Reporting live, from City Council:
(See previous post, also from council meeting, about a first — a developer urging council to reject his own rezoning petition.)
The City Council launched the vote-on-rezonings part of its meeting at roughly 6:25 p.m. By 6:39 p.m. it had finished its rezoning decisions. They ripped through 18 rezonings, all except one of them approved unanimously with no discussion on any, except for about 30 seconds on the one that was approved 7-2 (for a day care center at The Plaza and Barrington Drive).
That proposal to allow a 250-foot high-rise tower in South End? The one that was in violation of the South End Transit Station Area Plan, which set a 120-foot height maximum? I didn’t have a stopwatch, so I couldn’t tell you whether it was 5 seconds or 10, but there was no discussion, nothing. Unanimous approval, and on to the next agenda item.
Sure, the council’s rezoning meetings can drag. The public hearing part of the meeting tends to bring out developers and neighborhood opponents. It’s 7:34 p.m. and they’re just on No. 6 in a 15-item public hearing agenda. And council member Michael Barnes just pointed out that there have been numerous violations of the Northeast District Plan in recent years. So why didn’t he — or anyone else — think it was worth maybe a little public discussion about why they were violating the South End station area plan, adopted in 2005?
Maybe there were good reasons. Maybe the 120-foot maximum height limit adopted as part of the Transit Station Area Principles isn’t a good idea after all. You, the voting public, have no way to know why the council members decided to treat their own adopted plans as virtually irrelevant.
They’re on auto-pilot. The biggest issue facing the city for decades has been growth and how to deal with it and pay for its impacts. You’d like to think your elected officials are thoughtfully debating the pros and cons of different growth proposals. Guess what. I’m watching them tonight, and it’s pretty hard not to conclude they’ve abdicated that responsibility.