Committee studies neighborhood concerns over form-based codes

Members of the Planning Commission, after talking around the issue for more than an hour, finally landed on one reason so many neighborhoods hate the new comprehensive plan: They fear form-based codes will strip their neighborhood plans of their hard-fought protections, especially in compatibility.

 

The committee meeting on the comprehensive plan promised to be a lively one, but it started slow, with the committee considering more than four dozen minor amendment changes, half of them involving the development of a sustainable food supply goal.

 

Jean Stevens was the one to introduce the topic of mistrust of the new Imagine Austin plan, a point that came up multiple times at the Austin Neighborhoods Council candidate forum. Stevens noted that neighborhoods had a fear of the unknown, especially if form-based code did not offer existing protections.

 

“If they allow more density, they get these protections in exchange for that, and what I’m hearing is that there is that there is fear around the rewrite,” Stevens said. “They’re afraid a lot of those protections that they based their decisions on are going to suddenly disappear, and where are they left?”

Committee Chair Dave Anderson agreed that it might be necessary to allay those fears, either through a hearing or presentation. Staff wasn’t necessarily opposed to such a suggestion, but Garner Stoll, assistant director at Neighborhood Planning and Zoning said that form-based code – which bases zoning on configuration rather than purpose – was not replacing all of the decisions that were made by neighborhoods.

 

“I was real serious when I said we were not going to do form-based code 100 percent,” Stoll told the committee, noting that form-based code only made sense in certain areas. “What we’ll have is a hybrid, but we already have a hybrid.”

 

The only city where form-based code had been fully implemented was Miami. Even now, city leaders are walking back that decision, Stoll said.

 

Commissioner Donna Tiemann said it was not unusual for neighborhoods to express some apprehension about a new approach to zoning. She suggested that some additional information on form-based codes might make it easier for neighborhood associations to make their peace with the plan, or some assurance that new zoning would reflect existing decisions on zoning and land use decided in the neighborhood plans and future land use maps, or FLUMs.

 

Through the drafting process, it was clear neighborhoods had a mistrust of the new comprehensive plan, Commissioner Richard Hatfield said. Even if the instruction was clear in the plan, neighborhoods were leery of implementation.

 

“That’s not without foundation,” Tiemann protested.

 

Jeff Jack, an ex-officio member of the commission, argued that zoning categories often came with guarantees that form-based codes could not provide for single-family neighborhoods: predictability of form and design.

 

“One of the things you know, if you look at the land development code, is what it governs,” Jack said. “When you have construction within neighborhoods, what do you know? You know lot size, setbacks, height, impervious cover, building coverage, McMansion limits, parking requirements, front yard parking. You know those things if you have a zoning category.”

 

Playing devil’s advocate, Anderson said no significant overhaul of the city’s vision for its future would be without some changes in land use. Nothing in the plan’s specific language, however, suggested that the new vision for the 30-year horizon for Austin suggested scuttling existing plans.

 

Commission Chair Dave Sullivan, who also serves as a member of the committee, said he was willing to move the plan forward to the full commission, if only because no one had suggested better language to address the neighborhood plan issue.

 

Sullivan said a recent study out of Harvard University suggested the driving force in rising housing costs was no longer the cost of materials. It was the regulatory burdens that builders faced at the time of construction. Jack challenged city staff to provide feedback that quantified that particular burden.

 

Stevens said she wouldn’t mind taking a stab at new language – maybe some type of amendment. One suggestion was to embed the single-family zoning requirements into the language of the plan. Another suggestion was a 10-minute briefing on what form-based code would mean to neighborhoods at the front end of the meeting.

 

Ultimately, the group decided to offer more explicit direction to the stakeholder process to address the rewrite of the land development code, which will occur after Council agrees to adopt the comprehensive plan.