The public needs more time
District 9 Council Member and Mayor Pro Tem Kathie Tovo petitioned during a city council work session Tuesday for a delay after saying she’s heard concerns from constituents that the crunch for time has forced them to prioritize certain aspects of the nearly 1,200-page document and restricts their ability to give the code and map a full vetting.
District 1 Council Member Ora Houston said the complexity of the subject and the experience as well as the knowledge of those who will be most affected—the citizens—is worthy of an extended timeline to ensure the final result is produced confidently and correctly. She said although staff has been working on the project for four years the public has only been able to analyze the proposals since January.
“It’s a complex piece that you are asking lay people to understand in a short period of time and that will affect their quality of life for the rest of their lives,” Houston said. “The people I’m talking to need more time. There has to be flexibility for those who have different learning styles.”
“It’s a complex piece that you are asking lay-people to understand in a short period of time and that will affect their quality of life for the rest of their lives.”
District 1 Council Member Ora Houston
The experts need more time
However, members of the public aren’t the only group the feels rushed by the process; members of the Zoning and Platting Commission and the Planning Commission—the city’s sovereign boards tasked with handling the code’s second draft— also feel restricted by the timeline set forth by staff, according to District 10 Council Member Alison Alter.
As it is, the commissions will receive the second draft from staff and the consultants in August, and it will play out as any other zoning case: The commissioners will analyze it, debate it and host public hearings through October and produce a final set of recommendations for council to consider by November.
Alter suggested that instead of the planning and zoning commissions handing off recommendations on the second version for council’s consideration, staff should produce a third version according to the commissions’ recommendations, that would be sent back to the commissions for further analysis. Alter, who comes from the world of academia, related the process to a high-stakes thesis paper—the more expert edits and analyses, the better.
“I think it would really allay a lot of concerns I’m hearing from people that this is being rammed forward,” Alter told Community Impact Newspaper. “I think that I and many people would be much more relaxed if they felt the experts at the commissions had more time to review the next version.”
Alina Carnahan, a spokesperson for the CodeNEXT team, said the extra version proposed by Alter could affect the timeline and the ultimate cost of the project, and the decision would need to be a policy directive from council.
Council should stay on track
Mayor Steve Adler said the city needed to do its best to stay on the approved timeline, but assured that the council would not approve of a code prematurely.
“For me, it’s important that we try to stay where we are and understand that I won't be voting—and my colleagues won’t vote—for a code that is not ready,” Adler said.
District 3 Council Member Sabino “Pio” Renteria echoed Adler’s sentiment and said it was important to continue moving forward.
“It’s time we go to the next step,” Renteria said. “There are a lot of questions, but the longer we stay working on it, the further we are going to get behind.”
