City of Austin begins replacing 30-year-old comprehensive plan

City of Austin begins replacing 30-year-old comprehensive plan

By Eric Pulsifer Friday, 24 April 2009

After 30 years, the City of Austin is looking to replace its comprehensive plan, a document that directs the city council’s policies on growth and development.

The 176-page comprehensive plan in place currently, the Austin Tomorrow Plan, was created during the ’70s and adopted by council in 1979. At the time, the city’s population was around 320,000, the city limits did not extend out of Travis County and most of southwest Austin was undeveloped. Today, the population and land area have more than doubled, leaving a majority of Austin under a plan that was written before it was even considered a part of the city.

The plan has evolved with the council’s adoption of neighborhood and transportation plans over the years and received an update in 2008 to replace obsolete policies.

“The previous plan is very much a product of its time,” said Mark Walters, a principal planner with the Neighborhood Planning and Zoning Department. “It had some good ideas, but that was over 30 years ago. Back when this plan was written such issues as climate change, sustainability and even homeless[ness] were not even on the radar.”

Best laid plans

The values of Austin circa 1979 found in the Austin Tomorrow Plan have led the city to develop the way it has today.

“In some ways, things haven’t changed so much. In 1979, managing growth was important to the city,” Walters said. “[The city wanted to] direct growth away from environmentally sensitive areas in the southwest and some areas of the northwest and to create a more linear city along IH 35.”

The push to keep development away from areas over the recharge zone in southwest Austin has led to some problems for Oak Hill over the past three decades.

Oak Hill Association of Neighborhoods President Sandy Baldridge has lived in Oak Hill since 1985. She said the Austin Tomorrow Plan has limited projects such as highway improvements, new sidewalks and retail developments that would help relieve congestion problems in the environmentally sensitive but heavily occupied area.

“There were people involved in writing the Austin Tomorrow Plan that didn’t want anything built in Oak Hill,” Baldridge said. “It was designed to send growth east of IH 35, not west of MoPac. But individual homes and large residential areas have gone up west and south.”

With the Austin Tomorrow Plan’s vision of Oak Hill as little more than a bedroom community, Baldridge said retail and commercial developments to serve nearby residents have been difficult to bring in.

“What they have done by ignoring the reality of the growth is now they have to come back and build to service taxpayers that live out here and expect to have some level of city infrastructure,” Baldridge said. “Otherwise, we end up with taxation without representation.”

At the drawing board

The new comprehensive plan will consist of two parts: where the city is going and how it will get there. Beyond that, the city charter sets out 10 things that must be included: future land use; traffic circulation and mass transit; wastewater, solid waste, drainage and potable water; conservation and environmental resources; recreation and open space; housing; public services; public buildings; commercial and industrial development and redevelopment; and health and human services.

Garner Stoll, assistant director of the Neighborhood Planning and Zoning Department, said he hopes the new plan will establish a balance between protecting the environment and providing residents with the necessary infrastructure.

“That’s the heart of a comprehensive planning effort. You look at past development trends, population and employment projections, and where more development may be expected,” he said. “All of that is on the table. The policy outcomes would be a result of the process.”

Stoll said a comprehensive plan is implemented in two ways: capital improvements — spending on roads, parks, utilities and public facilities — and changes to land-use and zoning regulations.

Before any work on the plan begins, the city is doing work in house prior to the selection of a consultant who will help steer the creation of a new comprehensive plan.

“Right now, we are creating a community inventory, a snapshot of where we’re at as a community: demographics, economics, land use, etcetera, basically, all of what we have right now in Austin,” Walters said.

The community inventory is expected to be completed by the end of April, in time for the consultant selected by council to have access to the information. After the city council approves a consultant, it will take one to three months of negotiation before work on the plan can begin. A staff of six or seven Neighborhood Planning and Zoning Department employees will work full time on the plan with the consultant’s team and sub-consultants. The entire process is scheduled to take two years and will cost $1.3 million, paid to the consultant.

Fresh feedback

The city will work with the consultant to find ways to get public input throughout the process, including using the internet, speaking at neighborhood meetings and holding community forums and other meetings.

“Most planning processes are really working now at methods to get people other than the usual participants to get involved,” Stoll said. “I think all successful plans try that and succeed as a result of that effort.”

For the new comprehensive plan, Baldridge said she is confident Oak Hill will have a seat at the table.

“What I have expressed to some members of council is that everyone, not just a central select few, have a say,” she said, “that the group be balanced by people from the four corners of the city limits.”