Council: Austin is Which Way?

City Council doesn't meet again formally until March 26 (work session March 24), although they will likely squeeze in a few committee meetings in the meantime – and perhaps two more policy briefings on Monday, March 23 (public safety and community relations), still not quite concluded. The draft version of the next agenda doesn't hold any obvious land mines, but plenty of contracts ripe for what is becoming micromanagement, as well as a brace of zoning cases with the usual attempts at splitting the baby.

That recalls the headline news of last week, City Manager Marc Ott's decision to bifurcate the Planning and Development Review Department, separating its planning and zoning functions from development review. The Planning and Zoning Depart­ment will be headed by current PDRD director Greg Guernsey, and the Development Review Department will be headed by Rodney Gon­zales, currently the assistant director for economic development. According to Ott's memorandum announcing the change, "The reorganization will more evenly distribute the workload and allow each unit to focus on process improvements. The Planning and Zoning Department will include zoning case management, annexation, historic preservation, CodeNEXT, comprehensive planning and urban design. The Development Review Department includes the permit center, plans review and inspections."

The public presumption has traced Ott's decision to the Zucker Report – a consultants' review of the PDRD – released in draft a couple of weeks ago, still undergoing polishing and expected in final form sometime this month. But the change has clearly been in the works for some time, and it's not as though city staff and the public have not been aware of problems within the department for years – often expressed in opposing conclusions – and the draft report's executive summary identifies the central problem. "The so called 'Austin Way' contains an unhealthy dose of suspicion. This lack of trust became evident in the desire by both staff and citizens to over-document everything, to dot every 'i' and cross every 't', the tendency to create new commissions along with each new ordinance, unwillingness to delegate more decisions to staff and staff's feelings that if they make a mistake, they may be crucified. In the long run every detail cannot be documented. This kind of system will break down and sink of its own weight. We are not suggesting that the Austin Way be abandoned, rather that it be kept in perspective."

As it happens, that's not from this Zucker Report, but an earlier one: 1987, to be exact, and repeated nearly 30 years later. If anything, those tendencies in Austin's public life have gotten more ingrained in 28 years, with opposed stakeholders wielding ordinances like bludgeons, and staff cowering and covering in the middle.

Those consequences will hardly end with Ott's reorganization, but perhaps at least the work burdens identified in the report will be eased somewhat by the division of labor. When this all gets to Council for public mastication is uncertain – maybe the committee hearing, whenever it comes, will be the test of the new system. Unless "CodeNEXT" somehow streamlines the overbearing microdetail, legalism, and "suspicion" of the current planning system, the "Austin Way" will continue to rule the day, and the built landscape.