Among the many factors blamed for Austin’s affordability crisis are the city’s notoriously complicated development regulations. The development review process is so cumbersome, critics say, that builders have to hire agents to get their permits approved, creating a cost that…
When Rodney Gonzales took over the Development Services Department in April 2015, the Zucker Report had reported customer survey results showing that 82 percent of respondents felt that the city’s development review and plan check processes were unnecessarily cumbersome or…
Changes to the way the city processes development applications sailed through the Planning Commission last week, and the city hopes that the changes will effect a similar swiftness in its Development Services Department. Donna Galati, who is with the Development…
When the Zucker Report came out in 2015, it offered a scathing analysis of the city’s planning and development review functions and compared Austin’s development and permitting processes unfavorably to many other cities, including San Antonio. One of the report’s…
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In 2015 the shift to single-member districts was finally realized, leading to big changes at City Hall. Now, almost a year later, the Austin Monitor is taking a look back at the past 12 months from our admittedly selective point…
Homebuilders who were not paying attention during September’s city budget deliberations might have been surprised to learn that the “volume builder submittal fee” for construction of a single-family home or duplex, which has cost $29 per home since 2007, shot…
When it comes to planning and development, city staff has a lot on its plate in the foreseeable future. It no longer has to worry, though, about a plan review backlog that began to pile up earlier this year. Development…
As the city’s budget process gears up, each department is making its way to City Council with its budget for the upcoming year. And in the wake of the Zucker Report, eyes are on what was once the Planning and…
Austin is looking at solutions to fix its plan review backlog, but the fix is going to cost the city. Since the publication of the Zucker Report draft, the Development Services Department has worked to create strategies to eliminate the…
On Wednesday, Austinites had a chance to address the Zucker Report publicly for the first time. Developers, neighborhood advocates and other stakeholders offered their feedback on the report and the development process in two meetings, and heard from Zucker Systems…
Speaking to a receptive audience at the Real Estate Council of Austin on Wednesday, Mayor Steve Adler said he and his colleagues intend to make sure that they fix problems in the city’s development and permitting process sooner rather than…
The city released a draft copy of the Zucker Report last week amid growing curiosity about what it contained. This week, the aftershocks began. Zucker Systems analyzed the city’s Planning and Development Review Department last year, and in its 700-plus-page…
