Purpose: To allow the scale of a plat to be smaller than 1”=100’ (e.g. 1”=200’) if the plat remains legible.
Scope: Section 118-21(c) of the Subdivision Platting Ordinance states:
Administrative procedures. In addition to the requirements outlined herein for each type of application, the city may maintain separate policies and procedures for the submission and processing of applications consistent with the provisions of this chapter, including, but not limited to, application forms, fee schedules, checklists, language blocks for plats, and other similar items. These policies and procedures may be amended from time to time, and it is the applicant's responsibility to be familiar with, and to comply with, these policies and procedures.
Sections 118-24 and 118-29 state “The plat shall be drawn to a scale of no smaller than100 feet to one inch.”
Requiring a universal scale for all plats can result in unnecessary and costly administrative production work for engineers/applicants when multiple pages may have to be used to illustrate a plat in order to achieve the required scale. It is an outdated requirement that likely was more applicable when New Braunfels was growing more moderately and was less populous or geographically large.
The Administrative Procedures Section 118-21 allows the city to maintain separate policies and procedures for those items as they relate to the effective and timely processing of subdivision plat applications. As the requirements of Sections 118-24 and118-29 relate to the form and documentation of a plat and are not themselves development standards, it is the city’s interpretation that city staff has the flexibility to adjust the document presentation size to correlate to the size of the project resulting in a reduced number of pages in a plat while maintaining legibility of information related on a plat.
Summary: The scale of a plat may be smaller than 1”=100’ when the resulting scaled drawing remains legible and the number of pages of the plat can be reduced.