Lessons from the Planning Commission
By Janel Curry
I have served on the planning commission for a mid-sized city and on the planning board for a small town. I have learned a great number of lessons from serving with my fellow commissioners and board members.
If you don’t know what a planning commission does, let me give you some examples. The planning commission considers special land use requests at public hearings. These can involve approving anything from sign plans for developments, to a request to tear down a house, to an area-specific plan for a neighborhood. So what have I learned?
Aesthetics matter. For example, signs make huge impacts on business districts or neighborhoods. They either signal that this is a community that is inviting, or they signal a lack of individual and communal concern in a neighborhood—a free-for-all. The same is true with landscaping and the placement of buildings. How things look make a difference.
Safety comes with transparency. This is often counter intuitive to many people. Transparency can refer to the nature of decision-making in a public meeting, or it can refer to actual building transparency through the percent of square feet on the side of a building that are windows. Both have been found to ensure greater safety for the public. If you can see what is happening, if transparency is greater, then confidence and trust increase.
Decision-making must be tied to standards and principles. The planning commission works from the master plan of the city, the city ordinances, and also attempts to be consistent in its granting exceptions to these frameworks. Exceptions are made within the framework of meeting the overarching principles and this is transparent, and in fact, must be stated as part of the public record. In fact, random and unprincipled decision-making gets overturned by the zoning appeals board.
Set the bar high. The goal is to serve the larger public good and through doing this we must ensure that the standards for the whole are maintained. For example, one company wanted to put a cell tower up on the outside of an inner city church at the lowest possible cost, saying anything else was impossible. It would benefit the church. It would possibly provide cheap cell phone coverage for the city. But aesthetically it was not up to the standard that would be required in a wealthier neighborhood. We said “no.” They came back with a different plan that maintained the architectural integrity of the building and neighborhood. We maintained consistent and high standards for all.
Seek consensus but respect dissent. Usually we can come to a consensus, but different commissioners play different roles—some are mediators amongst us, some are the prophets. And it depends on the issue as to what role each plays. Yet, the commissioners themselves respect the roles that each chooses to play with each case. We do not always agree with each other on every decision, but we do always agree to support the work of the commission as a whole and respect each individual.
Be visionary but pragmatic. A planning commission is always making incremental decisions that push toward a larger master plan for the city. They could decide that there are no exceptions and leave no flexibility in moving toward that vision, or they could be pragmatic and see the vision as unattainable. These extremes lead to either public frustration or neighborhood decline. In one instance someone came to the commission for permission to add onto a building in the inner city. The commission could have given permission with the stipulation that he brought the entire building up to the transparency code, putting in more windows. But the neighborhood is in a “not yet” state. It has potential for improvement but it is not quite there. Additional windows at this point would only lead to more broken windows. The commission had to maintain the vision of what this neighborhood will be in the future, but hold this in tension with the realities of today, supporting someone who has maintained a commitment to stay in the difficult neighborhood.
How things look makes a difference. Safety comes from transparency. Decision-making must be tied to principles and standards that are public. The bar should be set high everywhere for everyone. The culture should support consensus-building, which includes respecting dissent. We must be visionary but pragmatic, holding the realities of the present in tension with the vision for the future.
These are many of the lessons learned from being on the planning commission or planning board
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