Streamline land use code revision process

Ann Marie Swan recently wrote a very comprehensive story about the new land use code committee. It provides a terrific overview of a rather complex issue.

For me, her story raises the question of why? Why is there yet another committee of citizen laymen charged with something that seems better handled by professional staff?

Government-appointed citizen committees have their place, especially those like the county’s roundtable committee that was so carefully and deliberately selected to embrace all stakeholders – especially those with the most to gain or lose. Such diverse, collaborative forums help local officials learn more about the issues at hand and weigh and balance competing viewpoints. At the end of the local two-year roundtable process, while not everyone was 100 percent happy with the resulting guiding land planning recommendations, everyone agreed they could live with them.

Let’s build on that achievement by letting the pro staff take over where the laymen, logically, left off.

Read through the land use code. I think those without formal training and expertise in land use planning can agree it’s pretty technical. Even though I’m a landowner, with property at both ends of the county, I wouldn’t pretend to have the expertise necessary to update such a technical document.

So it is at this juncture, now that the community has studied the issues and spoken, we can and should get out of the way and let the county’s educated, trained and certified pros draft the new code. It’s a technical job.

I think of it like this. I own a compact car but that doesn’t mean I know how to fix it. Even if I owned a bigger car, say a Cadillac Escalade, or even a whole fleet of cars, owning more doesn’t mean I’m automatically more qualified to fix any of them.

So I would let the pro staff draft the updates then go back to the roundtable participants for feedback and edits to ensure consistency with that group’s recommendations. The revised draft would then logically be presented to the planning commission for review and referral to the county commissioners for public hearing and final approval. Those steps alone represent a lengthy process, probably at least six months, with ample opportunity for public input.

Our current land use code is a jalopy and the longer we delay repairing it, the longer we get in our own way in achieving the universally shared goals of sustainable economic development and preservation of quality of life.

With the decline in new construction due to the sorry state of the economy, it may seem to those in office that they can continue to dawdle. I would argue the reason our current code is so desperately antiquated is due to dawdling rooted in a collective, years-long lack of intestinal fortitude among elected officials driven, in part, by a persistent disinformation campaign by a lobby whose minds appear closed to the possibilities of a more progressive approach to planning which, by the way, does NOT inherently mean infringing on private property rights or devaluing real estate. Heaps of research, data and case studies prove quite the contrary, actually.

Let’s get a new code in place sooner than later and put an end to the interminable and polarizing game of political hot potato. Our future is riding on it.