The Richardson City Council and the City Plan Commission held a rare joint work session July 31. The main topic on the agenda was "REVIEW AND DISCUSS THE ENVISION RICHARDSON COMPREHENSIVE PLAN UPDATE AND COMMUNITY SUMMIT ONE." That took almost all of the 3.5 hours the meeting lasted.
Let's start with the best five minutes of the evening. It came at the front of the meeting, during the public input time. Pam Thompson had to speak before anything else happened, but she read the handouts. Her words about the inputs to this meeting couldn't have been more on the mark.
As you review this briefing on the comprehensive plan, I'd like you to focus on the feedback that the consultant has heard: sustainable, local, green, environmentally friendly, protect our neighborhoods. I'd also like to point your attention to the things missing in this presentation. Most Comp Plans have multiple chapters: housing, mobility, environmental protection, future land use, fiscal impact, etc. Maybe it will come in future hearings...I was looking forward to seeing how the city is going to respond to the stakeholder comments and add bike lanes, more trees, how the consultant was going to recommend updates to the zoning that would reduce the amount of parking because we have a ton of completely useless parking in this city. What is presented to you tonight reads more like an economic development plan for future TIF districts. It also seems to ignore everything that consultant has heard during their engagement activities. For example, small locally owned pieces of property should not be targets for reinvestment or redevelopment but rather the areas that we protect. I'm hopeful that the consultant will return soon to talk about the rest of the plan and that you will add additional public hearings.Source: Pam Thompson.
Let's jump to the bottom line of the meeting. Five areas were recommended for "reinvestment studies" by the Consultant Team and City Staff. These five areas were chosen partly on measures like age of buildings, parcel configuration, vacancy rates, etc. In a surprise to me, out of six potential areas considered, the lowest ranked area (the Belt Line/Plano Rd area) made it into the recommendation for further study based on public demand expressed at the Community Summit. So, I guess in the future, I won't be so quick to dismiss these box-checking exercises in the name of public outreach. If they result in something other than more drive-thru chicken restaurants on that Belt Line/Plano Rd intersection, so much the better. (By the way, a brand new Popeyes is now open there, offering Cajun flavored chicken sandwiches, tenders, biscuits and sides...and a drive-thru!) In the map below, the five lucky re-investment areas to get further study will be C, F, B, E, and D.
Now let's recap the feedback of the City Council and City Plan Commission using some handpicked quotes, lightly edited for brevity and clarity. My editorial comments are in brackets, edited like crazy.
Joe Costantino: "I think you have a lot of great words here. I just have a question. 'Sustainable' obviously showed up biggest and kind of boldest. In your mind and your experience of interacting with these people, does sustainable mean like in a recycle, environmental sense, or does it mean sustainable insofar as my kids can live here and live the same way I do." [Steger: that's the problem with these word clouds. They say what words were used most frequently, not what people meant by them. Words like sustainable and affordable have so many different meanings to different people that I don't find them very useful. Still, I was pleased to see the words "neighborhoods," "dense," and "walkable" make the word cloud, even if in tiny font size.]
Ken Southard: "One of the things that I don't see up there is more involvement, more involvement by people who don't necessarily speak English. More involvement in meetings of both...the City Council and Planning Commission." [Steger: Bingo!]
Nate Roberts: "Out of a population of 122,000, according to my math, I could be off but it looks like you've interviewed about 6% of the population. So my question is, for diversity inclusion, are you guys tracking the actual demographics of who you're interviewing?" [Steger: Bingo! Roberts elicited a damning answer: The face-to-face "meetings probably weren't representative of the diversity that Richardson has as a whole in the community."]
Bryan Marsh: "What does this all add up to? It's a feeling of pride, and that we're an exceptional place or city that's unique. And we're Five Star or Class A, we're top notch or whatever, it's where people have a lot of pride in being from Richardson, or working here and living here. And that's what this all adds up to at the end of the day. It makes us one of those great small cities, if you will. Very good. Thank you." [Steger: This sounds like either a pitch for maintaining the status quo or a pitch in a future campaign for mayor.]
Jennifer Justice: "To Chairman Marsh's point about, we already have all these things in the left column. I agree that was initially my thought. And then I thought, Okay, let's look at the word attainable, like we can have a safe, sustainable, connected city, but is that attainable for all the people who come here to work or who work here and would like to live here, but can't be able to access all the great things on this list? So I do think there is work to do there to make sure that what you and I like...is that actually attainable to our teachers and our firefighters and our janitors, and whoever else would like to live in Richardson and benefit from these things?" [Steger: Bingo! Someone who isn't satisfied with the status quo, and looks for ways to improve.]
Ken Hutchenrider: "Moving forward, we know there are towns to the north of us that are just flat out aggressive and competitive on everything. And I'm not suggesting that's where we want to be. But if we identify something that we really feel like we want to go after, that I think we are appropriately aggressive and appropriately competitive." [Steger: If this means throwing taxpayer money to lure big corporate relocations to Richardson, count me out.]
Dan Barrios: "I'd like to see that whatever comes out of this is something that hopefully is an award winning plan. We have a lot of great things in Richardson. And I hope this is one of those things we can add to it. Because it'll either be great or we're going to look back 10 years from now and go, 'Wow, where did we go wrong?' " [Steger: This Comp Plan is this City Council's most important business this term. But it's already late to be talking about shortcomings in the process. Any process in which the City Council gives feedback after the fact instead of direction beforehand is surrendering the initiative to the bureaucrats. Barrios needs to start aiming ahead of the duck. Months ago, he should have started looking at some of those other cities' award winning plans and sending directives to the City Manager about what in them he wants to see Richardson do. Still, it's better late than never.]
Don Magner: "There is no way we can assure through an outreach plan that
we're going to have participation that's proportionate to our different
populations by making it voluntary. I think we've all agreed that the amount
of outreach and the different types of outreach that we've provided has been
well received. So I need to understand from the Council what the expectation
is, because what you're suggesting, and what you're saying is only going to
make this valid, if it happened, is going to take a completely different level
of resources." [Steger: My answer would be, show me how much different options
would cost. Magner's comment was in response to Barrios's desire for outreach
more representative of Richardson's demographics. Asking people to come to a
rec center or even a website is insufficient. You also have to go where the
people are. Interview people in a taqueria or in a Richardson public park on a
Sunday afternoon (the family picnics there are large and you hear a lot of
non-English spoken). The City also could benefit from hiring a professional
polling company to do a scientific survey. Short of that, the City's outreach
efforts are an exercise the City uses to check off an item on its
Ken Hutchenrider: "So I would respectfully say can we please stick to the script tonight?" [Steger: This also was directed at Dan Barrios, who wanted to see a more demographically representative outreach effort. It's an example of steering, i.e., getting someone to go in the direction you want. Hutchenrider was doing this crudely, but Hutchenrider was having this done to himself more adroitly by the slides the City (Don Magner, staff, consultants) included in this presentation. Keeping to the agenda, limiting discussion to only what's literally asked on a slide, is how the City Council lets itself get steered away from doing important work of its own choosing.]
Joe Corcoran: "If it were my preference on a vision plan, using the word 'community' instead of 'small town' or 'small town feel,' where possible, just to avoid misconception or confusion that we're trying to move towards a physical reality that has probably already escaped us." [Steger: This is an example where wordsmithing that looks like improvement through compromise actually results in a possible original meaning being lost. One of the terms the public liked was "small town". Hutchenrider added "feel" to that. Then Joe Corcoran wanted to replace it all with "community." And Jennifer Justice was on board. All well and good, but I bet there are people who want Richardson to go back to being a literal small town, who want "to stand athwart history, yelling stop" in the words of William F. Buckley, Jr. Let's make sure we're not losing that sentiment in our wordsmithing. I may not agree with it, but I acknowledge it exists.]
Mayor Pro Tem Arefin: "Based on whatever you have done so far, it looks like you tried to get participation from everywhere, and you did not leave any option on the table. You used pretty much everything possible, economical. So, no doubt on that." [Steger: Arefin sounds like a cheerleader for the City. "Did not leave any option on the table?" Really? "No doubt?" Really? See my comments above about going to a taqueria and a public park.]
Mayor Dubey: "One word that I've heard mentioned tonight, by several individuals, is not up there...And that's opportunistic, or maybe the opportunity...If Richardson is an opportunity, a place where opportunity abounds, I think that says a lot and it is encompassing all those people. And it's maybe an attitude that I think that maybe we want to consider." [Steger: An example of the Mayor's boosterism. Other examples from elsewhere:
- Houston: The City With No Limits. The City of Opportunity.
- Orlando: The City Beautiful and a World of Opportunities.
- Albuquerque: A City of Opportunities.
- Birmingham: The City of Opportunity.
- Bristol: A City of Opportunity.
- Liverpool: The City of Opportunity.
- Kansas City: The City of Opportunity.
- Wellington: The City of Opportunity.
Yawn.]
Bryan Marsh: "In our world today, we're facing a lot of new challenges in terms of like working from home, and, you know, our office buildings are in crisis, because nobody's going into the office anymore. And we're going to potentially be losing a lot of tax base and value and our commercial real estate, which plays a prominent role in Richardson. And retail has changed. And there's just a kind of a shift going on in the world and the way we live and interact with each other, and like our working habits, and so I think we've got to really start thinking about what does happen to the IQ, and some of those areas around Galatyn, or up along the Bush, where we've got a high concentration of office buildings. What is the future there?" [Steger: Bingo! That's what I thought would be a big part of redoing the Comprehensive Plan, but we're now an hour and a half into this meeting before someone asks this question. But, Commissioner Marsh, the burden is on you and your fellow Commissioners and Councilmembers to offer some answers, not just ask the questions.]
Ken Southard: "Some of the recordings recently on the Dallas City Council and City Planning Commission have to do with how to manage adaptive reuse. And you usually think about that in much older buildings. But the areas that Bryan just mentioned, that's going to be a much more important topic. And something that probably shouldn't be a part of the comprehensive plan." [Steger: Bingo! Except for that last head-scratching sentence. Adaptive reuse needs to inform everything in the updated Comprehensive Plan. And keeping a lookout for best practices elswhere, even Dallas!, is admirable.]
Byron Purdy: "I would say my experience with Richardson has been awesome, but I'm still trying to find my black community here. So I don't know if that's a bullet onto itself, but something I wake up every day thinking about is, how do I find my tribe to bring that through for the next 50 years?" [Bingo! There it is, that word community again, this time in a racial or ethnic context. If a City leader is still looking for his black community, then the word community is still more an aspirational goal and not a universal current condition here. We've got a lot of work still to do.]
Ken Hutchenrider: "I don't see the word futuristic...I don't want to say that we'll have flying cars tomorrow, but...I continue to hear that by 2030-ish, we may very well have the opportunity, if you will, to have some type of, Uber Air or something along those lines. So I would just ask if somewhere it says 'accommodate options for multiple modes of travel.' " [Bingo! Maybe the City should host a conference now and then to look into future urban disruptors so Richardson won't be caught flat-footed when Uber Air or whatever does show up in Richardson.]
Ken Hutchenrider: "I'm a little disappointed. I gotta be honest with y'all. Because I brought it up the first time we met...UTD is not in here. Well, it's a major component that as we look over the next 15-20 years, and the meetings I've been at, they're talking about a tremendous amount of growth." [Bingo! The City of Richardson ought to have UT-Dallas participation in everything Richardson. And UT-Dallas ought to have City of Richardson participation in everything UT-Dallas. And not just at the City Manager/University President level. Regular meetings in the planning departments. Or the engineering departments, where I'd expect flying cars to first get thought about.]
Joe Corcoran: "I do think that if the Comp Plan was just, hey, here's five reinvestment zones to which we've already looked at, I kind of consider it a little bit a failure, not to be dramatic. But it's important to talk about all this other stuff as well." [Bingo! Go back and reread what I said at the top about the bottom line of the meeting. Even I fell victim to the mentality that the point of the meeting was identifying economic development study areas.]
And that brings us to the last hour of the meeting that was spent on what I summarized above as the bottom line of the meeting: Five areas were recommended for "reinvestment studies" by the Consultant Team and City Staff. I'll quit my own coverage with one last comment made by Joe Costantino.
Joe Costantino: "I'm not for less studying, I'm just like, understanding how some of the other bullet points are going to be fleshed out...How are those other areas going to be studied?" [Steger: Bingo! What about the other "overarching strategic issues" the consultants identified? What about Land Use? What about Mobility/Transportation? What about Community Facilities? What about Other Infrastructure? What about Neighborhoods and Housing? What about Parks, Trails, and Open Space? What about Natural Environment? It does seem like there was an overwhelming amount of time spent on deep dives into identifying reinvestment areas. Costantino is asking a process question, but it's a good question, one that I didn't hear a good answer to.
The next step in this process is by the consultant team, who will propose a Vision Statement, Guiding Principles, and a Preliminary Scenario Structure (whatever that is) to the City Council on September 25.
"Municipal chess.
Game of far-sighted vision,
Master plan unfolds."
—h/t ChatGPT
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