Brazoria puts moratorium on mobile home permits

BRAZORIA — People who want a special use permit to put a mobile home on their property will have to wait while the city works out delays in processing transactions at the county level.

Mayor Phillip Ray, in a previous session, asked for a moratorium on such permits, citing a call he had with the Brazoria County Appraisal District.

“We use the appraisal district maps,” Ray said. “But the appraisal district maps get as far as two-to-three months behind.”

Ray said during council’s Aug. 23 meeting the city plans to meet with appraisal district officials and try to find ways to circumvent the backlog. He does not expect any permits to be affected while the moratorium is in place, he said.

“It’s not that many mobile homes that really come into the city other than in a mobile home park, but they have to go through a process and that process right now is where we have a couple of council members who disagree on how it’s being handled,” City Manager Sheila Williams said.

Council members likely will have a workshop to discuss potential solutions once the budget process is complete, she said.

The moratorium is not a solution in search of a problem, Ray said, but the first step in revisiting all of the city’s ordinances. It just happened the mobile home issue jumped to the head of the line due to the timing of his call.

City leaders already started tackling Brazoria’s animal ordinances to carve out different rules for the keeping of chickens within city limits, and other ordinance examinations will start in earnest early next year, the mayor said.

“What we’re going to do is start at the front of the ordinance book and work our way through,” Ray said. “It’s been a long time since we’ve done that, as far as I know, on the council, and it needs to be done about every 10 years.”

The decision will not affect a special use permit that was issued July 12, which had already been approved by the council after following the city’s requirements. He said the prior permit was unrelated.

“I was doing some checking,” Ray said. “I’d inherited a piece of property and it still hadn’t gotten changed over. We’d gotten the paperwork turned over in the March/April timeframe, so that’s what clued me in that they were behind.”

At the previous meeting, Ray asked about having the city send letters to property owners rather than relying on the district to do so. That brought a mixed reaction, including worry over whether it could open the city up to legal liabilities. Ray said it was still on the table as a possibility, but they were looking at all possible solutions.

In other business, the council had a public hearing for the budget but no one weighed in on it, Williams said. The budget has been worked on since the last meeting and the numbers are largely lining up for the city, she said.

“On (Sept.) 6, we are going to meet for them to propose a tax rate and schedule the public hearing and to let everybody know when we are going to adopt the budget and the tax rate on the 20th of September,” Williams said.