City code amendments moving slowly, including change to parking requirements

Remember all those amendments to Austin’s land use regulations that City Council directed city staff to write – ideas that seem particularly important in light of the housing shortage? They’re moving slowly.

Those amendments include eliminating parking requirements from the land use regulations outside the central business district. Parking requirements have already been eliminated downtown, outside of those required by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

District 9 Council Member Zo Qadri was the lead sponsor on the resolution to eliminate the parking requirements, which asked for an amendment to the city’s regulations by the end of 2023. But it seems likely, given the information that the Housing and Planning Committee heard last week, that parking requirements will continue to be part of city code for many months.

At last week’s committee meeting, planner Stevie Greathouse, who leads the interdepartmental group working on putting the amendments together and bringing them back to Council, explained how staff is keeping up with the various amendments. They are categorized in part by how difficult they might be to bring forward and how much public engagement might be required.

Greathouse also addressed the full Council at a work session on June 6. Before she spoke, interim City Manager Jesús Garza told Council the workload at the Housing and Planning Department “is significant,” adding that some of the scheduled items will take a little bit longer than staff originally thought. “And that’s simply because we’re short-staffed, and we’ve got a lot of amendments that have been generated for us to work on,” he said.

During last week’s Housing and Planning Committee meeting, Qadri pointed out that the committee had ranked eliminating parking requirements as a high priority, but city staff’s Gantt chart showed the change not coming back to Council until next May.

Qadri wanted to know what they needed to do to move that ordinance change up the list, so that Council could approve the changes by December. Greathouse responded that the item was being handled by the Austin Transportation Department, so she could not answer the question.

Qadri also wanted to know if there was some part of the ordinance that could move forward in December. Greathouse did not know the answer to that, either. Qadri said his office would work directly with the Transportation Department to see if they could speed up the process.

The resolution had several enthusiastic co-sponsors, including Council members Ryan Alter, Vanessa Fuentes, Leslie Pool, Natasha Harper-Madison and Mayor Pro Tem Paige Ellis.

The Austin Monitor asked Alter on Friday to comment on the slow pace of bringing forward what the majority of Council members consider an important change.

“I’m not sure (Austin Transportation Department) is as familiar with the planning process as the Planning Department. … I think there are elements of the parking resolution that are very straightforward, that can just be deleted from the code,” he told the Monitor. “I think they could deliver those pretty quickly.”

He added that some parts of parking regulations “are kind of wrapped into other elements of the code that have a multiple-layer effect. And I respect staff’s desire to make sure that they think it through.”

Alter concluded, “We do want them to be thoughtful, but it is a little frustrating. It does seem like a long time. What I think we need to have them do is get started” on that amendment, “and then maybe have a progress report in September.” He said it was necessary for Council to find out what elements would take so long and what parts might be achieved earlier.

Harper-Madison, who chairs the Housing and Planning Committee, said she expects a report on progress on the amendments at each meeting of the committee moving forward.

This story has been changed since publication to clarify the proposed changes to parking requirements.

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