Now that we have a significant number of project proposals presented for our community, we can compare and contrast which projects sail right through the P&Z process and which hit the proverbial wall. The most obvious projects that appear to have had little to no resistance are the AYC and SAYC, while Crystal Spring, the Eastport Shopping Center and Rocky Gorge have not enjoyed the same favorability track.
The obvious answer to the success through P&Z of the AYC and SAYC projects is that their proponents seem to have an inside track to influence decision-makers. All the other projects continue to be picked apart under the guise of P&Z criteria.
There are serious deficiencies in the current P&Z process. The P&Z approach is based on an acceptable public policy interest “to promote and maintain orderly development.” But now, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, the implementation is out of date and flawed. The problem for Eastport is that community clogging projects are presented as isolated building initiatives, rather than as a grouping of projects that should be viewed as a torrent that may overwhelm our community with grid-locked roads, negative impacts on public safety, and detrimental effects on our environment.
The immediate effect of these projects may be pretty buildings. But the life-cycle impacts should be projected for fifty years and that should be the focus of P&Z, and needs to be the critical path for future public policy.
Just to be sure you know where I stand, I am opposed to all of the projects. Each and every one has fatal flaws. If we actually judge the project decisions and objective criteria from an environmental life-cycle public policy perspective, I believe that none of the projects as presently structured would see the light of day. The current process is highly subjective and based on short-term myopic thinking as well as being devoid of the links between building construction and operations. That is the difference between a paper process and the way the projects impact the real world.
Other elements of the process are also flawed.
Projects are significantly altered from the time they are approved until the time they are actually constructed. These changes are usually worked between the project proponent and P&Z with little notification to, or input, from the public. The work-arounds used by proponents through use of waivers and/or exceptions effectively render the process a bureaucratic joke. Project proponents should be required to provide any long-term plan or project changes that they may consider at the time of presentation of the original project.
To ensure that this occurs, no project should be permitted to be altered for a minimum of ten years after the initial approved project is actually completed and receives approval for occupancy.
Also, it is inadequate to simply change the name of a project, or use some alternative spelling, or claim that you have drawn some magical line around your project so that you need have no say in the use of an adjacent piece of land.
We, the community, P&Z and the Planning Commission need to be more assertive and not just throw softball questions at project proponents when projects are reviewed. Our challenge is to keep our focus on the long-term and not get enthralled by pretty pictures, the name or self-described status of the proponent, or hollow platitudes.
P&Z needs to provide the public with the technology tools to help community members effectively search through mountains of project materials. We, as individuals, do not necessarily have the resources to keep up with all of the submission materials that paid consultants and other project proponents placed into the record. This is not an easy question to resolve, but it at least needs to be raised.
The goal, as I have previously stated, is for project proponents and the public to be on an equal footing.
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