|
July 27, 2008
Planning for Placitas: The Issues and the Schedule
By: Stephen M. Barro
The outline of the proposed Placitas Area planning process presented by Sandoval County's long-range planner, Mr. Moises Gonzales, on July 17(1) identifies some of the issues to be examined and lays out a schedule, or timeline, within which these issues would be addressed. This note deals with two questions concerning these key components of the County's proposal:
- Whether the set of issues, as Mr. Gonzales' has presented it, adequately reflects the concerns and priorities of Placitas residents regarding future land use and development in the Placitas Area; (2)
- Whether the proposed schedule allows sufficient time to give the issues the attention they deserve, so that well-founded conclusions and recommendations will be forthcoming.
The Issues
In the "Overview" section of his outline, Mr. Gonzales identifies several general types of issues that would be considered in a Placitas Area plan—among them issues of land use, zoning, future subdivisions, infrastructure, road improvements, and community facilities. Then, in a section called "Plan Issues," he offers the following somewhat different list of 10 topics:
- Population Growth/Land Use
- Infrastructure Improvements
- Water Issues
- Community Facilities
- Preservation of Placitas Village Center
- Open Space/Recreation
- Land Grant Future Plans
- Transportation/Road Improvements
- Acequia Issues
- Build Out
All these items do, indeed, seem relevant, though some are so tersely stated or cryptic (What is a "build out" issue?) that one can only guess what specific questions might be pursued under each heading. There is no accompanying explanatory material. Obviously, each issue would require considerable elaboration at the outset of the planning process.
But perhaps more significant than the issues Mr. Gonzales presents in his outline are the issues he has chosen to omit or submerge. Most conspicuously, the outline never mentions the two fundamental land-use issues that have been the most heavily discussed in Placitas in recent months and are of the most pressing concern to large numbers of Placitas residents. These are:
- Retail/commercial development Whether any land in Placitas should be designated for retail, office, or other commercial development, outside of parcels already zoned for such purposes;
- Higher-density housing Whether there should be provision anywhere in Placitas for new housing other than unattached, single-family homes, or housing of higher density than in existing subdivisions.
That these two aspects of development have not been acknowledged and featured prominently is troubling. Decisions about them could lead to changes in the area's present zoning (predominantly rural residential/agricultural, or RRA) and thus could alter the character of Placitas fundamentally and irrevocably—and not necessarily for the better. The omission suggests either a sharp disconnect between the community's and the planner's priorities or an attempt by the planner to downplay the most critical and contentious matters, perhaps in the hope of deferring strong community reaction. Mr. Gonzales might argue that the issues of retail/commercial and higher-density housing development are subsumed under the broader headings of land use and zoning, but that is hardly a reason not to recognize them explicitly and to accord them the priority they deserve.
It appears, moreover, that (for reasons laid out below) the same two land-use issues will be among the most difficult and time-consuming ones to deal with in the planning process. They will require intensive study, substantial community involvement, and large allocations of the planning agency's resources.
To correct the aforesaid omissions, to give some structure to the issue list, and to pick up some other now-missing topics, I would suggest a reformulation along something like the following lines:
Overarching land-use issues
General policies regarding future growth of Placitas
Extent and composition of further residential development
Extent and nature of retail/commercial or other nonresidential development
Issues concerning historic and traditional areas
Preservation of Placitas Village Center
Special issues concerning acequia-based communities
Special issues concerning land grant areas (3)
Issues of water availability and quality
Issues concerning infrastructure and public services
Improvement of roads and other transportation
Drainage and flood control
Public safety services
Open space/recreation
Environmental quality issues
Community facilities and amenities
How the issues are defined and arranged is significant because it bears on how the planning effort and the plan itself will be organized. Considerably more important, though, is how seriously and in what depth each issue will be examined. I touch on some aspects of the latter question in the following remarks on the proposed timeline.
The Schedule
The schedule set forth in Mr. Gonzales' July 17 presentation reads in its entirety as follows:
Part I: Existing Conditions (July 17 – August 08) (Community Meetings)
Part II: Plan Goals (September 08)
Part III: Plan Recommendations/Community Workshop (Early October 08)
Final Public Hearing (October 08) Planning and Zoning Commission
Plan Completion and Adoption (November 08) Board of County Commissioner
The two key items are those highlighted in yellow: plan goals, to be formulated sometime in September; plan recommendations, to be ready by early October. Nearly all the substantive work of planning—data collection, studies, surveys, analyses, etc.—would have to be carried out between these two dates. What Mr. Gonzales seems to be indicating here, in other words, is his remarkably optimistic belief that all the work needed to get from goals to conclusions can be completed in only about one month. (Note: It has been suggested in recent days that County officials would be amenable to extending this schedule by a few months if necessary but that Mr. Gonzales' still wants to wind up the process by December 2008.)
Is the foregoing schedule reasonable for producing a Placitas Area plan? Clearly, for many of the issues enumerated above, the answer is "no"; it would be far too short. There are, to be sure, a few issues that the proposed timeline might accommodate. It may be perfectly feasible, for instance, to resolve expeditiously the issue of preservation of Placitas Village. County planners are already familiar with local conditions and have experience with the relevant policy tools (zoning overlays, etc.). A series of meetings with residents should yield enough information about local preferences and priorities to allow county staff to proceed with drafting that section of the plan. But to deal adequately with some of the more complex issues would require studies and data collection efforts that probably could not even be initiated, much less completed, within the indicated timeframe. Among the issues in this latter group are the overarching land-use issues identified above as well as issues requiring specialized technical analysis, such as those concerning road improvements and water supply.
To avoid making this essay unduly lengthy (and to avoid writing about matters of which I know little), I make no attempt here to estimate how long it would take to deal with all the different planning issues listed above. Instead, to demonstrate why Mr. Gonzales' proposed timeline is too short by an order of magnitude, I focus on just one selected major issue, retail/commercial development, and on what the planners would have to do to deal with that issue responsibly.
The retail/commercial issue, as explained earlier, is whether any land in Placitas not already zoned for retail, office, or other commercial uses should be designated for such purposes in the future (and, if so, how much land, in what locations, and for what sorts of commercial activity). To address this issue seriously, it would seem necessary to investigate, first, the economic viability of further retail/commercial development in Placitas, and second, the impacts of new retail/commercial development on such things as road traffic, water supply, and environmental quality.
But what would such an investigation entail? Here, just for illustration, are some specific actions the planners might take to shed light on economic viability:
- Consult with interested parties. Planners could, for example, query local real estate people and owners of commercially zoned property as to (a) why much of such property remains vacant or underutilized and (b) under what conditions development of such property might proceed. They could try to learn from developers who have sought commercial rezoning of undeveloped Placitas land why they, the developers, believe that new retail/commercial development might be successful.
- Conduct a consumer survey of Placitas residents, designed to find out (a) where residents now do their shopping, and why, (b) what goods and services residents might choose to procure locally if suitable outlets existed, and (c) what types of retail and commercial enterprises residents deem compatible with the setting and character of Placitas.
- Commission a professional market research study of prospects for successful retail, office, or other commercial development in Placitas, under alternative assumptions about land-use policies and the area's future demography.
Item 1 could be completed quickly but the findings would be of limited value because they would reflect mainly the perceptions and opinions of self-interested parties. Items 2 and 3 involve inquiries that, by their nature, would require not just a month or two but four to six months or more to carry out. Should it not be self-evident why this is so, consider the multiple steps needed just to conduct a methodologically respectable mail-questionnaire consumer survey of Placitas residents:
- Organize the survey effort; assign tasks
- Define the questions to be answered
- Draft a survey questionnaire
- Obtain comments and revise
- Select a sample of Placitas residents; compile a mailing list
- Pilot-test the questionnaire on a small group of respondents
- Revise again, as necessary
- Distribute the questionnaire to the full sample; collect responses
- Conduct follow-up efforts with initial nonrespondents
- Code and tabulate responses
- Prepare a report that presents and interprets the results
This is an effort that would easily extend over four months.
Likewise, assessments of the impacts of retail/commercial development on road traffic or water supply cannot possibly be produced in the month or two that Mr. Gonzales' proposed schedule would allow. Such analyses would have to be carried out by, respectively, professional transportation engineers and hydrologists. Just the initial tasks of writing specifications for the work, selecting contractors or consultants, and finalizing contractual arrangements could exhaust the allotted time. The actual substantive work would take many months longer.
Should Mr. Gonzales draw up and present recommendations for further retail/commercial development without having conducted any such studies, some awkward questions would immediately arise: Where might such recommendations have come from? Would they reflect solely the planners' intuition? Or, as some untrusting citizens might speculate, could they have been preconceived, perhaps even with the interests of certain parties in mind? Clearly, for recommendations on this issue and other major issues to be credible, they would have to be based on solid evidence and serious (and transparent) analysis of development alternatives and their implications.
Also important to keep in mind when thinking about the schedule is that not all planning tasks can be carried out in parallel; some need to be undertaken sequentially. One reason is practical: The Sandoval County planning agency is unlikely to have sufficient resources to deal with all issues simultaneously. In fact, whether the County has allocated adequate funds, personnel, and other resources for this complex planning process is a matter of significant concern in its own right. But another reason is more substantive. Some issues cannot be addressed properly until other issues have been (at least tentatively) resolved. For example, if transportation engineers were called in to assess future traffic volume and the attendant need for road improvements, they would ask what assumptions to make about the future intensities and locations of traffic-generating activity; but such questions could be answered only after, not before, possible future patterns of retail/commercial and housing development had been explored. The same applies to assessments of the impact of possible future development on water supply.
What, then, might a more realistic schedule look like? The following is my own rough and preliminary notion of a schedule that would allow thorough examination of Placitas planning issues. Please note two points while reading it: First, although this alternative schedule does not list community meetings explicitly, it should be understood that they would occur at appropriate points throughout the planning process (as County officials have recently confirmed). Second, provisions have been added for two important steps toward the end of the planning process that Mr. Gonzales apparently forgot to include in his initial schedule: community review and comment and subsequent revision following completion of a draft plan, and further revision following the initial submission to the Planning and Zoning Commission and public hearings before that body.
Suggested Alternative Schedule
August – September 2008
Compilation and assessment of information on existing conditions
August - September 2008
Organization of working committees of Placitas residents
October 2008
Definition of plan scope, goals, and issues; formulation of specific planning questions; identification of needed studies
October – November 2008
Design of data collection efforts and surveys; development of specifications for commissioned studies
November – December 2008
Selection and engagement of contractors or consultants
November 2008 – August 2009
Conduct of data collection efforts, surveys, and studies
July – August 2009
Preparation of draft Placitas Area plan
August - September 2009
Community review and comment
September 2009
Preparation of revised plan
October 2009
Submission to Planning and Zoning Commission; public hearings
October – November 2009
Further revision; resubmission to P&Z Commission
November 2009
Submission to Board of County Commissioners
This schedule may be a bit overoptimistic in that it does not allow fully for the necessarily sequential nature of some important elements of the planning work, nor for the problems and attendant delays that nearly always arise in an endeavor of such magnitude. Nevertheless, it serves to make the point that late 2009—not the end of 2008—is a more realistic target for completion of the Area plan.
1. "Placitas Community Area Plan: Plan Overview, July 2008" (handout distributed at a community meeting on July 17, 2008).
2. As recently agreed by Sandoval County Officials, the Placitas Area Plan will cover all of Placitas other than Diamond Tail. Mr. Gonzales' original plan, as outlined in the previously cited handout, would have covered only an eastern subarea of Placitas.
3. Mr. Gonzales has stated that most aspects of planning for the land grant areas fall outside the county's jurisdiction, which raises some interesting questions about the coherence of a Placitas Area plan.
—TOP OF PAGE—
|
