The council’s committees essentially divvy up the workload, vetting issues before they reach the full council. So his committee hears and gives preliminary approval to many – but not all – area plans, land use policy changes, etc. The so-called focus areas are the issues the council makes its top priorities. He said planning has never been a council focus area, “because it’s infused in everything.”
Since I was fortunate enough to have the chairman of the Transportation and Planning committee on the horn, I asked him about another tidbit I had spotted while burrowing through Charlotte City Manager Curt Walton’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year. This is on page 70. Deep in the text accompanying the summary of the Planning Department’s accomplishments and focus, etc., under “Service Delivery Challenges,” is this:
In other words – and if you follow my writing this will sound familiar because I have been beating this drum for years – the city-county zoning ordinance needs a top-to-bottom rewrite. The types of development it allows and in some cases requires can all too often completely undercut the city’s adopted plans and policies.
I asked Howard about that. He said he had had conversations with Planning Director Debra Campbell about that issue while he was on the planning commission. I asked if the idea of a comprehensive re-do of the city’s zoning ordinance had come up at the City Council level. “It hasn’t come up to that level,” he said.
As a postscript I’ll note, just because Charlotte and Raleigh NEVER compete, that Raleigh has in the past few years finished a massive re-do of its comprehensive plan, adopted in 20090, and is embarked on the huge task of rewriting its whole zoning code so that it upholds the plans. That process is in the public comment period.