'Stakeholders' - but not public - invited to Pensacola's assessment of development rules

Pensacola has invited "stakeholders" to participate in workshops this week to assess its land development code, but those stakeholders don't include the public.

Inspire Placemaking Collective Inc. is conducting a $100,000 assessment of the city's land development code, and as part of that effort, it's holding workshops to gauge issues with the city code that guides growth and development in the city.

While the assessment won't result in any changes, it will be in a report on the current state of the city land development code and will include a list of potential changes that should be considered in a later re-write of the code.

The workshops are being held this week at City Hall and in virtual meetings to gather feedback on the land development code from city staff, architects, developers, and other stakeholders invited to the meetings. However, no general announcements of the meetings were sent out by the city to the public or local media.

When asked about the lack of announcement about the meetings, Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves said the public will get a chance to weigh in before any decisions are made.

"We always want community feedback, and I think we showed a good track record of that," Reeves said. "But stakeholders ? those are architects, those are construction, zoning, planning experts within our city ? where you're really getting in the weeds on technical aspects of the land development code. This isn't just a scenario where they're going say,' Well, this policy sounds good. What do you think?' There's a lot to get in the weeds about it that's well above my head as not a planner and zoning (expert)."

The land development code sets the rules for what can be built and where it can be built. Many policy experts have pointed to land development codes as causing a lack of affordable and workforce housing, while the codes also can provide vital protections for residential areas by preventing encroachment from commercial and industrial developments.

More often than not, when a development proposal causes an outcry from the public, the decision on whether it can be built has already been determined by what's contained in the land development code.

Reeves made conducting a review of the land development code a campaign promise and on Tuesday noted that the issue kept coming up during policy discussions at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington D.C. last week.

"It probably came up three times, in a public-private-partnership workshop, in a housing workshop, in a veteran's workshop about how to bring resources," Reeves said. "Independent, the conversations came up about, 'Hey, mayors, you really need to be looking at your land development code and how we think in these neighborhoods.' And so, so I'm glad that we're ahead of that."

The only advance notice of Pensacola's workshops came during a Jan. 9 planning board meeting where the board was informed about Inspired Placemaking Collective's progress on the assessment by Planning and Zoning Manager Cynthia Cannon.

Board Member Myra Van Hoose asked if the workshops would be open to the public.

"I believe they are; it's just not a public meeting per se because it's very strategic as far as getting the stake (stakeholders input)," Cannon said. "Now, it's going to become more of a public type of meeting when it comes before the planning board with the findings. Right now, this is a deep dive into the efficiency of our code. And we're looking at excessive cross-referencing and organization on top of this content type. There's a whole other list of how we're going to consolidate our historic district tables. A lot of organizational aspects to this as well."

Inspire Placemaking Collective will present its assessment of the status of the city's land development code to the planning board in May and to the City Council in June, and at that time, the public will be able to provide input.

If the City Council agrees, the next step would be to proceed with a full rewrite of the city's land development code, a process that will take several hundred thousand dollars and require many public meetings.

Cannon said at the planning board that the phase would be made up of entirely public meetings.

Reeves said Tuesday that if the process makes it that far, there will be several public workshops held during that process and community input on any proposed changes.

"It's part of the timeline for them to hear from the community," Reeves said.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola transparency questioned in land development code assessment