MPT Alter (and colleagues):
Thank you for going onto the message board to post your questions and suggestions. Below is what I hope to be the clarification you seek.
As you suggest, I will ask the clerk to post V3 (as posted on the message board Monday a week ago) as back up to Item 42 on our Oct. 27 agenda and it contains all the elements you mentioned. I am also sharing a new V4 here that contains (a) amendments suggested by CM Pool and (b) the amendments you suggested clarifying stakeholder input and being more descriptive about “materially” reducing developable land. We will have this put in backup as well.
VERSION 4:
http://assets.austintexas.gov/austincou ... 132607.pdf
You ask for clarification as to the “goals and expectations” for this item. Simply put, they are to enable the Council, when it votes to achieve desired community benefits, to provide at the same time for offsets or balancing elements mitigating what might otherwise be associated increased costs of development or lost development potential.
We believe that it is not necessary to choose between helping to preserve affordability and seeking to achieve important community benefits and this item is to enable the Council to actually achieve both. We believe this requires both to be considered at the same time.
We are not prescribing a timeline or how staff would accomplish this goal, but rather asking staff to suggest a process or framework for how this might be best achieved.
We appreciate that you feel comfortable with this on a going forward basis. Thank you!
But you have questions about the “look back” component. In answer to your question, there is no specific prior council action that is targeted. The two-year period is arbitrary and could have been one-year, three years or any other time period. The co-sponsors chose two-years because it’s a relatively short timeframe, but still a meaningful period of time. Looking back now, ordinances that we’ve passed over the last couple years include parkland dedication, Water Forward, and street impact fees. CM Tovo at the last council meeting asked about Atlas 14, but we think that was adopted more than two years ago.
Importantly, it’s the co-sponsors’ intent and we feel the words of the V4 resolution make clear, that this look back is not to “undermine, reverse, or amend" the policy choices we have previously made in these prior actions. We are proud of our prior work and the items we voted to approve. But we also recognize that we might have been able to better offset or balance any impacts such items might have on affordability had such offsets or balancing elements been presented for consideration at the time of the prior council action. This item would enable the Council to act now as regards those past decisions (within the last two-years) and going forward.
For lines 26-28, you suggest we use a better qualifier to describe when the reduction in developable land is sufficient to warrant attention. We would support the use of “materially,” rather than “significantly or substantially” because whether or not a particular loss is significant or substantial would seem to turn on whether it’s material. Would that work for you?
We see the ambiguity you point out as concerns the mention of a stakeholder process. We would propose this language as providing clarification: “The City Manager is directed to incorporate a stakeholder process as an element of the framework/policy.” The co-sponsors are not prescribing any particular stakeholder process and we want the Manager and his staff to come back with a recommendation as to what they believe would best provide for stakeholders and our process.
It’s just important that there be a stakeholder process broad enough so that any no one department, discipline or advocacy group or area provides the needed vetting. For example, if we are to consider a 400 foot setback from the lake to protect against erosion, the necessary stakeholders would include not only those focused on protecting against environmental harm, but also those focused on how to transfer or other preserve development potential that might otherwise have been lost. It could well be that multiple stakeholders would be interested in the related issues, each with different priorities and expertise. Once staff comes back with a proposed process, then we could all work on the questions you ask (if the recommendation itself does not already answer them).
Staff will be the best judge of how to approach this work. We just want to make sure that a future Council that is being asked to consider an ordinance that enables realization of important community benefits also be presented with offsets or balances for any, if any, impacts on affordability (as described).
We agree that it is difficult now to know how best to apply a framework that has yet to be developed, and this item was drafted so as to allow staff to propose how a proposed framework might be used. The language you note as concerns this issue makes clear that this agenda item is intended to ensure that any new community benefit ordinance that Council is able to consider comes to Council in a way that allows concurrent consideration of offsets or balances.
We believe affordability is our city’s current existential challenge and we need to be doing everything we can to make sure that we are able to address and at least consider affordability in most everything we do. We also believe that we do not have to choose between affordability and achieving significant community benefits. But we believe that this is possible only so long as we make sure that we are always able to consider offsets or balances whenever we are asked to consider ordinances seeking greater community benefits. That will be how we achieve both – in fact, we believe this process will be constructive in getting ordinances passed that promote community benefits because they won’t give rise to concerns about affordability
You are correct that staff capacity is not unlimited and if we need greater staff capacity it could be that Council needs to help re-prioritize spending. We need to do whatever it takes to make sure that Council is not put in the position where it has no choice but to detrimentally impact affordability in pursuit of community benefits. For us, this includes ordinances intended to deliver community benefits already initiated or to be initiated in the future (in addition to the look-back). Our current system has not provided for this holistic consideration of benefits and impacts and this agenda item is intended to help address this.
-S