INC NEWS - Letter: effort to "streamline" development process is misdirected (Herald-Sun)

Mon May 12 20:23:14 EDT 2008

There are 2 other proposed changes that are REALLY ugly:

* Authorize the city manager, rather than the City Council, to approve
agreements where developers have to pay to extend utility lines to
their projects. Such agreements now have to wait weeks to land on a
council agenda, where they usually get rubber-stamped. Estimated time
saved: 5-8 weeks.

Southpointe taught us that City Managers are not necessarily working in the interest of all citizens.

* Limit the City-County Planning Commission's ability to defer a
recommendation. This is not a frequent problem, Voorhees said, but the
commission can withhold a decision on a particular project for three
meetings, or 90 days. Estimated time savings: 1-3 months.
The infrequent uses of deferral are exactly those where a disadvantaged neighborhood is getting shafted.

> Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 13:27:16 -0400
> From: bragin at nc.rr.com
> To: randy at 27beverly.com
> CC: inc-list at durhaminc.org
> Subject: Re: INC NEWS - Letter: effort to "streamline" development process is misdirected (Herald-Sun)
> 
> "Many times development has been planned years in 
> advance. You only notice or hear about it as it reaches the final stages 
> prior to construction."
> 
> isn't that exactly the problem? Engagement in the development process, years before the bulldozers are even hired, is limited to those who have very specific stakes in the outcome. These are, for the most part, speculators, investors, developers, builders, real estate agents, bankers, and, to a lesser extent, trade workers. Their desired outcomes may or may not be the same as the community at large. Turning a profit under perhaps difficult economic conditions is, and should be, the primary goal of those groups. But building a sustainable community whose quality of life and economic value continues to grow over the next 5 decades or so is the community's goal, and quite frankly it should be the goal of our political leaders as well. 
> 
> All you need do is look at the bedroom communities in Phoenix or Las Vegas  over the past year to see what happens when development decisions are allowed to be driven exclusively by short-term profit margins rather than long-term sustainability and liveability concerns. We could end up either way in Durham, depending on some of the decisions that our elected officials take over the next couple of years.
> 
> And don't you think that a public policy that encourages farmers to keep their land in production makes a certain amount of sense? With food and fuel prices at all-time highs, minimizing our reliance on food produced 4,000 miles away or more seems like a good idea to me.
> 
> Barry Ragin
>  
> ---- RW Pickle <randy at 27beverly.com> wrote: 
> 
> =============
> Don Moffitt said in his letter to the Herald:
> 
> "In places like New Jersey, where developable land is quickly
> disappearing, as it is in Durham, the approval process can take several
> years."
> 
> The development process, in NJ or here, does take several years. From
> acquisition to design, it's not an overnight process.  Once it gets to the
> Planning Commission, much time has gone by and preliminary work done. Even
> for developers, time is money (just the interest on the finances deters
> some development). Ultimately, when it gets drawn out longer, it just
> costs the end users more. And in most cases, these are homeowners like
> many of us.
> 
> There is no shortage of developable land here. Just get in your car and
> drive north of town and turn off any of the side roads. You'll drive for
> miles seeing land just waiting on a future use. Should it be kept as farm
> land? Just ask the farmer who owns it. He can no longer make a living
> growing much of anything... I suspect many of those who see the farm land
> as something of beauty have never bought the tons of fertilizer, the
> hundreds of gallons of diesel fuel (every week I set a personal new record
> for this... last week it was $4.258/gal), all the equipment necessary to
> even begin to grow something on a commercial scale, or paid the taxes on
> hundreds of acres. And none of it is getting any cheaper. So what is to be
> done with this beautiful piece of land holding the planet together? If you
> can't make a living growing something on it, then about all that is left
> to do is to develop it into something different. Hence, development
> happens. It's like the glass bottle, the plastic cup, yesterdays
> newspaper... recycle it into something different. And with land, there
> just are not that many options.
> 
> Our region of the country is expected to grow by more than a million
> people in the next 20 years. If there is not development, where do you
> think these people will live, work, and play? Preparation for this influx
> of new families has already started and will continue. Slowing anything
> down at this point only brings what is going to happen to a crisis level
> at some point down the road. And management by crisis is the wrong way to
> do much of anything. Planning ahead for the future will always yield
> better results. Development is a necessary evil for this region of our
> country that has been blessed by good climate, good educational
> facilities, and seemingly sheltered from the ills that plague other parts
> of it.
> 
> Accepting the fact that we have to grow and develop land will lead to a
> better planning process. Slowing it down will only postpone a crisis. You
> don't have to look far to find one either. Fayetteville will have an
> influx of 40,000 families this year alone (due to a shift in the
> military). Just think about how hard it is to come up with that many
> desirable homes to put all these families. And it's something you won't be
> able to do overnight no matter how fast the development process is.
> development isn't fast. Many times development has been planned years in
> advance. You only notice or hear about it as it reaches the final stages
> prior to construction. Only then does it seem like it all happens too
> quickly.
> 
> RW Pickle
> 
> 
> 
> > Letter: Process works fine
> > Herald-Sun, 12 May 2008
> >
> > The effort to "streamline" the development process in
> > Durham is well-intentioned and misdirected. Comparing
> > the speed of project approval in Durham to that in
> > Cary is using the wrong metric. In places like New
> > Jersey, where developable land is quickly
> > disappearing, as it is in Durham, the approval process
> > can take several years. We're a lot faster than that.
> >
> 
> >
> 
> 
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