Last night we had a public meeting for the Lewisville Planning Board so that we could explain the access management ordinance that we've been working on for the town the last couple of months. One person from the public showed up and since she represents a coalition of realtors and developers she was essentially paid to be there. Now I know this stuff can be dull as dirt, but this is where the rubber hits the road.
Let's put it this way. If you plan on building in Lewisville in the future and you want to know where you can access a road from your property, i.e. build a driveway, and you want to know what kind of driveway you can build, how far away it has to be from your neighbors' driveways and other details then you might want to take a look at what we're doing. Or if you want to redevelop your land, you might want to know how the new ordinance will affect you. Whatever, this is the kind of stuff that directly affects people but even when we advertise the meetings, as we did this one, people generally don't show up in droves.
Access management is just one of the things we're working on right now. Because our Town Council declared a six month moratorium on development until we can get some new ordinances in place we're meeting every week to work on an access management ordinance, a stormater/watershed ordinance and a multi-family housing ordinance. All of these will affect propert owners in one way or another so I would recommend that people check in on our meetings to see what's going on.
Now, we're by no means the final word on these ordinances. We'll eventually send our recommendations to Town Council and they'll make the final decisions, but most citizens don't realize that by the time it gets to the Council a ton of work has already been done and they've missed some golden opportunities to influence the ordinance before it even gets to the powers that be. Every one of our public meetings has a public comment segment and we really do welcome any feedback we can get. In fact we've already incorporated changes to our early drafts of the ordinances thanks to the feedback we've gotten from people who attended earlier sessions.
If you're a resident of Lewisville or are a business owner in Lewisville you really should check out what we're doing so you can be part of the process. Don't wait until everything's 99% done and you have to fight the inertia of a downhill train. It's not too late. We continued our deliberations until our next public meeting which is May 13 at 7:30 at the community center next door to the library. Hopefully we'll see you there. If you'd like to catch up on what we've been doing you can check out our minutes here.
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Jon, The best way to inform the public regarding the workings of the planning board on the tasks the board is working on ie: downtown moratorium, access management, etc… would be to more fully publish what discussions are taking place at each of the meetings. Your link to the meeting minutes does not provide any substance on what is being considered only that that new rules are going to be enacted. If what is being considered and talked about at these initial meetings were published online, that would likely elicit more public comment as to support/disagreement with what is being contemplataed & could draw more people in the process. The planning boards in most of our area communities are stacked with slow/no growth advocates and it appears that their preference is to have as few people involved in the process in order to achieve their goals. additionally,I don’t get the reason for a moratorium on downtown, because other than the dentist’s office & the town hall, not much has been happening along Shallowford Road that would require a stoppage of any zoning requests. It would appear that the town should have been more cognizant(spl?) as to how the new federally mandated storm water regs would relate to the overlay district regulations. I would also think that NCDOT is better skilled in determining safety/traffic mgmt issues regarding driveway access permits.
Thanks for the comment zalo. One thing I should have mentioned in the post
is that we had another public meeting last month where we showed a couple of
maps with our concepts of where the driveway cuts would go using an early
draft of the access management ordinance and we probably had 15 people show
up for that one, and I was very encouraged by that. I think we also took
some of that feedback and incorporated it in the draft that we currently
have. The meeting on Wednesday was disappointing in the sense that we
didn’t get any more feedback on what we’ve come up with.
I agree with you that it would be preferable to have more detailed
information available about our meetings. I’m very much a believer in open
meetings and full transparency so I’d have no problem with the concept of
putting up podcasts of our meetings on the town website. I’d even volunteer
to help figure out how to do it, so maybe that’s something I could suggest.
I’d also find this a better solution than public access television because a
podcast could be viewed at any time by citizens and they wouldn’t be
beholden to the access channel’s schedule (or our meeting schedule). So I’d
say we’re in agreement there.
As for the planning boards being stacked with slow growth people I can’t
really speak to that because I don’t know them. I can speak for myself when
I say that I believe in planned growth and a big reason for that is I saw
what could happen with and without good planning when I lived in Northern
Virginia. The places I lived that had good mixed use planning (like North
Arlington) were very livable communities that also saw tremendous growth in
market value for all types of property, while other communities in Fairfax
and Prince William counties were transformed by ill-planned growth into what
felt like sprawling parking lots. I’d much prefer to see the former and not
the latter.
In regards to the moratorium that really is above my “pay grade.” We on the
planning board serve at the pleasure of the Town Council and so whatever
their reason for the moratorium we’re going to do our job and get them what
they need. The consequence of that is we’re now meeting weekly, instead of
twice a month, until we get the Council what they need.
Personally I’m glad that we’re taking on the access management ordinance and
not just leaving it to NCDOT. While we have to make sure that we conform to
their regs, and the town planner has consulted them to make sure we are,
their job isn’t to look at the access management from the standpoint of the
town’s goals. For instance they wouldn’t look at access management downtown
from the perspective of wanting businesses to be closer to the front of the
property with parking in the rear, or making sure that downtown is
“pedestrian friendly” or any of the other long term “vision” considerations
that we might have. In terms of watershed I can’t speak for what happened
before in creating the UDO, but now that we realize we have watershed issues
we’re dealing with them in the new ordinance. In the long run I think it
will be better for everyone involved.
Thanks again for the comment and hope to see you at a future meeting.