Will apply to specified areas
Manufactured housing soon will be allowed in the city of Benton, but in specified areas and with restrictions.
The city’s 10 City Council members on Monday night approved an ordinance that amends a previous ordinance governing mobile and manufactured homes in the city.
Alderman Charles Cun-ningham, who chairs the council’s Community Serv-ices Committee, said a committee has been studying the issue for 18 months.
The study included a review of Ordinance 22 of 1992, which regulated the location of mobile homes and manufactured housing within the city.
Because of changes with manufactured housing, and the passage of the Affordable Housing Accessibility Act, the city needed to update regulations in order to provide affordable housing for residents of the city, the ordinance states.
The new regulations will give the Benton Planning and Zoning Commission the authority to establish overlay districts where manufactured housing will be permitted.
Patricia Ashley, who has been an outspoken proponent for manufactured housing, said today that she is “very proud and thankful for the City’s Council’s vote to let us have those homes and not deprive of as we had been for all those years in not being able to get one.”
“I have worked real hard in gathering more than 200 signatures of people who wanted manufactured homes in the city,” Ashley said, “and I was really pleased that the council has voted for it. I left the meeting after their vote and came straight to my community with great jubilation.”
It will be 90 days before the ordinance takes effect, Ashley noted.
Normally, unanimous passage of an ordinance makes the measure effective immediately, but the council voted down the ordinance’s emergency clause, which sets the time frame 90 days out.
“I wish that emergency clause had passed,” Ashley said, “but people are excited in our community. It was the best news we’ve heard in a long time.”
Ashley is a resident of the Ralph Bunche community of Benton.
Under a section of the ordinance called “replacement of existing mobile home or manufactured home,” it notes that “an existing mobile home or manufactured home may be replaced with a manufactured home if such replacement occurs within six months of the removal of the structure.”
It further states that “all manufactured homes moved into the city .... after the effective date of this ordinance shall have been manufactured after Oct. 25, 1994, the same being the effective date of the Federal Construction and Safety Standards incorporating revised specifications for fire safety requirements ... .”
The ordinance states that medical hardships, which granted permission to individuals to locate a mobile home or manufactured home on property within the city that otherwise would not have been allowed, are abolished.
Only three of these currently exist, Marsha Guffey, the city’s director of community development, said in the council meeting.
The ordinance notes that medical hardship permits previously granted by the city may continue so long as the medical hardship continues, but the individual involved must provide proof to the community development department on a yearly basis that the hardship still exists. Once the hardship does not exist, the mobile or manufactured home must be removed, the ordinance states.
The ordinance allows the location of a manufactured home while a permanent structure is being built on a site and is permitted for up to six months. The permit may be extended for no more than six additional months in the case of extreme delays in construction, the ordinance notes.
The council turned down a recommendation of Alderman David Sparks, who heads the council’s Street Committee, to use $500,000 of what is generally known as the “Doug Kidd money” to purchase rights-of-way for an extension of Palm Street to Arkansas 35.
Kidd, now the Saline County circuit clerk, was serving in the Arkansas Legislature when he obtained $6 million in state improvement funds to build a road connecting Edison Avenue with Interstate 30.
“This (Palm Street extension) was not the intent for this money,” Kidd said.
He pointed out that there are no traffic issues that would justify using the funds for this purpose. “There’s no justification here,” he said.
Kidd reminded the council that several legislators from other areas supported him in his request for the money and he said the council should not deviate from the purpose for which the funds were allocated.
“I beg you to be responsible ... ,” Kidd said.
“We need to improve Alcoa Road,” he said.
When a vote was taken, only Aldermen David Sparks and Charles Cunningham voted for the proposal.
It was noted that around $1.5 million remains in the account.
In other matters, the council approved a resolution confirming the appointment of the first nine members of the recently established Benton Historic District Commission.
The members, appointed by Mayor Rick Holland, are David Prater, Brad Jordan, Doyle Webb, Kevin Malone, Robert Edwards, Virginia White, McKinley Donnor, Jennifer Kelly and Dushan Mrdja.
Several of the new commissioners were present and were recognized at the meeting.
Holland noted that numerous people expressed an interest in serving on the newly established panel. “I lost count of all the people who volunteered to be on the commission,” he said, adding: “This truly is a historic moment.”
The aldermen also approved a resolution confirming the mayor’s appointment of Sam Ballard to the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission. Ballard is filling the remainder of Frank Large’s term on the commission.
Large recently resigned to serve on the city’s Public Utilities Commission.
Holland noted that Ballard owns a great deal of rental property in the city.
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