With the deadline for comments on CodeNEXT’s second draft only a week away, the Planning Commission—hoping to cover significant ground—got creative on Tuesday night. Moving away from the regular debates on mapping and zoning, the 15-member commission divided eight sections of the code’s text among six work groups—made up of planning commissioners and members of the public. Over two hours, government and the public worked together to dive into and discuss the details of more than 650 pages of their city’s new proposed land development code. “The breakout sessions were meant to address whole different topic areas that don’t get the spotlight that zoning and mapping do in our discussions,” Planning Commission chair Stephen Oliver said. Oliver said there has been a gorilla in the room during CodeNEXT meetings of late: Were the commissions tackling CodeNEXT in the right way in the amount of time they were afforded? Oliver said there is never going to be enough time to tackle the hottest topics like affordability and transportation and that sticking to the April 2018 deadline was important to wrap up the process that has taken four years and $8.5 million. Currently in its second draft form, CodeNEXT is the city’s project to rewrite its land development and address the problems created by Austin’s continued growth. City staff will stop taking comments on Oct. 31 and begin working on a third draft, due to be released on Nov. 28. The sections tackled by Tuesday’s six work groups were: Administration and Procedure (23-2); General Planning Requirements (23-3); Affordable Housing (23:3E); Subdivision (23-5); Site Plan (23-6); Building, Demolition, and Relocation Permits—Special Requirements for Historic Structures (23:7); Transportation (23-9) and infrastructure (23-10). The work groups reported that the majority of each section of text was fine as is. However, there were some issues highlighted by the work groups:

• The downtown density bonus program needed to be strengthened in order to be more successful.
• The threshold for triggering a site plan needed to be looked at. Currently no site plans—which are expensive, intricately detailed analyses of the project for a given lot—are required for single-family home projects as they are typically smaller projects. Commissioners said this gets murky when a 5,000-square-foot home doesn’t require a site plan, but a 1,000-square-foot triplex does.
• The fee-in-lieu program that sends money to parkland dedication was such that city was receiving no dedicated parkland. Commissioners wanted to balance that program.
• Commissioners felt the city should not require a permit for someone to repair their sidewalk or an outside door.
• Historic structure relocation should trigger a tree review, as there has been a history of trees getting damaged during this process.