Planning Commission urges quicker processing of Land Development Code amendments

With dozens of amendments to the city’s outdated Land Development Code currently in the works – many aimed at increasing supply and lowering costs for housing – City Council members and city staffers in recent weeks have discussed how to prioritize the changes, given limited staff resources.

The Planning Commission on June 13 weighed in, echoing Council members’ calls for staff to move quickly, especially for items related to housing supply and affordability. 

Council and the Planning Commission have initiated approximately three dozen Land Development Code amendments that have yet to be put into ordinance. These include eliminating minimum parking requirements, reducing or eliminating compatibility regulations, making accessory dwelling units easier to build and creating a “site plan lite” process. More amendments are potentially on the way, including a proposal to reduce minimum lot sizes.

For each item, staffers conduct varying degrees of stakeholder engagement, departmental coordination and legal review before bringing draft code language to Council for final approval. 

Simple amendments could take as little as four months to process, while more complex amendments could take a year or more.

Staffers recommend consolidating complex amendments, like those around density bonus programs and new zoning categories, into more comprehensive work that could involve consultants.

Commissioner João Paulo Connolly questioned the amount of planned community engagement for some of the items, pointing to a seven-month engagement and development timeline to eliminate minimum parking requirements. 

“It seems interesting that there’s some things the city does where it seems to charge forward, and then there’s certain things that we do where it seems like we need to take all the time in the world and understand every implication to every person,” Connolly said.

Under staffers’ proposed timeline, eliminating minimum parking requirements would take until April 2024 – nearly a year after Council initiated the code change.

Beyond recommending staffers reduce timelines for engagement, commissioners urged the city to devote more resources in the budget to hire and retain staff to move the amendments forward more quickly.

“A lot of the discussion tonight has been about deadlines and trying to push these things forward, and (that’s) not going to happen without adequate staff,” Commissioner Grayson Cox said.

Stevie Greathouse, a manager in the Planning Department, said that staffers are already discussing how to reduce timelines. “That’s certainly a conversation that will continue to be had through the budget process and with Council,” she said.

Planning commissioners also discussed how they could help speed up the process, such as scheduling additional meetings, establishing working groups on complex amendments well in advance of a vote by the full commission and consulting with staff before initiating any new amendments.

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