OGDEN — After more than a year and a half of work and community surveying, the city’s Southeast Ogden Community Plan has finally been approved — but there’s still some work to be done on the measure’s most controversial element.

The Ogden City Council voted Tuesday night to approve the plan, after city staff made several amendments to it.

During the public input process of the plan, there was a large public outcry related to housing provisions in the proposal — specifically, language related to accessory dwelling units (ADUs). The plan includes a provision to set limits that would allow ADUs in each area of the community, but only up to certain threshold. ADUs are typically smaller, independent residential living spaces located on the same lot as a standalone, single-family home.

Ogden Deputy Planning Manager Clint Spencer said the desire for ADUs among those in the southeast community has been widely split, as the city polled residents in online surveying and tracked sentiment expressed during several public meetings held for the plan. The city planning staff amended the plan to include more neutral language about ADUs and narrow the focus to the College Heights and Forest Green neighborhoods, establishing an appropriate threshold for ADUs there, which would balance the needs of the community while also preserving the single-family nature of the neighborhood.

Spencer said the newly adopted plan calls for a zoning amendment, to be voted on by the council at a later date, which would set exact ADU thresholds for specific areas of the community and that would include provisions for better enforcement on ADUs.

“Im sure we’ll have to work out some sort of compromise,” Spencer said.

Angel Castillo, a former Ogden City Planning Commissioner, said limiting ADUs would limit possibilities for working-class families, young teachers, firefighters, police officers and graduate students to live in the neighborhood. She also said limiting ADUs in an area would be a violation of property rights.

“The long and the short of it is there is no magic bullet for housing, period,” Castillo said. “The best that we can do is hope for a comprehensive strategy … (that) involves multi-family dwelling units, ADUs and tiny homes.”

Much of the public outcry prior to the approval of the plan fell in line with Castillo’s sentiment, but several residents spoke in favor of an ADU cap on Tuesday. Marci Matonis and Tom Farrell both live in the southeast community and said having a limit on ADUs is a no-brainer. The pair both cited concerns related to increased density a limitless amount of ADUs would usher in, namely problems with parking and traffic.

One of 15 planning communities in the city, the southeast community generally includes everything in Ogden south of 36th Street and east of Gramercy Avenue. The area includes large employment centers like Weber State University and the McKay-Dee Hospital and also features a thriving commercial district surrounding those two organizations. The area is also Ogden’s most affluent, dotted with numerous million-dollar homes along the city’s southeast bench.

According to the city’s website, community plans “create a vision” for different sectors of the city, with input taken from residents, political leaders, developers, business owners and others. The plans tackle things like community facilities, neighborhood identities, economic development, environmental issues, housing, land-use and transportation.

The last complete update to the Southeast Ogden Community Plan was finished in 1987, according to the planning department. The city has been working on the new plan since January 2019, holding a series of public meetings along the way.