By Peter H. Milliken

milliken@vindy.com

AUSTINTOWN

In a major rewrite of its zoning ordinance, Milton Township has added proposed new sections regulating digital signs and billboards and establishing a new lakefront residential district along the Lake Milton shoreline.

On Tuesday, the Mahoning County Planning Commission endorsed the changes, which will be the subject of a township zoning commission hearing at 7 p.m. today at the township fire station, and which will go before the township trustees in January.

To avoid distracting motorists, the new digital sign and billboard rules would limit their brightness and require that at least 8 seconds elapse between changes of the sign face, explained Michael P. Kurilla Jr., interim township zoning inspector.

“We wanted to take an affirmative step to get a set of regulations,” on such signs and billboards, he said.

The current zoning ordinance does not address this relatively new technology, he added.

Another proposed zoning ordinance change would specify that sheds and detached garages are to be between the road and the houses, and not between the houses and the lake, in the lakefront residential district, Kurilla said.

“The lakefront dwellers want to have an unobstructed view of the lake,” he explained. “There is continued development and prospective development. We’re probably going to have three new lakefront developments in the coming year.”

Another proposed change would specify that outdoor swimming-pool perimeter safety fences would have to be between 4- and 6-feet high. Current fence requirements “are somewhat vague,” Kurilla said.

The new provisions would take effect 30 days after trustees approve them.

The planning commission also approved the rezoning of 84 lots on Terrace and Homestead drives between Market Street and Southern Boulevard in Boardman from residential R-2, which would allow up to six-plexes, to R-1, single-family residential.

The neighborhood’s land use is now single-family residential.

The proposed rezoning will go before the township zoning commission at 5:30 p.m. Jan. 9.

Sarah Gartland, Boardman zoning inspector, said the township already has rezoned about 800 lots from R-2 to R-1.

The goal of such rezoning is to stabilize neighborhoods and maintain their single-family residential character and to prevent the building of new apartment buildings that would increase housing density and traffic in those neighborhoods, Gartland said.