Proposed subdivision regulations raise hackles at meeting
Proposed rewrite of a city ordinance would curtail citizen input and ease subdivision requirements.
LAKEWOOD – City Hall wants to make it easier and faster for developers to build subdivisions in the city, but impose limits on neighbors’ rights to voice their concerns directly to City Council.
Council and the Planning Commission will discuss the proposed rewrite of the city’s Subdivision Ordinance at a joint study session April 6. The issue could come before Council for a vote as early as May 11.
The changes, if approved by Council, would drop a provision allowing citizens to appeal to City Council any Planning Commission decision on the final layout of subdivisions of less than 10 houses. Instead, the proposed ordinance would deny that avenue of appeal and require them to be filed in District Court, launching a legal battle with City hall’s battery of lawyers.
The proposal also would eliminate the long-standing requirement that developers compile a traffic study to gauge the impact of development on the safety of nearby residents.
The sweeping consequences of the plan drew a number of heated comments at Saturday’s Ward 1 meeting at Lakewood Library.
“Because rezoning and subdivision go hand-in-hand, this scares me,” said former City Councilwoman Kathy Knoble. “It scares me because you are trying to remove another layer of public notification, public input. In my mind, the City government starts with me.”
City Councilwoman Vicki Stack called the meeting after she became concerned over the proposed changes, especially the removal of citizens from the process.
“The Planning Commission has determined there is no longer a need for public participation regarding some subdivisions of property and is asking Council to approve a new document that vests this power in a City Hall administrator, taking Council and the public out of that and other parts of the process,” Stack said.
Tim Gelston, Lakewood’s Development Review Manager, said the proposed regulations allow the city to require subdivision applicants to arrange a public meeting. But Gelston conceded that the city relies on the applicant to relay citizens’ comments and has no means of verifying what’s passed along.
Gelston also said the proposal is evolving in response to citizen concerns.
The proposed ordinance also would strip from City Council the ability to review and decide whether some public easements, including utility easements may be abandoned. Also eliminated would be a current requirement that the public, neighborhood associations and other interested parties be notified when public easements are vacated on plats.
Easements belong to the property owner and, when abandoned, can affect such things as building and fence setbacks.
I’m disappointed in the city staff or maybe it’s the city manager, documents are given to the city council at the last minute. My city councilors said they’ve asked the staff to provide meeting packets so they have more time to review them but the staff said they couldn’t. So I wonder the same thing as Jim does, who is in charge? I thought it was supposed to be the people we elect.
Although I have a high degree of respect for the current director of Community Planning and Economic Development there are several things that I dislike about the rewrites to the subdivision ordinances. I have attended several of the Study Sessions between Planning Staff and Planning Commission and I was disappointed with the number of commissioners that were not prepared to comment on the proposed changes. As I recall, only Commissioners Golley, Rohr and Schoch seemed prepared to offer comments to the staff planners regarding their proposed changes. Commissioners Plotkin and Urbanoski had virtually nothing to say and in fact commissioner Urbanoski admitted that he was unprepared to comment on the proposed changes.
But it was clear that staff wanted the comments on that evening and they stayed later in order to cover the available comments.
In the past, I was greatly impressed with the degree of input that the commissioners have put into other documents so I was disappointed that they let the staff rush them through the process. I think it’s rather comical that the commission has spent so much time over the last few months listening to several speakers to learn about the process of ordinance modification and they come to the actual changes only to be rushed through the process so that staff can achieve some arbitrarily defined ephemeral scheduling commitment.
Personally, I’d like to take the time for the Commissioners to have sufficient time to study and discuss all of the proposed changes. Ray Schoch and Michael Rohr have been attending the Garrison Station Meetings and I believe they fully understand the level of interest that some of my neighbors have regarding public notification with regard to all possible changes to their large lot neighborhoods. I’m very disappointed that they are being rushed and they are allowing themselves to be rushed. Whose in charge the Planning Commission or the Planning Staff.
On another front I’m wondering if the idea of having the director of planning and the director of economic development be the same person is a good idea. Recent over turnings of Planning Commission decisions by the Council make me wonder if the planning commission is losing their connectivity to the community at large. Is it always necessary that final outcome of planning be “economic development” even if the majority of local residents don’t want the changes.
Finally, I’m disappointed that the ordinances seem to be leading us down a path of less public input. Admittedly, it is difficult to acquire input from much of the public. On the other hand our City is not as transparent as some might think for example why do public meeting notices get posted in the corner of the city hall. Why aren’t they published in an RSS/RDF feed and made available to the public via publications like this. In fact why isn’t the City’s calendar posted on an RSS/RDF feed and made available to the public. It’s hard to understand why the City’s website is a regular Digital Cities Survey Winner.