Just a Little Story

Just a little story:

It is often alleged that public engagement doesn’t change things. That is not my experience. And it happened again last night.

A friend and I are helping a small town write a new zoning code. Among other things, we are making some types of “missing middle” housing for which a conditional use permit was required, by-right. It is impossible to know whether this change will encourage construction or make it a smidgin less expensive to build apartments, but it seems like the right thing to do. And there has been no opposition so far.

Having reached agreement on that, the consultants, the staff, and the planning board were sailing through a discussion of how recent changes in state law affect residential parking requirements, when a member of the public asked a question about parking for work-live units that led from parking to an inconsistency in procedures that we – who were looking at the ninth draft of this chapter and thought we knew what it said – had not realized was there. It was minor. It took two minutes to fix. I don’t think we’d have caught it before adoption without that other set of eyes happening upon it.

Perhaps this isn’t how it goes in the big city. Maybe it doesn’t happen during proceedings that are too formal. But I am telling you that if you welcome citizen involvement on a consistent, low-key basis, it will happen. It will help.

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