On October 21, 2024, the Richardson City Council and City Plan Commission (CPC) reviewed a close-to-final draft of a new Comprehensive Plan.
My own feedback can be found here:
I'll add that the best thing about this draft Comp Plan isn't the plan. It's the list of 77 action items. It's a better list than the list the Council came up with during their own goal-setting retreat at the beginning of their term. But there's too much latitude in it. They shouldn't leave it to City Manager Don Magner to prioritize and schedule, not if they care about what gets done and what gets kicked down the road.
Almost everyone who spoke gushed about the draft Comp Plan. Following are selected quotes from councilmembers and commissioners.
CPC Commissioner Bryan Marsh: "I think when I compare it to the 2009 plan, I find that it's much more detailed. It's about 70% bigger, longer, almost 200 pages versus, I think 113. I think the structure is much more usable, readable, easy to follow, compared to the 2009 plan. I like the way you've set it up here, in a printed format, with the text, different chapters, coloring, I think your use of color, and throughout the document, the call out boxes...I think it makes the entire report so much stronger than the 2009 plan."
I said everyone gushed about the new Plan. Some of the praise, like here, was about formatting. But good things were said about content as well, like the amount of data in the plan. Marsh said, "Overall, I just think, compared to what we had, this is a much more workable document from a CPC standpoint." It makes me wonder what City officials in 2039 will have to say about this 2024 edition.
CPC Commissioner Nate Roberts: "I like the implementation plan. I did a little rough count. It looks like there's maybe 65 items on there. It looks like maybe roughly half of them are high priority. And I was just curious what your thoughts were about the implementation of those high items, or how they are prioritized here."
City Manager Don Magner replied, "It'll be a constant and regular, ongoing dialog with the Council to receive their policy direction and to apply that to the action items either on this and some of our other Plans." In my perhaps faulty memory, I can't remember the City Council ever providing input on the schedule (that is, the prioritization of action items). It seems the City Manager sets the schedule and then brings draft plans to City Council for review and approval on his own timetable.
Chandu Garapaty, UT-Dallas in Richardson: "I am in full support of the density, walkability, mixed-use that this plan is putting forth. I especially love that the PlaceTypes are incorporating mixed-use into every single part of the city, and that other people in the city have been echoing what UTD students have been saying, which is that we want more walkability, we want more mixed-use...The only thing I wish the plan was, was more bold. I hope that we can see that...We have, as you've been hearing, demand from students for more housing, more amenities around the university, around the campus. I think there's something to be used there, utilized for this plan, for the benefit of the city."
It's significant that there was only one member of the public who spoke at the public hearing and it was a UTD student, the President of Comets for Better Transit. I have the impression that City officials have a mindset that it's the responsibility of UTD administration to meet all of the students' needs, and that UTD administrators speak for students. Hardly. Students live, study, work, shop, and play in the City of Richardson. City officials need to solicit their inputs directly and work to address their needs as it relates to life in the City of Richardson.
Councilmember Joe Corcoran: "The words that kind of came to my mind, it's a lot of ideas that are really fashionable in planning right now with that missing middle housing and walkability. But it presents them in routes as like a small c conservative way. It gives us that latitude to implement changes gradually, and implement the changes we want to do. So it's a long range vision. We're going to keep experimenting. We're going to keep implementing these numerous principles, but in a nice, cautious sort of, let's just see what works and make it work for Richardson, right?"
Chanda Garapaty had just said she wanted to see the plan be more bold. But Corcoran wants to move in a "nice, cautious sort of" way. Personally, I like "bold' more than "nice, cautious."
Councilmember Curtis Dorian: "We do need to create new infrastructure, new buildings, new mixed-use, new areas where people can call home, and generally we're living in an area where people want to focus on a one to two to three to four mile radius to at least function in their area, whether you're going out for coffee, or you're wanting to drop something off of the cleaners, or you want to go to the restaurant, or whatever the case may be. I'm really happy to see that that has been included and in detail."
Well said.
On another topic, Dorian said, "Last, the office and repurposing. Yes, we do have a lot of office space, whether it's one level, two level, mid rise, I think it's time for us to put that to use in whatever way possible that we see fit, and how that's going to be focused mainly on what the future of Richardson looks like."
Dorian didn't count, but the 200 page Comprehensive Plan mentions "repurposing" exactly zero times. It uses "redevelopment" 74 times, but that's a more general term and doesn't explicitly encompass repurposing, which is redevelopment for new uses. Richardson needs an explicit plan for repurposing its excess office space.
Mayor Pro Tem Arefin: The Future Land Use Plan map "is probably the one single thing that's most important for many people...This came from the GIS, I guess. So if the GIS information is wrong, the color code is going to be wrong. So if you zoom in and check those individual area, make some corrections, you're going to probably find a few things there. So that's something that needs to be updated."
City Manager Magner replied, "I'll follow up with you on the map. I'm not really sure I understand." It's a good thing I wasn't in the audience. When Mayor Pro Tem Arefin talked, even though he didn't mention my favorite example, I thought to myself, "Just look at Point North Park." When Magner said, "I'm not really sure I understand," I might have screamed it out loud, "Just look at Point North Park." Thanks, Mayor Pro Tem Arefin, for bringing up the map problems, but you've got to be a lot more specific to get your point across.
Mayor Pro Tem Arefin had some overall comments. "Anyway, I just don't want to, you know, say too many things. There are many details I can see much better today than yesterday. So that was, I got excited, and I read it probably too much, and I'll give you my markup here. But overall, I'm happy with this. Just maybe, maybe the readability could be improved somehow. I'm sure you're going to find some other way to make it much better. This is just a draft, I believe, right?"
Ouch. City Manager Magner fought back diplomatically. "It is a draft. I mean, we're, we're refining, in the final stages of refining. I think some of the comments that you've made, I think are good points, and I think they can be incorporated. But I would say for the most part, the readability of it is..., there may be some tweaks or some some minor adjustments, but I think at this juncture, this is what we envision taking forward." To anyone reading this far, what was presented is not called the "final" draft, but it's obviously pretty damned close. Don't expect much more than typos to be corrected.
Councilmember Jennifer Justice: "I nerded out a little bit and read a book about comprehensive planning from the American Planning Association and how historically it was consultant led, and that has shifted a lot, and I just want to thank you for taking that shift seriously about how it's community led."
I participated in a community summit (a misnomer if ever there was one). To me, it looked consultant-led every step of the way. Yes, there was a lot of opportunity for community input. Yes, possibly because of that input, "mixed-use" is a part of all but one PlaceType, and even the Neighborhood Residential PlaceType allows for multi-use. But a lot of the exercise was showing residents pretty pictures and asking them to put paper dots on the ones they liked, with Post-It Notes for comments. One such Post-It Note asking for protections against "displacement" in the redevelopment study areas was included in the August 12 Council review of the summits. Councilmember Barrios called attention to it. Did the consultants include it in the draft Plan? No. The word "displacement" appears nowhere. So much for community led or even Council led.
I also watched all of the City Council meetings about the creation of this Comp Plan. Those were also consultant led. There was no collaborative, creative effort by the City Council to craft any substantive input. Meetings amounted to, like this one, consultants showing a bunch of slides, then stepping back to receive compliments from the City Council. Substantive inputs are rare. When final, formal approval is given by the City Council, that raising of hands will be about their biggest contribution to it.
Councilmember Ken Hutchenrider: "We as a council took a very definitive and strong statement a few months ago about our support of DART. And I'm wondering if, under economic development, do we need to make a stronger statement?"
The word DART appears 45 times in the draft Comp Plan, including in two of the five "guiding principles" for the "Transportation and Mobility" section. So I think we're good on DART. I'd trade a few of those references for a few more mentions of "repurposing" and "renter" and "displacement," each of which is mentioned exactly zero times.
Then Hutchenrider offered a prebuttal, "I just want to remind people, the City of Richardson is not going to go out tomorrow and start building houses. That's not going to happen. We're not going to do the missing middle housing development. City of Richardson does not do that. While it is a city issue, is also a state and federal issue as well. That has got to be dealt with. And so I just wanted to kind of put that out there, because sometimes it's kind of like, well, why aren't you doing more? Why aren't you doing more? I think we're doing a lot. I applaud us for what we've done. Others will disagree, and I'm sure I'll hear about it all week long, but whatever."
With that, it sounds like he's talking about me. Hutchenrider is already making excuses for failure to live up to this Comp Plan. And he wants applause. Like he said, whatever. His failure, if it comes, won't be because the City didn't itself build housing. It will be because it failed to relax zoning ordinances that are a barrier to construction, or adopt inclusionary zoning ordinances, or streamline permitting processes, or provide financial incentives to developers who do build missing middle housing, or increase tenant protections to prevent displacement as areas redevelop, or support programs for repurposing excess office buildngs, or incentivize the development of transitional housing options. None of those require Councilmember Hutchenrider to build any houses himself.
Councilmember Dan Barrios: "In a plan like this, you have to make it make sense. We get community and feedback, we listen, we try to build a balanced plan that's not just attractive and makes sense for our community members, but it makes sense for our development community as well, because ultimately they are the ones investing the dollars, and that same time, we need to provide for the needs of the city and the citizens, because ultimately, that's who we are here to serve. So it is a balanced approach, and I do think overall, that's what this provides."
I didn't expect that. Chandu Garapaty wanted bold. If there was anyone who I expected to give us bold, it was Barrios. Instead, he responds with political triangulation. As if a tack to the middle of the road is needed with this Comp Plan. It's not in danger of being rejected. It'll pass 7-0. Now is the time to insert as much bold language as possible, language that will make it hard for future City Councils to wiggle out, like this current City Council wiggled out of the plain intent of the vision of the Interurban District and voted to approve a special use permit to open a car repair shop there. Insert bold language. If you lose a vote or two in the process but the new Comp Plan still passes, you'll know you found a good place to land.
Mayor Bob Dubey: As is often the case, Mayor Dubey had nothing to say about maybe the most important issue facing the Council during his term as mayor.
Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
"Praise flows for the draft,
More action items than plan.
Future unfolds slow."
—h/t ChatGPT
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