We are once again hearing the anguished groans of growth from people in College Station’s Extra Territorial Jurisdiction (ETJ) who do not want to be annexed into the city. And this issue is likely to roar more loudly into the conscience of the Brazos Valley as the development community is poised to make itself heard in less reserved ways about similar issues as the city exerts its authority in the ETJ.
The ETJ is the three mile band around the city in which the city as some authority to prepare for growth and expansion. In Texas, restrictive state legislation makes growth management more difficult than it is in other states. What little control there is tends to be focused in the ETJ, making this the battleground of growth management.
Currently College Station is in the process of annexing new land into the city. Understandably, some residents in these areas do not want the increased taxes and restrictions that come with annexation. At the same time the city is considering placing a restriction in the ETJ that would keep land from being divided into smaller than 20 acre tracts. Understandably, the development community, who has been busy pushing subdivisions into the ETJ, is rather adamantly opposed to this restriction, as are realtors who see this as restricting the number of properties that can sell.
Growth management is a tangled mix of conflicting goals and objectives. The tendency is for each interest group to go to their own corner in a polarizing effort to ignore common ground and advocate only for their own interest. In so doing we miss the many win-win opportunities necessary to create a truly great community.
In College Station the city has done a wonderful job of going to its citizens and business community to find out what they want. Some of our top concerns are traffic issues, improved greenways parks and ordinances to protect trees, and the elimination of sprawl development. Of course all of these issues are intertwined and seem to suggest that we do not want growth. That of course is not the case. We are excited about the many new opportunities that come with growth, including cultural amenities and economic expansion. Managing growth is not the same thing as eliminating, or even limiting growth. It is, in fact, a necessary component of encouraging growth. It is also vital for economic development and the increased quality of life we all seek.
So, where is the common ground? It can be found in the surveys that the city did to find out what its citizens want. Focusing our objectives on quality of life issues and making our cities more enjoyable places to live will attract people businesses to locate here. Better yet it will encourage our citizens to invest in growing locally owned independent businesses that feed our economy at accelerated rates and create the sort of character that builds on our already great quality of life. Smart growth management is win-win in every direction.
If it is such a win-win situation why are so many people opposed to growth management? Currently there are not a great number of people opposed to growth management. In fact this is what we, as a community, told our city leaders that we want. But opposition tends to be loud. The biggest difference in perspective is time. Most citizens, looking to connect growth to increased qualities of life, are looking at a long range picture. Most of the people who make their money from growth are looking at the picture over a shorter period of time. Citizens want well planned parks and urban centers; they want walkable cities, reduced traffic and a cleaner city. All of this takes time and makes the job of development much more difficult.
So what’s in it for developers, builders, realtors and others who are responsible for our growth? Businesses need to be able to see a return on investment in a reasonable period of time. We depend on these important businesses to provide the growth that we want and we cannot ignore their needs. Part of the problem is the changing landscape within which these businesses have to operate. It was not that long ago that, as a small community, we placed no restrictions on development in the ETJ and little in town. Our development community became accustomed those circumstances and are now loath to tolerate a more restrictive environment. Communities that have been the most successful at encouraging high quality development have managed this with smart incentives. But this is a two way street. Developers must understand that as a city grows development criteria change. When we allow quick unplanned developments to push outward with little or no thought to traffic, esthetics, infrastructure or impact on surrounding neighborhoods, we discourage better planned developments in the same way that a junk yard might discourage higher end development nearby.
While some in the growth community will object to any growth management measures, smart business people who have a long term commitment to the community know that such measures will help keep out the businesses that are focused on low quality quick developments that diminish property values across the community. The National Association of Realtors even has its own Smart Growth Program aimed at encouraging its members to get involved in increasing property values through smart growth measures in their communities. These are the kinds of businesses that we want growing our community. In order to help them we must limit competition from bad development and we must offer incentives for smart, well planned development.
Sunday, February 03, 2008
FINDING COMMON GROUND IN THE ETJ
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5 comments:
The City has a lot of power to control development in the ETJ. The main problem is they have no authority to control land use or to zone. The proposed 20 acre lot minimum is just plain punitive. Why not 100 acres? Limiting lot size to what ever is reasonable for a septic system has merit. Any further restriction is unreasonable. After all, R-1 lots in the City can be 0.115 acres I do not believe the Council will approve such a restrictive measure and wonder why we spend all the money and time on the 20 acre proposal.
Mr. Birdwell,
Thank you for your response. Certainly you are a person with the experience to know what it is within the city’s power to do. Can you explain why you think that the 20 acre minimum being proposed is punitive and not an attempt to control land use? Personally, I love your suggestion on a 100 acre minimum. That would do a great job of forcing infill development which is what is good for College Station. One of the problems that we face with the sprawl of neighborhoods and developments into rural areas is the loss of rural culture and green space. Another problem is the wasteful stretching of our infrastructure and city services. From a conservative perspective none of this makes sense. Why would we want to consume our open agricultural land in an effort that will cause taxes to go up and city services to be diminished?
Hugh, the 20 acre requirement will do nothing to control land use. I will still be able to build a skunk works anywhere in the ETJ. What it will do is stop or seriously retard home construction in the ETJ and increases the cost of homes on infill sites in the City limits. New rural developments will move further away from the City. Subdivisions plated before the 20 acre rule goes into effect will not be affected so it will be some time before the rule has any affect. A new home reduces the same amount of green space whether it is in the city or not and regardless of lot size. Limiting development to infill increases the cost of homes.
Why wouldn’t seriously retarding land use in the ETJ have anything to do with control of land use? Currently we have unrestricted subdivisions going up in a leapfrog fashion throughout the ETJ and, as you point out, beyond. I suspect that you are right. Some developers will go beyond the ETJ to avoid community controls but the demand is just not that high further out. Plus other developers will start putting more energy into infill, which will also reduce some of the demand for sprawling developments. It is not the case that a new home consumes the same amount of green space regardless of where it is located. When developers are allowed to push out into less expensive agricultural land they place houses on bigger lots. In town we find zero lot line and other types of dense development. And this says nothing about the degradation of surrounding land as subdivisions spread out.
One of the results of this sort of unrestricted residential development is that it has helped invite students into family neighborhoods. Because this sort of ubiquitous sprawl of tract houses is easier and cheaper than other kinds of development, there is little energy going into more urban developments close to campus. And, of course each one of those students owns three big trucks jacked up on large wheels with really loud engines that they drive 15 miles over the speed limit back and forth to campus three times a day. At many universalities there is adequate student housing within walking distance of the university. We have lots of vacant land next to campus and students living in cheap housing way out in the ETJ.
I would suggest that a well designed comprehensive plan would go a long way toward controlling the negative aspects of uncontrolled development in our ETJ without an undue destruction of property rights or trying to micro-manage market forces through regulation.
If we would create a realistic land use plan to accommodate a doubling of our population over the next 20 years and implement a corresponding thoroughfare plan to support the traffic, and then extend both plans through the ETJ and into the county we would help solve many of the problems that the 20-acre minimum lot size is attempting to solve through a “sledgehammer” approach.
While we can’t control land use beyond our city limits, we can enforce our thoroughfare plan (which should be driven by realistic land use assumptions) and extend our subdivision regulations into the ETJ, which will expand from 3.5 to 5 miles once we reach 100,000 people. We can even collect park fees in the ETJ, which was only recently implemented. Even if the 20-acre minimum is legal, which I seriously doubt (and will cost the city millions in legal fees to prove), it will do nothing to prevent people from building whatever they want on their property, including multiple homes/duplexes/apartments/etc., they just can’t subdivide and sell individual lots that are smaller than 20 acres. I don’t even want to think about what unforeseen consequences this might lead to in a College town.
What is certain is that our low cost of living would end very quickly as the supply of affordable housing comes to a screeching halt. The only way to avoid this would be to embark on an extremely aggressive annexation schedule in order to maintain a steady supply of developable land inside the city limits where it would not be subject to the 20-acre restriction, and we have all seen how painful annexation can be recently.
In-fill and re-development is good, but it is also very expensive and almost prohibitively over-regulated at the current time. Our overly prescriptive, inflexible, control-based policy is why Northgate, the most valuable land in our city, has seen almost no creative mixed use development despite plenty of opportunity and a number of very innovative plans on the drawing board.
Smart, long-term comprehensive planning coupled with consistent, transparent policy implementation and the willingness to work with landowners, investors and developers in a cooperative manner to reach our ultimate goals as a community would have the positive side effect of signaling to the market that we know what we want our city to look like in the future and we have planned for our inevitable growth so that investments can be made in and around our community with the secure knowledge that our government will not change the rules of the game and destroy their property rights every time another error in a short-sighted plan is discovered.
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