Development review: Fix the process -- and the outcomes, too

Flying back into Durham last week, my plane was re-routed due to inclement weather and was forced to land from west to east, a deviation from the usual north-south flight plan at the RDU airport.

The in-sky delay turned into a delight from my window seat, as I got a birds-eye view of downton and North Durham as we flew over Treyburn and Falls Lake. And from that perspective, one thing is instantly clear: you don't see much more than trees.

There's a big clearing where downtown is, another for the stadium/hospital complex, some open space around Duke, and a thin gray river where I-85 wends from Granville Co. down through the heart of Durham. Setting that aside, you have a beautiful view of the treetops highlighting one of old Durham's most stirring features: its natural arboreal beauty.

I don't have a good photo of the view, but W-H resident and BCR reader Joshua Allen took some good photos from the top of the Hill Building downtown last year; this one at left best illustrates the green view you have looking beyond downtown.

Suffice it to say that it's a far different view than you get flying over Brier Creek and western Wake, where mass grading and deforestation gives you a view of, well, concrete cul-de-sacs. These subdivisions are chock-a-block with homes that resemble Monopoly pieces, with their green spaces relegated to the back edges of properties, separating places with nams like The Olde Woods at Brier Creek from Neuse Chase Fox Run Estate from each other.

...

This scene was on my mind when pondering the most recent proposals for improving the development review process in the Bull City, an item that's been a passionate issue for Bill Bell (who, interestingly, also stood in opposition to the timeframe for increasing impact fees recently.)

As the N&O and Herald-Sun reported last week, deputy city manager Ted Voorhees brought before the City Council this week a number of steps to speed the development review process, including holding annexations four times a year instead of two, allowing administrative staff to approve sewer and water extensions for developments where the builder is paying the infrastructure cost, and -- most controversially -- restricting the ability of the Planning Commission to defer a vote on development for up to three months' time.

As the comments over at the Herald-Sun show, the battle quickly falls into one over neighborhood protection and "good development." The fear clearly on the minds of many who've seen good and bad development in the Bull City -- most especially those who've watched some ill-planned subdivisions in South Durham, which would more closely resemble Brier Creek in a flyover -- is that improving the development review process would make it easier and quicker for developers to push through poorly-designed commercial and residential projects.

The fear is understandable, and as Melissa Rooney notes in her Herald-Sun comment, at times the Planning Commission's stalling tactic has helped force developers and neighborhoods together.

I'm inclined to take a slightly different tact, though. I think it's easy, and dangerous, to conflate two different problems: the speed of the development review process, and the desire to ensure high-quality development in Durham.

Not that it's not perfectly understandable why neighborhood activists like Rooney would do so. Some projects have hewn to development standards many residents are sick of, like the intense mass-grading and tree removal for the shopping center at the corner of NC 54 and NC 751, or which several subdivision projects have undergone.

At times, the pure slowness of the process and the Planning Commission's delay process have helped to nudge builders towards higher-quality development. But a reliance on that process, I fear, is essentially using inefficiency as a check on poor planning. Two wrongs rarely make a right; in this case, they simply increase the randomness of the outcome, by leaving it up to the ability of neighborhood groups to organize around a project to have any impact.

Frankly, to my mind there's no doubt that there are serious problems with Durham's development process. Last year, I did some volunteer work on infrastructure and site prep work for a small subdivision built by a non-profit affordable housing builder here in Durham, which afforded me the chance to actually work with the Planning Dept. a couple of times.

Let me just put it this way: if Matt Groening needs new inspirations for The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horrors, let me suggest he visit the lower level of City Hall. And mind you, I'm not even talking about public process here, but simply the challenges of working through various layers of planners and offices.

Not that the public process was that easy, either. Minor changes to the plan, such as those necessitated by surprises with soils or slight shifts in utility lines due to site conditions, in some cases triggered actions all the way back to the Development Review Board. For other questions, it was impossible to get a straight answer as to which way to turn with a problem.

At the same time, I witnessed some friends working on a commercial project in town -- an adaptive re-use of an existing structure -- who had to deal with a terribly arcane process well before the project even made it to the public eye.

All of which is by way of saying that, frankly, there are real problems that need to be solved with development in Durham, and that streamlining the development review process -- both the public one and the administrative side -- is central to that effort.

But this improvement in efficiency should not come in the absence of stricter rules and practices around development to improve the quality and nature of new construction in Durham.

Look, I don't subscribe to the philosophy of many Durhamites that somehow becoming more like Orange County -- with both an inscrutable and long development review process and exactingly tough standards -- is desirable. Bottom line, Orange County's development practices have, intentionally or accidentally, been major contributors towards that county's high housing prices and trend towards gentrification. (Not to mention helping to push bedroom communities out into Alamance County, contributing to longer highway commutes for many workers.)

The US and world populations are growing, and we need to grow our housing stock commensurately to keep pace. But we need to expect public officials to be clear in laying forth what types of development are and are not appropriate.

Personally, I'd love to see mass-grading and clear-cutting banned or severely restricted as building practices for single-family home subdivisions. On the other hand, in areas close to transportation corridors -- be it highways or future transit lines -- encouraging denser development and mixed-use, even where mass-grading is required, balances the sustainability of density with the loss of green space.

Similarly, improving stormwater management practices is something that should become de rigeur for new development, not a concession in the negotiation process.

What would be really terrific would be a pledge from the City Council (since I doubt you could make something like this legally binding) not to approve projects representing more than a 3% growth in housing stock in Durham in any given year.

Of course, plan approvals and actual construction are very different things, so the annual growth rate still might fluctuate -- but a small-percentage approval rate on new construction approval would essentially serve a long-range gating function on restricting growth to desirable, moderate levels. (Again, exemptions to this might be used to spur the kind of growth city leaders want to see, like apartments and condos downtown.)

All of which is by way of saying, I suspect those Durhamites fretting over a sped-up development review process would be a lot more sanguine about the idea if they had some assurances that we'd actually see higher-quality outcomes in the Bull City. After all, if we can do more to incent the "right kind" of development, why not make Durham an attractive place to deliver high-quality development by making the approval process quick?

I can't think of anyone who'd want to change that beautiful view you can get, every so often, out the window of a plane.

Of course, the staging and timing is a question, given Bell's eagerness to move forward with this review. Will we actually see any efforts to strengthen development guidelines concomitant with quickening the pace of development review?

Folks in the development community might point next door to Wake County, where committees routinely rubber-stamp any project that comes through and Wakefield residents whine about not being able to build impervious surfaces like decks in contravention of, you know, state environmental rules. Wake County has a more streamlined development process, they'd say.

Yes -- our point exactly. Let's use that as a model, indeed, of what not to become. In the end, efficiency improvements for development make sense, but only hand-in-hand with making sure we don't turn into Wake Forest West.

Comments

[Philip]

Kevin -- As is typically the case, I agree with much of what you say and how it is said, but there are some benefits to delay:

1. Developers typically have more resources than the reacting neighborhood and city department(s). Among other things, the developer controls the timing of the application , the initial contents of the application and the team of experts the developer put in place to drive the development. It takes time (and sometimes some repeated starts) for neighborhoods to react and then interact with the City and the developer.

2. Durham's increasing land values are a testament in part to the lack of developable space in Wake or Orange and the hasty decisions that those counties may have made. "Measure twice, cut once," the carpenter's adage is at least as applicable to development and tree cutting as it is to carpentry and board cutting.

All in all, I would be very concerned that developers resources and tight deadlines would lead to bad decisions. While I'd love for good decisions to be made quickly, a little delay seems like a small rice to pay for good outcomes.

[John Schelp]

Under the current process, developers work with the planning and other departments to refine and ensure their plan complies with the Unified Development Ordinance and other standards.

Developers have the financial resources and teams of experts -- lawyers, land planners and designers, traffic and civil engineers, consultants, lobbyists and others -- to ensure their plans comply with the standard required for approval.

The UDO is complicated and dense. It effectively excludes from the planning process the citizens it presumes to protect. Neighborhoods don't have the same amount of resources, expertise or time to communicate and negotiate improvements on a project.

Under the current system, developers work with the planning department shaping their plans long before citizens find out about what's going on. The staff stakes itself out on what it likes and doesn't like about a developer's plan long before any attempt is made to find out what citizens like and dislike. By then the developer has altered his plan to make staff happy and the staff feels committed to back the developer because they have influenced the developer's plans. This is human nature, but it puts a neighborhood -- which is already unsure where the race course goes -- standing at the blocks because it can't hear the gun go off.

[barry]

i've been out of town and only just catching up on this story, but i don't see any way in the real world of Durham (or anywhere else for that matter) real estate development for a speeded up review process to result in anything other than environmentally degrading development that is poorly sited and built according to the most profitable model for the developer.

the solution is not to encourage sprawl by forcing developers to take their most profitable building practices to Alamance County, but to encourage regional cooperation among all counties that contribute jobs and residences to the region, especially when it comes to what, for lack of a better term, we can call sustainability. I don't know how possible it will be to achieve that (probably somewhere between difficult and pipe-dream), but i think it's even more likely that this wholesale streamlining of the review process is going to result in a lot of sucky development practices (such as the mass grading and clear-cutting which Melissa is rightfully objecting to) which the public will be presented with as fait accompli, and no opportunity to undo that long-term damage.

Short-term profits for developers vs long-term profits for the community as measured by quality of life, economic stability, manageble demand on resources, and yes, increasing property values and municipal revenues to carry out projects that meet the needs of the community. In big picture terms, that's what's at stake here. Speeding up the review process is going to definitely give you the former, at least in Durham.

[Paula]

As someone who sits on one of the citizen review boards that encounter development projects in the planning cycle, I can emphatically say that this idea is a bad one. it's definitely putting the cart ahead of the horse - on a downhill slope with a load of bricks. I'm not saying that we couldn't use some streamlining and reorg in the planning process, but it needs to be in favor of *more* citizen participation earlier in the process, and *more* and *clearer* development guidelines, NOT less.

I personally have seen developers do almost everything under the sun to try and get around any requirement that might cost them a dollar. Streamlining the review process without a lot of other changes first will do nothing but allow for more instances of things "slipping by" without notice. Just ask somebody who lives off Morreene Road near the gigantor warehouse about how much damage "slipping by" can cause to a neighborhood.

Perhaps the scariest part of this proposal is the idea of limiting the ability of the Planning Commission to delay projects - how does this help anyone except the developers? Where will citizen voices be heard?

Who wrote this list? DO they work for a developer? Or hope to when they leave public office? Really, there's no other possible excuse.

[Tar Heelz]

Always the contrarian....

I believe there is a misplaced premise that land use decisions are properly made on an ad hoc basis. The question once a development application has come in is not, "Is this something the neighbors like?" It is instead, "Does this development conform to the law?"

Neighborhoods, builders, property owners, developers, and staff all agree that a weakness in the current process is predictability. What is allowed? What is not allowed? What is allowed only under certain conditions? How long will this project take to work through the process? Reliable answers to those questions would go a long way to resolving the current dissatisfaction with the Durham development process.

The UDO needs to be amended to add true objectivity to regulation of development. If we do not want mass grading -- prohibit mass grading! Instead, the law of the (Durham) land allows mass grading on one's property yet our politicians, neighborhood groups, etc. never miss an opportunity to cry out at the "evil developers" who submit their "surface of Mars" applications.

The same is true for other development features. Our Planning Board folks acted offended at any builder who doesn't include a "tot lot" or "pocket park" in his subdivision. Require those things! You want larger buffers? More opaque buffers? You want no oceans of surface parking? You want building envelopes closer to the street? You want sidewalks on both sides of the street?

Either we add those requirements to the UDO or we need stop blaming legendary hordes of developers, lobbyists, and lawyers and start blaming ourselves.

[David Rollins]

I'm going to play devil's advocate for a moment and suggest that Wake County has the best combination of development policies: quick and dirty development with mass grading in north and south Raleigh (not to mention Garner, et al.); funky in-town neighborhoods such as Oakwood and Five Points; and "town square" developments such as Brier Creek.

My point is that allowing "relief valves" for development on the edges decreases the need to tear stuff down in the center. It also allows longtime inner city residents to gain the benefits of property appreciation when their property eventually becomes valuable enough to redevelop. Witness Glenwood Village, which at one time was "out there" but is now a great in-town nabe. If I worked in Raleigh I'd gladly trade Trinity Park for some cool spot between Glenwood and NCSU that offered the same walkability and nightlife.

A similar thing is happening in Durham; SouthPoint is the relief valve, though of course it has been largely the poverty and corruption of the central city that has preserved it (rather than the inefficient development process). Eventually Brier Creek will creep further to E. Durham, and early investors in that area will reap the benefits.

[southdurhamite]

I hate the thought of being consigned to living in a "relief valve" just so downtown Durham can be gentrified. I'm sure the folks in still mostly rural North Durham share my sentiments.

We need walkability and the ability to travel by bicycle all over this city and not just in the gentrified areas.

But we also desperately need to preserve the currently undisturbed open space that we have, and in South Durham there are a number of wetlands that need preserving that are threatened by the encroachment of development (such a by the monstrous commercial development planned for the Boylan property).

If the development process among the professional staff is cumbersome, it is in part because of the fragmentation of the offices involved in development and the internal office political aspirations of the staff. If the development process is cumbersome in the planning commission and elected body review, it is because the elected officials have gotten in the bad habit of not taking planning commission recommendations to deny unless pushed by public pressure. The whole idea of deferrals for negotiation was to protect the elected officials from public pressure.

If development has become ad hoc, it's because we don't have a comprehensive plan, we have a framework for asking for plan alterations and rezoning.

The streamlining that Voorhees foresees amounts to making the Planning Commission and Planning Staff irrelevant as far as proactive consideration of private development is concerned. It is intended to create a government of business interests, by business interests, and for business interests but subsidized mostly by individual property-owning residential taxpayers.

We have delays and poor development at the same time precisely because of the politics and the unwillingness of our elected officials to do the right thing at the right time.

[RWE]

Great discussion here. I hope someone at the City is following along.

Most municipal ordinances(including Durham's UDO) are designed not to encourage "good" development, but to restrict the really "bad" stuff. Ordinances that require tree save areas, stream buffers, and on-site stormwater controls, as well as those that guard against excessive light pollution and intrusive signage are good things - particularly when applied to a previously undeveloped or rural site.

These tools can help keep greedy developers and untalented designers from polluting the environment and negatively impacting the lives and property values of their neighbors. If former Mayor Tennyson and his pals are inconvenienced because it takes a year to get permits to build 500 acres of taupe vinyl-clad homes or to pave 40 acres of woods in rural Durham County, or to build another big box along 15-501, then I say GREAT. There's plenty of wide open land in Apex or Fuquay.

However, what is broken about our development review system is that these same rules are hindering small infill projects and adaptive re-use projects on the perimeter of the downtown district. I think Durham is full of creative entrepreneurs and wannabe developers who would love to invest in the Broad Street or Ninth Street corridors, for example. But it is simply not economically feasible to redevelop many smaller urban sites because of the rules relating to off-street parking, landscape buffers, storm drainage, and trash handling, among others.

We should be doing everything possible to stimulate investment and encourage greater density in walkable areas that are already served by public infrastructure. Downtown finally seems to have some momentum - due largely to a substantial public investment and a streamlined downtown development process. Smaller pods of isolated activity have sprouted up outside the DDO, such as the Broad Street Cafe/Watts Grocery/Green Room area, but that growth won't spread unless our local government either proactively plans for it or gets out of the way.

[KH]

I have to agree w/ Tar Heelz on this discussion. We need to make sure the proper rules are in place. The neighbors should not HAVE to get organized every time a development proposal comes through. An efficient system and effective UDO should automatically filter out proposals that are detrimental to the community.

At the same time, you have decent proposals that get bashed by for quixotic reasons. Durham is the land of we want more open space but the buildings have to be short. We don't want miles of parking but why can't we have more parking spaces over there.

If the developers get a carrot such as expedited reviews, they should bring exceptional, creative and sustainable developments to the table. Durham residents need to embrace quality density that truly respects the appearance from the street but the impact on adjoining properties (i.e. effective tree buffers, decorative fencing, etc.).

A lot of our regulations are still stuck in 80-90's suburban mindset. Splitting Durham into development tiers was a good start. Now we need to add some meat to each tier to ensure we get the desired results that fit within each context.

[David Rollins]

I also hate the idea of living in a "relief valve", which is why I wouldn't buy a home there. If you want walkability out in the sticks, you either need to become a developer or buy into one of the "new urbanism" developments such as Southern Village.

Besides, I submit that Brier Creek is pretty walkable. I used to live in "The Preserve at Brier Creek" and would frequently walk for dinner at Champa and to the market down the street (used to be Winn-Dixie, I think it's a Lowes Foods now). Would I have rather walked to Wimpy's than the Bob Evans chain? Sure. But at the time I was in a corporate apartment and couldn't afford a second rental car.

My bank brings in contractors by the planeful from India and Singapore, and most cannot afford car insurance due to lack of a US driving record. We put them in Durham because it's the cheapest place to live, it has decent public transport, and there is a thriving international community.

[southdurhamite]

"I also hate the idea of living in a "relief valve", which is why I wouldn't buy a home there. If you want walkability out in the sticks, you either need to become a developer or buy into one of the "new urbanism" developments such as Southern Village."

Contrary to what many of you elitists think, it is not possible for most Durhamites to buy a new house like some of you buy new clothes.

[Tar Heelz]

I would suggest that my suburban home in South Durham is considerably more pedestrian friendly than many "in town" locations. It is located in a vinyl village of taupe houses that has sidewalks and abuts the ATT. My wife and child can walk from the playground at Barbee and Fayetteville to the Kroger at 54 without a worry. Along the way, they can stop in at Nantucket Grill, Bocci, Orient Garden, Rudinos, Wild Wings, or Sunset Grille for lunch.

Hint: Just because a house is not in Trinity Park and just because the house isn't featured on Endangered Durham doesn't mean development is bad for Durham.

[Kevin Davis]

SouthDurhamite:

Not that there isn't some elitism to the discussion of central vs. South Durham that comes up here from time to time, and this point isn't really germane to what you're saying -- but it did get me wanting to bring up something I've had on my mind for a while.

My wife and I drove by the Wynterfield townhouse community by Beazer in South Durham the other day. We had (when we first moved here) wandered into an open house at one.

For the same price as we could have bought a new (moderate-to-low) quality townhouse in a strip-cleared development, we bought a 1,500 sq. ft. home in Trinity Park, at a price well under $200,000.

There is a perception sometimes that living in W-H, Trinity Park, Duke Park, etc. is a necessarily expensive prospect and folks have to move out to new subdivisions. For the premium homes, or the large homes -- it is more expensive. But there's plenty of properties well-affordable in central Durham.

Some buyers don't consider central Durham. My guess is that a lot of it has to do with decision points like wanting the large houses in fashion these days, or feeling like new construction is the only option.

But the point is, though there is an elitism that I fully acknowledge is present in many central Durhamites' minds, the barriers to living here -- depending on one's priorities about what one expects out of a house -- aren't that burdensome.

As I noted above, even as a central Durhamite I actually don't have a problem with making the development process easier to get through, assuming that Planning and other departments can avoid the situations that have of late created so much mistrust among residents.

I'd love to trade off with developers requiring them to spend more on quality development, land management, stormwater, etc. practices -- and give that back in savings by reducing their soft costs and time to get projects in the ground.

[barry]

"The UDO needs to be amended to add true objectivity to regulation of development. If we do not want mass grading -- prohibit mass grading! Instead, the law of the (Durham) land allows mass grading on one's property yet our politicians, neighborhood groups, etc. never miss an opportunity to cry out at the "evil developers" who submit their "surface of Mars" applications.

The same is true for other development features. Our Planning Board folks acted offended at any builder who doesn't include a "tot lot" or "pocket park" in his subdivision. Require those things! You want larger buffers? More opaque buffers? You want no oceans of surface parking? You want building envelopes closer to the street? You want sidewalks on both sides of the street?"

it took, what 5 or 6 years to write the UDO? And every week, i get the text emailed to me of some new proposed amendment trying to resolve yet another overlooked problem that the UDO either failed to anticipate or does not adequately address. Yeah, all those things should be in the UDO. The fact is, they're not. I don't know why that is, but i suspect it has something to do with the fact that creating a document like that is, and should be, the job of the professional and political leadership of the community, acting in the interests of the community. As it turns out, since most of the community doesn't know about the intricacies of development law, and doesn't have the time or knowledge to follow along in this arcane process, most of the input comes from the development sector. I know, for example, that Tom Miller and Pat Carstensen both put in dozens if not hundreds of hours reviewing the UDO on behalf of Inter-Neighborhood Council, and they're two of the most knowledgable people in town when it comes to these issues. I don't know how much of their input was accepted into the final document, or whether they made the kind of recommendations you described above, only to have them rejected in the end. But the UDO as it stands now is going to be the guiding document for development in Durham for the next generation. If it doesn't meet our needs, which appears to be the case, the last thing we need to be doing is "streamlining" the process by which developers can skirt the intent of the law in order to maximize profits without benefiting the rest of the community.

[Tar Heelz]

No one should think that "streamlining" necessarily means "deregulating."

In the many roundtable discussions that were held between staff, developers, and local professionals (planners, engineers, and architects), the complaints were not about, "There are too many laws and rules." Instead it was, "We follow the rules we are told we must follow only to learn that there are City/County turf battles, intra-City departmental wars, unwritten "policies," unwritten procedures, and innumerable opportunities for purely discretionary delays and stalling by staff and the Planning Commission.

Streamlining, IMHO, means setting reasonable timetables for administrative reviews of applications. It means hiring staff where staff is required. It means keeping salaries competitive so that good City planners and engineers are continuously lost to the private sector. It means requiring appointed commissions to act upon the applications submitted to them (or to defer them only with cause). It means ending the "wink-wink" extortion whereby the City effectively requires cash payments to the Durham Public Schools. It means adding to or strengthening the UDO's objective standards for development and design (amenities, parking configuration, grading limits, tree protection, etc.). It means abandoning the awkward (and unique) "development plan" style of zoning and adding instead conditional zoning where objective, legally enforceable development conditions can be added to zoning districts.

[Ted Voorhees]

I'm very excited to see such spirited debate on this topic. Please understand that staff (including me) have been asked to make proposals, but it is the elected officials who will make the decisions. Please make sure you share your thoughts directly with them as this process unfolds.

[barry]

"In the many roundtable discussions that were held between staff, developers, and local professionals (planners, engineers, and architects), the complaints were not about, "There are too many laws and rules." Instead it was, "We follow the rules we are told we must follow only to learn that there are City/County turf battles, intra-City departmental wars, unwritten "policies," unwritten procedures, and innumerable opportunities for purely discretionary delays and stalling by staff and the Planning Commission."

I wish Kevin allowed html in the comments, because i'd certainly highlight the phrase "between staff, developers, and local professionals."

It's pretty obvious which group was left out of these "round table" discussions, innit?

by the way, if you've got a dog in this fight, it would be better if you said so out loud.

[Tar Heelz]

No dog in the fight. Just info that I thought might help give perspective to the discussion.

I agree with you that there should have been more representation at these meetings by those, like you, Kevin, John Schelp, Tom Miller, etc. who, although not necessarily traditional development professionals, have a real working knowledge of the "process."

Heck, even if the recommendations had been exactly the same with more neighborhood advocate involvement (which I believe would largely have been the case) it would have gone a long way toward quelling the distrust and conspiracy theories that are generated (on this blog and elsewhere) by not having all the right people at the table.

(To defend the staff a moment, the reasoning in not broadening invitations was that the goal of these meetings was specifically to focus on the technical process of development and permitting reviews and those most knowledgable of the process were the architects, land planners, and engineers (traffic, structural, environmental) who interact with this process every day.)

[barry]

Based on your apparently first hand knowledge of these meetings, and your "defense of staff," i have to wonder what exactly your role in the process is/was?

I also don't think anyone is engaging in conspiracy theories. As i've been pointing out on the INC listserv, it's simply a fact that the development community is driven by the need to turn a profit on its projects. Although profits aren't a bad thing in and of themselves, that need is not necessarily in harmony with the long term interest of the community at-large. Probably the most prevalent example would be the practice of clear cutting/mass grading, which Melissa Rooney is documenting numerous instances of in South Durham. This practice may be helpful to the developer's bottom line, but in the long term it's destructive of the both the quality and quantity of water available to the community.

How do we reconcile these needs?

A better, more objective development ordinance is one possible long-term solution. But in the meanwhile, how do we prevent this kind of damage to the community's ability to sustain itself over the next 4 or 5 decades, while we create a new ordinance? And note, as far as i know, nobody is actually even talking about rewriting the UDO, just amending it every week when some new and unanticipated problem emerges with interpreting it.

[Tar Heelz]

But Barry, wouldn't it be easier for concerned citizens to bring a citizens petition for a text amendment that proposes to ban mass-grading? That will get the ball rolling.

The entire UDO doesn't need to be re-worked in order for there to be real change, just like the NC General Statutes don't need to be thrown-out each time a new challenge faces the General Assembly.

I gotta believe that builders, staff, and neighbors are all tired of the unspoken logrolling-style of development approval that characterizes Durham's current process. (e.g. "If you make a bigger contribution to the DPS, we'll let you mass-grade.")

[southdurhamite]

Finally we are beginning to get to some real issues. The UDO is not the problem. Even the process mandated by the UDO is not the problem. The problem is in execution of the UDO. No tinkering with the language, no insisting on the Planning Commission constrain itself with a narrowly-conceived "advisory role", no stripping of language from the UDO will solve this.

Here are the issues as I see them:

1. New development is being privileged over the long-term interests of residents of the city and county who are committed to being here for a long time. Tax breaks and improvements to infrastructure are aimed heavily at new development while the needs of existing neighborhoods are ignored.

2. The spinelessness of the elected officials in the face of bad development is unnecessarily delaying good development. There is no excuse for allowing consideration of a bad development to be extended again and again in sessions of the elected officials just because elected officials lack the will to tell their very good friends, "This development is being opposed by the neighbors because it is a disaster waiting to happen." And then to deny on a procedural stalemate. This sort of political Kabuki is what is fueling the distrust of the process among citizens of South Durham. If elected officials want to streamline the public hearing process, they can act on behalf of all citizens on critical decisions. As it is, there are some elected officials who think any public comment or pressure is illegitimate. Message to these folks: You work for us, not for the developers.

3. There are only a few developers who are consistently turning in bad developments, playing games with development plans, violating sedimentation ordinances and paying fines as an ordinary cost of business, and steamrolling the public with tactical political tricks and phony plans. But the failure to hold these folks to account drives the pressure for ever more stringent and specific ordinances, which in turn create other loopholes and legal bases for suit of the city and county. This problem will not be solved with words and documents and paper processes.

4. Trends in development and community interests are increasingly out of joint. Few citizens have heard of the "new urbanism" or know what it means -- and more importantly how it can help in the delivery of services. What they do see is the use of these terms by certain developers to justify high-density sprawl. Changing the process will not of itself promote creative dialog between citizens and the development community.

5. No one has yet advocated what is obvious. No additional areas should be annexed or extended water and sewer until existing areas of the City have the full complement of high-quality urban services. And that those services be delivered in an income-blind way.

6. The single action that can streamline the process is to hire a sufficient number of technical staff to permit site visits of every request for plan change, rezoning, or adjustment. The assertions of the developer cannot always be trusted; Google Earth and the county GIS system can only provide limited information that might not always be current. There is no substitute for actually seeing the situration.

7. The single policy issue that faces the citizens of Durham is how much and what kind of terra-forming will we allow in order to ensure that a developer makes a profit. Mass grading is only a part of the issue here, although the most visible part. Will Durham County continue to permit the strip-mining of property - clear-cutting of trees, mass grading and sale of topsoil and earth, massive alteration of terrain, blasting and sale of bedrock as part of residential, multi-use, and commercial development or will we compel developers to do the right thing and design with nature in mind. A less charitable description of the strip-mining approach circulating in this part of the county is Jerseyfication, Floridaization, or Californication.

8. A central question that developers and elected officials must answer is their vision of the future of Durham City and Durham County. Fifty years from now, what will the landscape and the community look like? Will there still be berry farms and horse and cattle pastures? Public open space and trails? Honest-to-goodness neighborhood commercial or strip malls masquerading as neighborhood commercial? Or will it be one continuous suburban sprawl from RTP to Rougemont?

Or will we be in a position that the best thing to do is for the City and County to get out of the the then sham of planning and zoning and building regulation and sedimentation control and provision of infrastructure? When a Planning Commission becomes so advisory it can be ignored by elected officials routinely and on the most important issues, why have it?

[barry]

"But Barry, wouldn't it be easier for concerned citizens to bring a citizens petition for a text amendment that proposes to ban mass-grading? That will get the ball rolling."

I don't know if it would be easier or not. I have no clue how one proposes a text amendment to the UDo, nor if a citizens petition carries anywhere near as much weight as developing (no pun intended) a parallel to the relationships that exist between the planning community and the development community. I do know, based on several high profile cases (Morreene Road) as well as other, less media-intensive incidents, that the UDO in many cases doesn't do what people thought it would do. It's way too subjective, as far as i can tell.

"6. The single action that can streamline the process is to hire a sufficient number of technical staff to permit site visits of every request for plan change, rezoning, or adjustment. The assertions of the developer cannot always be trusted; Google Earth and the county GIS system can only provide limited information that might not always be current. There is no substitute for actually seeing the situation."

Based on my own personal experience, i have little confidence in the ability of current staff to perform site visits and inspections and flag violations. Details on request. Whether increasing staff will help is something i can't answer. I think, in the long term, that structural change in the department would be a good thing. I'd also like to see code enforcement (of things like lawn parking or illegal rental units, for example) handled by a separate code enforcement team that is not part of the Planning Department.

[Dave W.]

"5. No one has yet advocated what is obvious. No additional areas should be annexed or extended water and sewer until existing areas of the City have the full complement of high-quality urban services. And that those services be delivered in an income-blind way:

Hear Hear !

couldn't someone win a mayoral campaign running on this issue alone?