and low grade subdivision. (Ord. 2007-05, 5-16-2007)