No-spin land use planning: convention, invention in Ellis County

In recent years, both critics and supporters of American democracy have decried an impoverished version of local citizenship in which people and organizations are more absorbed in securing their own rights and claims against government than asking what they might do to contribute to the overall public good.

In a country that Alexis de Tocqueville once described as a nation of joiners that protected community interests through volunteer committees and civic organizations of all types, this is bad news.

Contrary to this anti-government and cynical perspective, the Hays-Ellis County Planning Commission functions as a group of citizen volunteers organized around the principle that land use planning is too important to be left to professional planners or elected officials alone.

Unbound by election promises, narrow economic interests or simple expediency, the nine volunteer members of the commission strive to find the collective interest in each of its decisions that will best serve the public good of all 26,000 city and county residents. Granted, this is more art than science, and in many cases the commission becomes a lightning rod for controversial issues such as countywide zoning.

Nevertheless, it's an important and required part of local governance that has it rewards when the commission's individual decisions, plans and vision are mixed, arranged and connected to produce a larger city and county landscape that eventually enhances the quality of life.

What are some of the more crucial issues and items that appear or have appeared on the commission's agenda in the past year? First, one of the items that will not go away is limited countywide zoning. As the city of Hays “spreads” further out into the county with new development, the need for conventional codes and regulations that go beyond simple environmental stipulations becomes more obvious.

Even if the city's boundaries were not expanding, there exists a need to develop plans and enact design solutions that will help maintain the desirable aspects of the county's rural character and sense of village and small-town community. To think this will happen without some form of planned growth and design is simply to take a lowest common denominator approach that too often has dismal results.

The Ellis County Commission is to be commended for keeping this issue on its agenda. Second, the planning commission continues to seek champions for the implementation of biking and hiking trails.

City staff and others have submitted grants and continue to explore ways to fund this important addition to the quality of life in Ellis County.

With a local election in the near future, it would be good to see and hear what position those running for the governing body take on making biking and hiking more accessible and convenient within the city. Third, an issue that will require a less conventional approach to regulation is the challenge of “portable storage units.”

More and more businesses and even residents are leasing these units for inventory control, hiding unused items and other related uses. Currently, the planning commission believes the city does not have adequate regulatory control of this new use of land.

It has researched what other communities have done with ordinances and temporary guidelines and submitted a recommendation to the Hays City Commission to develop code that will, hopefully, serve as a proactive way to manage this growing problem. Action should be forthcoming in the near future.

The Hays-Ellis County Planning Commission believes that progress depends on a blend of conventional land use regulation, community values and new ideas and inventions that channel and cluster growth, leads to an enhanced quality of life and reduces the impact of development on community and natural resources.

We welcome your assistance in creating a Hays-Ellis County form of smart growth.

Larry Gould is chairman of the Hays-Ellis County Planning

Commission.