Cocoposts

TIDD Lovefest

A resolution approving nine (9) tax increment financing districts was approved at the County Commission.  Heavy hitters with the business community piled on in support. 

The esteemed Sherman McCorkle did his spot-on Bush imitation.  He kept calling TIDDs ethical.  And my favorite, good planning.  It may be preferable to the wicked-crooked way that developers otherwise seek utility extensions on the public dime.  It sure must beat lobbying for pork at the legislature.  It creates more of a one-stop-shop for all your development subsidies. 

There was much more bluster about  misinformation provided by the opponents than about the absence of  information about the proposal in the first place.  The TIDDs resolution and master plan wasn't / isn't online.  Staff's presentation was one awkward sentence.  The SunCal rep got two minutes - which was not even enough time to outline hinted-at promises.

Proponents seemed slightly frantic and the testimony was over the top with optimism.  Perhaps they do really believe that there is no national economic trend that could possibly change their rosy assumptions.  Perhaps they really do believe that building new buildings constitutes sustainable economic development. 

Urgency is the tone behind this.  Seems it is a race, of sorts, between a bunch of vacant land on the edge over there and a bunch of vacant land on the edge over there.   From here, it looks like a race to the edge either way.  What lies between doesn't fit in this paradigm.  This is about investment in that edge land using this "amazing finance tool."   In a hurry. 

Take this Pipeline

This Arizona Republic story, "Pipeline raises concerns for Phoenix developers, airport", describes  a consequence of Arizona's passage of a knee-jerk private property rights and land use takings proposition in 2006.    

Phoenix leaders may be forced to choose between the city's two economic heavyweights: downtown renaissance and the airport. Lofty plans envision the Jackson Street Entertainment District - a cluster of shops, music venues, nightclubs and bars - that would add a key ingredient to downtown nightlife. Plans are causing concern, though, not because of the site, but because of what  runs underneath it. (...)

A pipeline break could create a deadly 300-foot flume of fuel, according to a July report by a consultant for the airline group.  The Phoenix jet-fuel pipeline has had repeated leaks and corrosion problems during the years. Most of those accidents have been on the airport's property. The last accident was in 2003, when 13,100 gallons leaked into containment vault and 300 gallons seeped into a storm sewer.

The city, airlines, state leaders and developers share concerns, but they say they aren't responsible for policing development near the pipeline or are powerless to do so. A 2006 voter-approved state law virtually has tied the city's hands on the issue, Phoenix officials say. Proposition 207 allows property owners to seek compensation if cities change land-use rules in ways that make their land less valuable. Because of that, Phoenix can't afford to impose development restrictions, Deputy City Manager David Cavasos said.

Others say the city of Phoenix is using  Prop 207 to take the easy way out and do nothing but mediate or maybe move the pipeline again.   

Long snarky online comments to the story blame "planners" and government bureaucracy.  First, believe the crock about private property rights and vote to kill government.  Next, complain about how it isn't working. 

Watered Down Planning

The Journal opines:  Water Board Should Keep Focus on— Water

In the high desert, water is at the center of any discussion of urban growth. The city and county have a unified approach to water-resource planning, under the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority.

On the contrary, it is a fragmented approach to have three separate governments doing the work of one.  It fragments  planning, oversight and public participation. 

City Councilor Michael Cadigan would like to see the Water Authority take on a much larger role. Cadigan, currently a member of the water board, proposes that the board look at all growth issues.  ...

This would be a radically different agenda for the Water Authority, which was created by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Bill Richardson at the county's behest and over the city's vehement objections. In fact, it is the agenda you normally find at meetings of the city and county planning boards, or at the City Council and County Commission. (sic)

Wuh?  Re-read about a dozen times and still makes no sense.

As it relates to issues other than water, development and the rules that govern it are the business of those governing bodies. The water board was not created to make social policy.  The full City Council and County Commission are responsible for urban growth decisions, and are held accountable by voters. A board whose membership is appointed, not elected, to deal with water issues should not second-guess governments explicitly authorized to make planning decisions.

Wait, wait, wait.  Can't have it both ways.  Can't tout unified water resources planning  and then sniff at  urban growth decisions as  "social policy."  Water planning without social policy is simply engineering.   

The fact that water is key does not make the Water Authority king.

I beg to differ. 

Greenfields and Marty Chavez

Mayor Marty vetos the TIDD amendments that would have restricted the use of tax increment financing.   Tosses away his responsibility and spins it as city-county cooperation.   1st and 10, Developers.   

Marty throws the ball to the Board of County Commissioners - who'll hide it where no one but Geraldine Amato can find it.  Soon will emerge multiple agreements in a  flurry of many-dead-tree- paperwork that no one will want to read before Christmas.  Hurry before the Legislature tries to block Pandora.    

Carter Bundy on Heath Haussamen presented all the reasoning on why Mayor Marty Chavez should not do what he did before he did it.  He is damning greenfields.   Greenwashing that developer touchdown will be playing on astroturf.   

Tremendously Idiotic Development Districts

I posted about TIDDs on the Fix. 

TIDDs are not a planning tool.  This is not a way to manage growth.  It is a way to pay for it. 

A recurring thesis of this blog is that public utility decisions are political decisions. They are made through development agreements, not through a public planning process.  This is by design.  Water, sewer, roads and storm drainage - the big four up front costs for sprawl developers - are dealt with on a development by development basis.   TIDDs may bring a little order to funding new infrastructure, but don't mistake that for planning.

Planning might look like phasing of capital improvements - a capital improvements plan that prioritizes available funding as a component of a comprehensive plan that gets updated through a highly visible community-wide process. 

We don't do that.  We've smothered our comprehensive plan with a pillow and shoved it in the closet.  We've truncated administration of the largest utility in the state from the land use authority of its largest city.

And now we're further fragmenting responsibility for the economic health of our public tax base by creating multiple districts to bond and build public improvements.

Santa Fe Neighborhood Conservation Districts

The Journal North covers a proposal by a Santa Fe City Councilor to create neighborhood districts. 

"Planning" isn't mentioned in the story except to lightly backhand bureaucrats in the planning department who are reportedly lukewarm on this prospect.   Probably because the idea is stupid.    

From the Journal story (my emphasis):

It might be too late for the residents of Juanita Street who opposed the towering three-story condominium currently being erected in their neighborhood. But a proposal to create neighborhood conservation districts— in which residents would decide what they do and don't want in their neighborhood— could put the kibosh on future construction deemed to be out of sync with the residents' wishes.

...  (City Councilor) Heldmeyer said Thursday many Santa Fe neighborhoods have up to now had little to no voice in their own evolution. "There are a lot of neighborhoods that really have been screwed up," she said. "Hopefully, this will prevent more neighborhoods from being screwed up."

(...) Under the current proposal, neighborhood residents could define boundaries and establish rules on such issues as building heights, density, landscaping and more.
Two-thirds of the property owners within the neighborhood would have to approve of the standards in order for them to take effect. City staffers would then be in charge of explaining the restrictions to anyone submitting a building plan.  "It's made to be very simple, not bureaucratic," Heldmeyer said. "This is something that's very grassroots."

Residents voting to enact zoning restrictions is a lot like residents voting to enact new taxes on themselves.   It will have unintended consequences and create wicked inequities.    Planning and zoning, in theory, attempt to balance land use impacts.  Multiple zoning rules for multiple self-serving neighborhood associations would enable neighborhoods to restrict development - pushing uses perceived as undesirable into less powerful neighborhoods.   

Down this path lies a parochial nightmare. This is an attempt to delegate what is the Santa Fe City Council's responsibility for sound growth and tough planning decisions. 

Talk about screwed up.   

Nevada Empress on PBS

I turn on the TV last night and there's Patricia Mulroy, The Water Empress. Only the News Hour with Jim Lehrer calls her the Water Czar.  The first, more accurate title, was bestowed by High Country News in 2001.  It is more in keeping with her vampiric ageless stature.

Nevada is a bell weather for New Mexico and they have lots in common.   We have written and thought much about Nevada's  socio-political construct. 

Mulroy got her own little segment in the show and didn't have to answer silly questions on the panel about whether growth was good or bad.   She even got to bash planning in a sentence they used as her opening. 

PAT MULROY:  From a planning perspective, we're assuming the worst.   

I hear disgust in her voice - like she's saying she always assumes the worst from planning. But I'm touchy, I know.

RAY SUAREZ: Pat Mulroy is called the water czar of Las Vegas.

Empress!  She's the Water Empress!  I yell at the TV jumping around trying not to spill the cab.  Big dog sighs.

She describes why farming and ranching must die.  And how its a natural thing.   She's saving Vegas from drought, afterall.   She looks like  a tough cookie.  If I were drought, I wouldn't want to mess with her.

(...)  PAT MULROY: We have to protect this community from that drought, and there's only one way to do it, and that's develop a water supply that is hydrologically separate and apart and not connected in any way to the Colorado River.

So that project is not driven by growth; that project is being driven by what we see the consequences of climate change are on the Colorado River Basin.

RAY SUAREZ: Mulroy argues Las Vegas actually uses only about 10 percent of the state's water, compared to nearly 80 percent consumed by ranchers and farmers up north. And while she says she doesn't want to compromise the food that's grown in the region, it may be time to rethink whether it makes sense to have so many irrigated farms in areas that are naturally so dry.

PAT MULROY: It's the culture of the west, and a lot of what we're talking about here is cultural. You have, what, fifth-, sixth-generation families that have grown up on farms and have lived on farms and on ranches, and you're changing their reality.

And it will be difficult for them to envision it in a different way. I think there's a natural evolution already occurring where some of the less profitable, more difficult to ranch areas are already selling out.

RAY SUAREZ: Those are fighting words to ranchers.

CECIL GARLAND: We're not down there trying to Las Vegas' water. They're up here trying to take our water. That's the simple truth of it. And the point is that in the southwest, with an ever-exploding growing human population, it's on a collision course with the amount of water.

Those people down there are going to have to learn to conserve, have to live within the limits of their own ability to grow, and they have to recognize that. So far as I can tell, they're not willing to do that yet.

The panel talked about growth without ever defining it.  There is population growth, gross receipts tax growth, gross national product growth.  Regional, state or local measures of the economy - like job and income growth can be measured.  And then there is growth in the number of developed acres.  Building growth.  Sprawl growth and redevelopment types of building growth.  18 hole golf course growth. 

But Noooooo.   Its all lumped together.    Tree ring growth is the same as new casinos, is the same as 5000 new people a month.  Growth is growth.  It all needs lots of water and power.

Is the growth good or bad?  The inane question begs the question.  Is it cancerous?   

The closing sentence bugged me too - something about how "city planners" say  stunting growth will cost everyone.   He didn't interview any city planners as far as I saw.  Everybody but Moses was on the panel, but no city planner.  A city planner might have said that sustainability depends on how you build to accommodate growth.  You have to talk about the quality of growth, not just the amount.

Zoning Versus Planning

The City of Las Cruces election is described on Heath Haussamen.   He characterizes the outcome as a growth vote, more or less. 

(...) There were strong signs that a growing number of Las Cruces residents weren’t on board with the vision shared by Mattiace, Frietze and others. They believe the city’s growth is either too fast or happening without rules to ensure adequate infrastructure and services are being provided. They don’t like the idea of paying a tax for a spaceport when infrastructure in their neighborhood is lacking. Most important, they feel left out of the process. One of the main issues in the Las Cruces municipal election was the difference between public input and public involvement.

Well put.    Then this comment got my attention: 

...What is the difference between public input and public involvement? Aren't there citizens (public)appointed to the Planning and Zoning Commission to review the land use cases? .... There are numerous land use cases every month that no one seems to care about, and they have no problem letting the Planning and Zoning Commission and the City Council act on them. That's what those folks are appointed/elected to do. Ultimately, the decision is up to them. Problem is, it's a slippery slope. There are such things as property rights, and the Council must be careful not to start arbitrarily denying land use requests or they will end up in a lawsuit, which does nothing to help anyone.

I also think that people have a responsibility to find out for themselves what's going on. Short of sending someone to knock on every door of every citizen in the City to inform them that there is a land use case before the City Council, there is no way for the City to "get the word out" in a manner acceptable to everyone. All this information is readily available to anyone who bothers to inquire. Civic responsibility instead of laziness, anyone?

If I had written it I would have mentioned planning about 60 times.  Nobody mentions it once.   
Here's the deal:   Property rights and allowing owners to do whatever they want with land can be hard on land.  Ask any coal town.  It is also very hard on community planning for growth.  We're told that holding individual property rights over government land use regulation will protect property.  But fights about growth are most always about private development initiatives.  The local government zoning board is often representative of the community - siding with the neighborhood in recommending denials of site plans or zone changes.*

But you can't plan for growth case-by-case.  The public input and public involvement has to come at a big-picture level.  Otherwise you have every single neighborhood association attempting to to exert veto or approval power over every single development with no one effectively speaking up for land outside town - which is, in fact, a lot like where we're at now. 

You need communities, and community representatives in local government, to continuously develop and maintain comprehensive regional and area plans.  And not just land use plans.   The plans have to anticipate needed infrastructure financing, aka capital improvements.  That's the way the Legislature and Congress know what to fund besides their pet projects. Otherwise its all pet projects. 

Dream world?   Sure.  Fraught with the peril of a representative government attempting to effectively manage the tax base and shared regional resources.  Community building, like any other kind of building, requires a sound plan.  A big view.  A regional vision.  Not just No Wal-Mart There. No regional vision ever arose from an individual zone change.

*Governments never deny subdivision platting requests - a more obscure development action. 

Oregon Property Rights

Among the worst outcomes of Blame Government - Benefit Business that arose from Reagan Worship is the  "private property rights movement".  It kills planning.  And I (still) strongly contend, in spite of how we don't do enough of it,  community-based planning is a good thing. 

The property rights movement consists of developers, mining companies, timber interests and the average Joe who hates his local planning commission.  And who doesn't from time to time?  But, the passion is misguided, as in the case of "Takings" legislation.      

A note of hope from Oregon where voters just rolled back the Ultimate takings legislation, Prop 37, on Tuesday. 

From the distainful Oregonian:

(...) But the scale of proposed Measure 37 development, especially in the Willamette Valley where 60 percent of the claims were filed, alarmed conservationists and farm groups. They found ready allies in Democratic legislators, who wrote Measure 49 during the 2007 legislative session and referred it to voters on a party-line vote.

The campaign partisans took it from there. Yamhill County vineyard owner Eric Lemelson poured more than $1 million into the Yes on 49 campaign. The Nature Conservancy of Oregon, which usually works in the background buying land for preservation as wildlife habitat, made passing Measure 49 its top priority and funneled $1.2 million to the campaign.

Timber companies were the biggest contributors to the other side. Stimson Lumber, which filed Measure 37 development claims on at least 57,000 acres, contributed $495,000 to Oregonians in Action, which headed the opposition.

Blog for Oregon has the numbers for both the original Measure 37 and the rollback Measure 49 and concludes - people caught on.   They saw the raw deal for taxpayers and the little guy.   They changed their vote.   

The fact is that people across Oregon saw the truth - it wasn't M49 that was pulling the wool over people's eyes. It was M37 that did that. And people around the state realized it and voted in favor of Measure 49.

Delusional Hubris of Good Sense

This San Francisco Chronicle story from my urban design list serve (thanks John Hooker) covers a debate about growth among planners at a conference of the California chapter of the American Planning Association.  Status quo wins. 

"Bad news: Unless the experts are wrong, California suburbs will continue to sprawl beyond the horizon.

The threat of global warming pales next to the allure of a backyard sliver of green. Two-hour commutes are tough, but it's even tougher to persuade an older suburb to allow dense new housing downtown.

Am I being cynical? No. I'm passing along the verdict of 150 professional planners after they watched six of their peers debate whether or not our state is prepared to change the way it grows.

"California was built for the car," jousted Marjorie Macris, one of the three skeptics on the panel. "Retrofitting it to look like Switzerland will be extremely difficult."

The debate occurred last week in San Jose during the annual conference of the California chapter of the American Planning Association. And it truly was a debate; the two teams jabbed within a tight time frame over the topic: "Resolved, that California is ready for complex urban development."

(Full disclosure: I was in the middle, the moderator keeping an eye on the clock.)

For those of you who don't read planning journals for fun, "complex urban development" is a new synonym for "smart growth." The premise is that we need to steer new growth into older areas, mix in mass transit and not be afraid to stack a few floors of housing on top of shops and small offices.

Blend everything together and - voila! It's North Beach without the $4 cappuccinos.

This isn't an arcane topic: California's population is now 36 million, and demographers expect us to hit 59 million by 2032. If we follow the mold of the past 50 years, most of those folks will be housed in single-family homes in suburban tracts, more and more of them tucked behind sound walls or gates.

Logically, there's a limit to how many culs-de-sac can blanket the landscape. We're also now grappling with the knowledge that pollution and energy consumption are not local issues; your drive to work emits carbon that plays a role in the retreat of ice from the Arctic Circle.

"We have no other choice, and we are ready," argued Al Zelinka of RBF Consulting in Irvine. He talked of how Orange County has downtown housing and condo towers taking root. "Green" buildings now are touted by developers and demanded by governments. "We're at the tipping point. ... Suburbanization will continue, but the wave will be in urbanization."

One of Zelinka's allies touted regulations that would use such lures as cash bonuses for transit-friendly housing to move development in a more compact direction.

"The limits of suburban development have been reached," argued Steve Lawton, community development director for Hercules and the organizer of the debate. "This state can turn on a dime when it has the will and policy inclination to do so."

The con side nodded politely and then bore in. Its argument: Get real! California is too large and contentious for plannerly visions to make much of a mark.

"It's spectacular delusional hubris to think that good sense will prevail," proclaimed developer John Anderson of Chico. "People feel entitled to their fantasy."

Another opponent was more polite but no less pointed.

"I've seen the problems. I just don't think we're ready to solve them," argued David Sargent of the Pasadena design firm Moule + Polyzoides. He emphasized the lack of strong regional governments. Another problem: an environmental process that can be used to kill projects that neighbors don't want, even though banning growth in an established community can cause it to move to farmland or hillsides on the outskirts instead.

At the end, I asked the crowd to vote one way or the other. The cons had it - by a landslide. In a logical world shaped by what the mass of people want, we'd have communities with more housing options and a convenient range of transportation alternatives. Many young adults today aren't in a hurry to settle down in a cul-de-sac - and many of their parents would love to sell their home on the cul-de-sac but still live in the suburbs close to their friends.

But the real world is a local political stew where the loudest voices are the ones who want the status quo preserved at all cost. Statewide planning regulations, meanwhile, look great in press releases but often are disconnected from daily life.

Which puts me on the side of the cons: The small victories for more livable regions seem to be no match for the larger forces that want things the way they are. I sure hope we're wrong."

I think they are wrong.  The topic: "Resolved, that California is ready for complex urban development", alludes to some degree of control over how everything happens -  some state law that can be tweaked to do something or something else.   Things can't stay the way they are. 

Even big-picture-thinking planners underestimate the realm of change outside their control.  Take finance, for example.   Federal tax law allows rapid depreciation on new buildings and this provides a huge incentive for commercial sprawl.   And public financing figures heavily into  the sprawl incentive as well.  Who knew?* 

"Form-based codes" won't save us.  Neither can we assume that the engine, with all its interdisciplinary parts, will be cranking out new houses and Arbys forever.   There is that credit bubble popping, for one thing and I can now hear someone yelling "Peak Oil!"   

*Geraldine Amato is right.