Curious Senoia residents should know by the end of the month what the city's new zoning ordinances will look like.

During Monday night's city council meeting, Mayor Joan Trammell told the citizens the council was looking at implementing a number of changes in the hefty document. The changes are a result of several meetings with the town's business people, Trammell said.

"They brought up a lot of good ideas, but we have to change zoning to control growth," said Trammell.

The main issue discussed was removing the controversial historic town center zoning category from the ordinances. The planning commission suggested the zoning to keep the town's historic look in place, but the business group suggested a compromise.

If the council agreed to abolish the zoning and leave the businesses in general commercial, the business people would agree to let the city officials place a historic overlay on the downtown area and have a historic review committee examine any potential changes to new buildings downtown.

The business people suggested the compromise because general commercial allows more uses than the historic town center, Trammell said.

"The city would get continuity of a historic look, while the business leaders could get more uses out of their businesses," Trammell said.

But planning commission chairman Darlene Stanley said the compromise would add another committee to the city and actually make it more difficult for the business leaders to open a business. Councilman Judy Belisle agreed and said it would actually make matters more restrictive.

Councilman Kyle Frank couldn't understand why the leaders would want something, that in his mind, is far more restrictive. He said a historic review committee would slow the application process down.

But Trammell beseeched the council to think hard about the compromise offered.

"Why are we trying to shove historic town center down their throats?" She said.

Trammell emphasized the city would not be voting on the issues until April 27, but asked the council to take a long look at the requests. Belisle suggested the council meet again April 15 for a workshop to discuss some of the requests and hash them out before the April 27 meeting.

The planning commission has worked on the city's new zoning ordinances for more than a year and the city council has been making changes to the proposed ordinances for the last month.

When the business community got wind of some of the proposed changes, they quickly went into action. The group retained attorney George Rosenzweig to plead their case and have had several meetings with the mayor to explain their point of view.