Council Recap: Comp Plan Update

On August 12, 2024, the Richardson City Council and City Plan Commission (CPC) received an update on the development of a new Comprehensive Plan for the City. The emphasis was on land use with focus on allowed secondary uses, missing middle housing, and identified redevelopment zones. City staff plan to finish the Comp Plan and present it to the City Council for adoption in December, 2024.

My hopes for this update to the Comp Plan, the first since 2009, have steadily fallen during the year-long effort to produce it. Here's why.

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I expect the Comp Plan will emphasize the need for flexible zoning and development to accommodate diverse businesses and housing types. I expect it will support missing middle housing options such as duplexes, townhomes, courtyard housing, and even accessory dwelling units. While I expect it to support all of these, which I support as well, I don't expect it to grant by-right approval to build such housing everywhere, or even most everywhere. Maybe, just maybe, by-right approval may be granted on the fringes of some neighborhoods or in buffers between some neighborhoods. Special permits might be allowed more broadly, but such permits will be discretionary and tightly controlled by City Council.

I expect multi-use neighborhoods will be identified in a few areas, but on a case-by-case basis. Small service-oriented businesses like dentists might be identified as a secondary use allowed in some single-family neighborhoods. More broadly, multi-family and missing middle housing will be allowed in some employment areas, maybe some even by right. In practice, whether this will lead to significant changes remains to be seen. What I expect it will lead to is fuller calendars for CPC and City Council.

At the end of the day, no matter what's in the Comp Plan, it's not a zoning ordinance. The process to develop that comes after a new Comp Plan is adopted. And even that is not the end of it, as much as I'd like to see it be. City Manager Don Magner said, "It's really not about the vision or the zoning that you put in place that results in workforce housing or affordable and mixed-income housing. It's really the policy that the Council sets and the economic development approach that they direct us to utilize to attract that kind of housing. So you can have affordable housing, or you can have workforce housing at City Line, or you could have it on West Spring Valley. And so it really just depends on, again, the policy that this Council, or future Councils set, and the direction that they give us to work with the development community to bring those different types of housing to Richardson."

In short, Don Magner warns us that the Comp Plan won't dictate what gets built where. Not even zoning ordinances will do that. Instead, it's "policy." That's what Magner says. What does Mayor Dubey say will determine what gets built where? Mayor Dubey said, "I think what I heard our Council say, and the CPC say to us, is our vision today is not going to be the same vision then [in 20 years]. So we don't want to get boxed in. We want to be able to have the ability to look at these things independently. I think that's what I heard. If I didn't, y'all please correct me. So I'm 100% in favor of us looking to the future and seeing where these things can fit, but not taking the control away from the CPC or the Council to have an opportunity to look at it and try to put those round pegs in round holes, and not put the square pegs in there, because I think that's where we get in trouble."

So, add vision to the things that won't dictate what gets built where. Mayor Dubey wants us to trust an empowered City Council, taking their own independent look at these things, to wisely decide what gets built where, despite their heads being filled with an abundance of new urban planning terminology that has left the Council in what Mayor Dubey describes as "uneducated ignorance." Mayor Dubey calls it not being "boxed in." I call it government by whim. That's not being business friendly. Businesses prefer predictability over dependence on the whim of Councilmembers.

What do the rest of the Councilmembers think? I'm not quoting them because by and large they were sidelined by minutiae. They missed Mayor Dubey dismissing the vision statements by saying that he doesn't want to get "boxed in" by visions that might change in 20 years. He said, "I think that's what I heard. If I didn't, y'all please correct me." Mayor Dubey's request for correction was met with silence from the rest of the City Council.

Based on what happened in the same meeting on zoning applications from Clay Cooley VW in the Interurban District, I fear a reader's conclusions are spot on. I fear government by whim where development approvals are determined by personal likes and dislikes, not policy; where variances and special permits are handed out as rewards to favored businesses; and where businesses are "liked" or "favored" depending on the size of their investments in Richardson. I think that's what I heard. If I didn't, y'all please correct me.

Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

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"Visions change, he says,
Plans once clear now lost in whims,
I say. City drifts."
—h/t ChatGPT

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P.S. I knew I'd written about government by whim before, so I went looking through the archives and found this old gem from 2013: "Drive Through Government". In it, I called for an end to requiring the City Council to sign off on any drive-through restaurant. In it I said, "Ordinances that encourage politicians to think they are traffic experts just open our city up to government by whim. Which is what it looks like every time seven elected politicians pore over design drawings asking whether this or that driveway might be just a little too tight a turn for, say, a large pickup truck."