It’s hard to know who has more empty rhetoric: municipal planning consultants or school system bureaucrats (see separate editorial below). Both must have gone to the same seminars on how to say nothing in the most words. (And, conversely, how to disguise major potential policy changes in seemingly innocuous or vapid language.)
We’ve warned before and we raise the concern again: residents in any municipality that’s developing what may seem like an ostensibly mundane “comprehensive land use plan” better beware – lest they discover in the years ahead that bureaucrats and consultants have included massive shifts in a municipality’s future “land use,” without adequate public notice.
One of the most laughably ironic descriptions – made twice recently by the lead consultant Ben Hitchings who is overseeing the city’s comprehensive plan – is the contention that there had been “really strong engagement from the community.”
In practice, that really translates to fewer than 200 people who turned out at a few meetings, plus about a thousand more who responded to one or two online surveys.
Yoo-hoo: Mebane is now estimated to have a population of over 20,000. So the “lots of public engagement” actually translates to well under 10 percent of all residents – and that doesn’t account for possible (and likely) duplicate participation by the same few individuals, either at meetings or in surveys, which probably brings it down to under 5 percent of the population weighing in.
Meanwhile, we’ve asked repeatedly whether residents whose land is proposed to be “envisioned” as some other future land use from its current actual zoning were ever told that it might change, there’s either silence or a quiet, reluctant admission that “no, they haven’t been told.”
Of course, they could’ve come to the meetings, we’re always told. How would they know that their properties or neighborhoods might be affected by an allegedly general land use plan that is always described as just being “advisory” or for “guidance”?
We’ve heard and seen the explanation, also included in the report, about the difference between the comprehensive plan and actual zoning. Follow this ostensible distinction: “To be clear, land use plans are policy guides. They do not have the force of law. Plans establish a ‘vision’ for the future that is reflective of community expectations.”
But while the claim is that the land use plan doesn’t have the “force of law,” it’s cited subsequently (after its adoption), by city officials and council members, in almost every rezoning case to “prove” that whatever rezoning is approved is “consistent” with the comprehensive plan.
So beware about the preliminary zoning maps, which are also conveniently small enough in the printed study that residents cannot really assess whether their properties are proposed to be affected by the “future land use vision.”
Beware, we say again.
Meanwhile, in our judgment, if individual cities won’t do it themselves as a part of good, open government, this is an area where the General Assembly should require notification to property owners that their homes, businesses, or other land is being “envisioned” as something else for the 20-year future.
Because the comprehensive plan is a 20-year document that is intended to lock in these plans for the next two decades.
But, as if it’s not bad enough to have a “vision” that isn’t really shared by anything close to a majority of the public at large, and about which individual residents haven’t been informed as it might apply to their properties, Mebane’s proposal has more than four dozen “goals” and “implementation projects” buried in the narrative within the report.
These vary from mundane, and in some cases rather juvenile platitudes, to major policy shifts (or at least recommendations for them) cloaked in the plan.
Among the more ludicrous in the category of platitudes:
- “Help build local pride through an initiative that celebrates what people love about the community to help energize participation in community improvement projects.”
- “Combat growing social isolation by evaluating the existing social infrastructure and develop ways to help people in the community connect with one another and participate more actively in civic affairs.”
- “…Prioritize actions to make Mebane more senior-friendly to help better serve this growing segment of the community population….”
To their credit, several councilmen – most notably mayor pro tem Tim Bradley and councilman Jonathan White – seem to be rather alert to the potential dangers lurking in the 64-page report, and we commend them for not just sitting idly by without objecting to some of the report’s most outlandish suggestions.
And foremost in the category of “not really a city government function”:
- Prepare a market study for new types of cuisine and facility options (e.g. restaurants, food trucks, etc.) in collaboration with partner organizations to identify opportunities to expand dining options and help celebrate different cultural traditions.”
It’s not a city’s job to go out recruiting restaurants or other competitors for existing food establishments – neither permanent (brick and mortar) ones, nor ones on wheels.
For instance, though Mebane residents had wanted them for years, the city had no role in attracting a Starbucks or a Chick-fil-A to Mebane. Market forces, not city bureaucrats or more consultant studies, will determine which businesses will decide whether they want to locate in Mebane in the future.
One rather glaring omission in the comprehensive plan is much discussion about economic development, specifically industrial. It is the decades long focus on being friendly toward industrial development that has been the foundation of much of Mebane’s economic growth, employment opportunities, subsequent residential growth, and property tax base.
But, again, as with commercial development, the city is largely in the posture of responding to proposals for development – not going on the hunt to recruit a particular company.
All in all, Mebane residents should explore the proposed comprehensive plan on their own, and share those concerns with council members – either individually or at the next city council public hearing on the issue (Monday night and/or next month).
We think the dangers lurking therein will have major consequences over the next 20 years. We can already hear the future complaints from residents – echoing previous residents’ reactions to past plans – that “no one told us” this is what was being contemplated for their neighborhood, property, or nearby.
