Implement downtown park standards throughout the city, ease the path for development of “informal parks” and allow for the discretion of park types in transect zones. Those are the recommendations sought by the Parks and Recreation Board, which brought forward the proposed changes to the city’s proposed new land development code during Tuesday night's meeting. The board passed all three recommendations by an 8-1 vote. The recommendations to update CodeNEXT, the process for updating Austin's zoning designations, will be forwarded to the CodeNEXT Advisory Group, which will consider the recommendations in a report expected to be released June 7. The report will hold influence the second CodeNEXT draft due in August. Parks and Recreation Board members chose to exclude a fourth recommendation that would have left the city's Parkland Dedication Ordinance unchanged in the new code, to the initial dismay of some board members who said doing so would open up the door to negotiating a new Parkland Dedication Ordinance—a process vice chair Rich DePalma described as exhausting. The decision to remove the recommendation came after a spirited testimony by CodeNEXT Advisory Group member Eleanor McKinney, who said the current ordinance too easily allowed developers to pay a fee in lieu of developing parks in many of the city’s park-deficient areas. DePalma told Community Impact Newspaper that he did not feel the exclusion of the recommendation opened or closed any doors, as the final decision rests on council. A breakdown of PARB's recommendations can be found here.