Naked City

By Doug Potter

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Introducing ... ZAP!

Whether you're looking to activate a neighborhood plan, or just hoping to change your lot from CS to LI zoning, Mayor Pro Tem Jackie Goodman wants to make your next visit to the Planning Commission a more enjoyable one. But even if the PC docket now flows about as fast as chilled syrup, is it wise to expand the processing capacity of one of the city's most powerful citizen boards through simple mitosis? Thursday, the City Council will take up Goodman's proposition to split the PC into two separate 9-member commissions -- the newly created one would be called the Zoning and Platting Commission. Goodman first proposed the idea in September to coincide with the city's department reorganization. Goodman wants to free planning commissioners from the weekly grind of deciding whether carpet stores on Slaughter Lane can expand or whether Onion Creek lots can subdivide. This way, Goodman says, the commissioners can more productively weigh the long-term future of our streets and neighborhoods. Her proposal would shift zoning cases located outside the boundaries of neighborhood plans to the new ZAP Commission, but leave the business of mulling over neighborhood plans and making revisions to the city's outmoded Land Development Code to the original PC.

The reconstituted Planning Commission would not function as "another layer of bureaucracy," says Goodman, but as "visionaries engaged in ideas, design, and creating the practical implementation tools to achieve them." The PC is currently too bogged down in minutiae to craft the ordinances that would let Smart Growth and other City Council initiatives reshape city planning around neighborhood-centered, sustainable communities, says Goodman.

But while it would appear to spell relief for the overtaxed and unpaid planning commissioners, the commission has given Goodman's proposal the thumbs down.

"I don't think it's going to accomplish the objectives that are set out for it -- to do more long-range planning," says planning commissioner and longtime City Hall scenester Robin Cravey. "The real reason it's not getting done is lack of sufficient staff support. … To say now we're going to create another commission, and make twice the demand on staff, doesn't make any sense," Cravey says.

The development community, which presumably would appreciate being freed from meeting gridlock, is not confident that Goodman's proposal will help, either. "I don't want to sound negative, because I'm willing to try anything," says engineer Paul Bury, who has business before the PC most every Tuesday evening, "but I think when you get down to actual implementation, it's going to be very difficult, both from the public sector side and for the development community." Bury fears the additional commission will double the headache for developers and city staff, who he says would have to shuffle information between two boards.

The Planning Commission currently sets aside one work session each month to review neighborhood plans, and Cravey says that arrangement is churning out neighborhood plans on schedule. But Goodman's office disagrees. Goodman aide Jerry Rusthoven says other city business often intrudes on those work sessions. "One meeting a month is not going to cut it unless we're happy with doing three neighborhood plans a year, which we're not." (Cravey says the PC has been more productive than Rusthoven claims.)

Assistant City Manager Lisa Gordon, who oversees the city departments that work most closely with the PC, says the duties of neighborhood planning and zoning review are already divided up among her staff and she doesn't foresee them running to twice as many meetings.

But the City Council's support for Goodman's initiative is tentative, at best, with even ardent neighborhood supporter Beverly Griffith expressing reserve. Chances are good that a final decision on the issue will be pushed back.

This week: It's do or die time for Riata and Partners' Robertson Hill development on the long-disputed Bennett Tract. The zoning for the project has been approved on second readings, but the crucial third vote is still up in the air. Likely complicating the picture will be a proposal from Beverly Griffith to pull the suggested $23 million incentive package and have the city buy the property outright, which Griffith says could be done for considerably less than $23 million. Griffith, however, says she hasn't spoken to the landowners, collectively known as the ASN Company, about a selling price.

Neighbors along East 381/2 and Manor Road will find out if the council heard their pleas to forego widening those corridors, as called for by the Austin Metropolitan Area Transportation Plan. Mayor Kirk Watson said two weeks ago at a hearing on the plan that delaying transportation improvements would only lead neighbors to eventually decry the lack of roads, but the neighbors say the closure of the Mueller airport makes more road capacity through central East Austin unnecessary. Council members hinted that the widening projects may be pulled from the plan for the time being. Council Member Daryl Slusher is promising to submit a compromise proposal Thursday.