This rant came out of my head in 5 minutes or less . . . its a start to a conversation, what would you add?
I hear people saying the process is “broken” but I haven’t heard anyone specifically explain what is broken except they don’t like the Edgewater process. I heard some talk about predictability, but the only thing not predictable is if the council and plan commission are going to follow the neighborhood plans and standards in the laws. I heard people talk about how long the process took, but much of it was waiting for the TIF application and for them to go back to Landmarks Commission because they didn’t follow the rules in the first place. I heard complaints about it not being transparent, but that’s because of all the closed door meetings held by politicians to work on things out of the public eye and the massive, unprecedented lobbying effort that took place.
From my perspective we need:
– Training for Plan Commission and Alders on the new Smart Growth Laws and what that means for development approval and neighborhood plans.
– Training for the Council on what their legal role is in the development process with a commitment to compliance with the standards.
– A better process for the zoning code rewrite that is happening now. The updates are too overwhelming to even try to craft a meaningful statement for public input. I can’t even begin to imagine what the unintended consequences of this rewrite are going to be, and I’m afraid of the intended consequences that I don’t yet see.
– Neighborhoods should be allowed to determine their own destiny, decide who their members are and decide what process they take. A cookie cutter approach will not work for the diversity of neighborhoods out there.
– Alders should have a standard way of getting input from their neighborhoods and stakeholders, and it should be inclusive.
– Alders need a bigger budget for mailings and decent staff support for the meetings with neighborhoods and stakeholders.
– Training for neighborhoods that have not dealt with the development process in the volume CNI has been forced to.
– Simple materials developed for citizens who go to plan commission so that they speak directly to the criteria in the ordinance, and have guidelines about what their most productive input would be.
– A limit on meeting times. Meetings should be better planned and not go past midnight or longer than 6 – 8 hours.
– Don’t combine multiple agenda items into one. It’s hard to talk about several sets of standards at once and it limits valued input.
– Stick to the process. I really didn’t like the way they set up the spokespeople for the neighborhood against the developer in that half hour slot, I think it was meant to discourage others from speaking, and I didn’t understand the point of it.
That’s what I have for now, I’m sure there is more if I think it through more than 5 minutes. What are your thoughts?
