For the last few years this blog has served as a source of information and dialog during election season in College station and Bryan. A couple of times in-between elections issues have arisen that motivated posts, but for the most part the blog sits ideal during most of the months of the year.

Having served on the College Station Planning and Zoning commission for a few months now, I recognize, more than ever, a need for our citizens to be more informed on development issues and more than anything to be more involved in a community dialog. I have always been engaged, with things like this blog, in effort to create community dialog. Unfortunately, now that I am in a position to provide more information, I am also too busy to be as involved in these efforts.

I hope to, at least occasionally, use this blog to discuss general issues in the development of our community. It is not my intention to limit this to College Station issues, especially as some of the more exciting development issues are occurring in Bryan. But I am just not as informed of, or involved in, Bryan issues. I will do my best to solicit input from those who are.

There are many reasons, including legal ones, that a P&Z commissioner might not want to be involved in such publically accessible dialog outside of City Hall chambers. In my opinion those with the most direct access to information and decision making should facilitate the discussion. As we have a dearth of community dialog on most development issues, I see this as part of my job as a commissioner.

I enjoy serving on the Planning and Zoning Commission for lots of reasons, foremost of which is the quality of people that I serve with. These people are very smart, socially adept and caring. Seldom do political bodies serve to assuage cynicism in me, this one certainly does that.

This is not to say that they agree with my perspective on development, or change. With great kindness and respect they tolerate what I can only guess seems like eccentricity from me. I have come to be known as Mr. Six-to-one, as my vote is frequently the lone impediment to consensus. It has been my experience that in College Station, like in other cities, ideas that seem far out can come into the mainstream in a relatively short period of time, even though they are at first perceived as tilting at windmills. The key for this to happen is to put them out there and allow discussion to occur.

There are several of these kinds of issues that I try to bring up in the course of commission deliberations. My hope is that by talking about them, in time some of these ideas will seem less out of the ordinary. One such idea is that gated communities are bad for College Station. Some of the more obvious reasons for this are that gated communities disrupt connectivity to both auto and pedestrian movement. By isolating themselves they create a decidedly anti-community atmosphere.

My guess is that most of my fellow commissioners may agree that they would prefer not to have gated communities in College Station, but they see it as beyond their reach to suggest such a change. Some probably also see it as beyond the reach of Council to determine such issues. There seems to be a strong sense on Council and in the Commission that such things should be determined mainly by market forces.

My hope has been that if I am somewhat redundant in talking about the pernicious nature of these kinds of development, in a couple of years we may be able to bring the issue up for consideration.

Last week’s P&Z meeting was the first for new Commissioner, Winnie Garner. Actually she has served on both P&Z and City Council in years past but has not served in several years. In the course of just one meeting I have already learned important lessons from Winnie. When the issue of gated communities came up, she indicated that this issue had come up years ago and that re recollection was that P&Z had suggested to Council that gated communities be stopped. Evidently that Council did not agree or they felt the pressure of the development community.

Later in last week’s meeting, when new agenda items came up, Winnie asked that the issue of gated communities be put on a future workshop agenda. Wow, I was impressed. No two years of trying to gain some level of acceptability for the idea, let’s just get it out there and deal with it. I think that I’m going to like serving with Winnie. The other thing that I learned from Winnie’s presence was that there was a time when community forces were given more credence in development considerations.

We went through about an 8 year period when the developers swept in and before anyone knew it they had managed, through heavy spending, to get several very pro-development people elected to City Council. Over the course of the last several elections the voters of College Station seem to have reversed that course. Nonetheless, a great deal of precedent has been set, which is difficult to change. College Station now has the sort of leadership that can bring our focus back to a point that quality of life is the goal and quantity of business is seen as a tool to serve that goal, rather than the other way around. The best way to insure and hasten this transition is to have a well informed and involved electorate.