Planners, Council explore possible solutions to late-night meetings
Allowing staff to do more at early stage would help
Agendas are now packed
By Nathan R. Huff
To facilitate or adjudicate, that is the question. That was the big question at a joint Town Council-Planning Commission meeting focused on ending the commission's late-night meetings and project backlog.
A full council and four of the six planning commissioners were on hand on May 31 to discuss a number of ideas to hasten the planning process. Uncertainty over the role of the commission--whether its emphasis should be on making decisions or guiding applicants--ended on that central question.
While there was no clear answer, council members favored the commission focusing more on adjudication than facilitation. A number of ideas were presented by the council, commission and audience on how the commission could refrain from the time-consuming process of redesigning projects with the applicant at the Planning Commission level.
In the end, the council directed the commission to try some of its own ideas for reducing the meetings first. Among the commissioners' many proposals were reducing audience and applicant speaking times, scheduling fewer items on the agenda, adjusting the agenda to allow more time for controversial projects, and continuing unfinished meetings the next day or week instead of months later, as is often the case. The commission will discuss the matter at its June 7 meeting, if time remains after the General Plan hearing.
Although the idea had been raised of reducing the number of commissioners from seven to five, there was little said on that subject. Mayor Steve Blanton and council members Jan Hutchins and Randy Attaway all expressed interest in the idea, but not enough interest to take action. Planning commissioners and the remaining council members resisted the idea, saying that seven members offered better representation and that it might be difficult to form a quorum some nights.
Councilwoman Linda Lubeck said that, given the council's preference for a citizen review body rather than a town architect or board of architects, a wide variety of perspectives was a necessity. "The majority of the council felt very strongly that it should be the Planning Commission and lay people that are doing that type of work, and not a professional board," Lubeck said. "And with that, I feel it's incredibly important that we have as broad a representation from the community as we possibly can."
Almost everyone agreed a key to speeding up the process at the Planning Commission level is to give staff and lower committees more power to guide applicants and do the "grunt" architectural work.
"Before [projects reach] the Planning Commission, I would like to see more massaging so individuals know this is where I can or cannot go," Councilman Joe Pirzynski said.
Community development director Paul Curtis said it wouldn't be as simple as just giving lower level committees "more authority." He said planning staff already advises applicants using previous commission decisions on similar projects. Staff will talk with commissioners at the June 7 meeting about their respective roles in the process.
Commission chairwoman Laura Nachison supported the idea of doing more fine-tuning earlier in the process, and added that the majority of meeting time was spent bogged down in dialogue with applicants. As agendas have grown, meetings lengthened and applications continued, she said, a "tremendous amount of tensions" had developed that could be felt by all.
Suzanne Müller, the newest planning commissioner, presented a list of ideas for shortening meetings, including more preliminary work and less meandering discussions at meetings. Which of those ideas will be adopted is up to the commission.
Müller also prepared a list detailing the commission's meetings since Feb. 9. Meetings ended after midnight on average, with the March 22 meeting the latest, ending at 1:35 a.m. A report prepared by staff contrasted these recent meetings with those of the same period in 1993. While commissioners were usually home by 10 p.m., they had an average of almost four fewer items on the agenda than the commission now faces.
Several audience members also made suggestions, including current planning applicants who said the commission was insensitive to residents of the town. Kelly Blough, whose project was continued from the last meeting, suggested the town consider commercial projects separately from residential ones, and continue items to the next meeting rather than the next open agenda.
Los Gatan James McIlvain made a full-fledged overhead presentation of his diagnosis of the problem and corresponding solutions. He suggested more objective rules, using the town's floor-to-area-ratio as an example of a too vague guideline. Knowing they will most likely be sent back to reduce mass and scale of projects, McIlvain argued, applicants come in with even bigger homes than they want.
"I came away with the sense that the council is really uncomfortable giving the planning commission direction and they want the commission to make the decision," Nachison later said, adding that it was not the commission's job to define its own role. "We just merely carry out policy, we don't make policy."
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