It shouldn’t have come as a surprise after Monday’s record flooding that the issue of a citywide stormwater management plan came up more than once at Tuesday night’s public hearing on the proposed Comprehensive Plan.

Wednesday, July 12, 2000

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise after Monday’s record flooding that the issue of a citywide stormwater management plan came up more than once at Tuesday night’s public hearing on the proposed Comprehensive Plan.

It wasn’t that the Comprehensive Plan doesn’t address stormwater management – it does, on pages 62-64 – but several residents wanted to make sure city leaders know they want it to be a priority.

Green space, development standards, wetlands and the downtown business area also were hot-button topics.

"We are creating a wetland area," Lee Bjorndal told the Austin Planning Commission holding the hearing and the Austin City Council members present at the meeting. "It’s my back yard … Water management is clearly one of the most important issues for health, safety and welfare. It’s a county and regional problem because of the increase of tiling and the decrease of wetlands I hope you’ll have the courage to work on this and make the tough decisions."

Thoughts on managing Austin’s water were plentiful. Francis Skinness advocated against storm ponds. Pat Schmid was in favor of increased wetlands. City Administrator Pat McGarvey thought a separate storm water system – to handle water that doesn’t need to be treated by the city’s wastewater treatment plant – might be in order.

City Planning and Zoning Administrator Craig Hoium said there was no answer yet, but the problem wasn’t going to be forgotten.

"It is not the intention of the City Council or city staff not to address stormwater management," he said. "Steps will be taken – (City Engineer) Jon Erichson met with DNR (state Department of Natural Resources) representatives today – but it’s not an overnight fix. It’s taken some communities 20 years to develop a stormwater management plan."

It’s taken Austin nearly two years to develop this latest Comprehensive Plan, the city’s first since 1988. The process has been a fairly public one, starting with community surveys and focus-group meetings, then involving many hours by the Austin Planning Commission members, Hoium and community development specialist Jeff Mundt, and finally coming full circle back the public at Tuesday’s hearing.

The plan itself addresses many issues – including residential, commercial and industrial development, diversity, recreation, stormwater management and land use. Ideally, a Comprehensive Plan will serve not only as a framework, outlining in general the future development of the community, it also will give the community leaders goals and action ideas to follow.

Schmid argued for more open, undeveloped habitat space to be included in the plan.

"Forget about the money, all these things cost money," Schmid said. "This is the time to be visionary – not just about where you want to build stuff, but where you want to restore nature."

Usem’s owner Tom Sherman questioned the plan’s vision for the future of the downtown business district.

"I’ve been trying to figure out what exactly is the role of the CBD (central business district)," Sherman said. "You talk a lot about multifamily housing, and there have been many excellent improvements in the past 10 years like the library and the Mill Pond. But what is the goal of the CBD? As a business owner, I’m not sure from reading this plan and that disturbs me."

Although they’ve put many hours into the plan already, plus another three on Wednesday, it was back to the drawing board for the members of the Austin Planning Commission for some fine tuning after Wednesday’s public hearing. The commission will hold at least one more work session – yet to be scheduled – and likely make a recommendation on the plan for the Austin City Council at the Aug. 15 Planning Commission meeting.

It will then be up to the council to officially adopt the plan.

"We (members of the Planning Commission) have discussed all of the points that came up tonight before," Planning Commission Chairman Brian Johnson said. "But it doesn’t hurt to one more time revisit this. This will be our guide for the next 10 or 20 years. It’s worth looking at and making sure we’re comfortable with the vision or the plan that we’re setting out."

"I thought it was a good hearing," commission member Lois McConnell said. "We’d discussed a lot of the issues, but I was glad so many people – approximately 25 -turned out. They had some good things to say."

Copies of the Comprehensive Plan are available at the city engineering offices on the second floor of the Municipal Building at 500 Fourth Ave. NE.