Community Consensus

Community Consensus - We can attain it and we cannot afford to charge full speed ahead without it.

The editorial in Sunday’s paper concerning the density bonus proposal was right on the money. Everyone in our community wants to have more affordable housing and everyone wants it yesterday. Yet many questions remain and the proposed comprehensive plan amendment does little to put us on the road to achieving this objective.

One requirement in the plan stands out. It requires that we develop a "comprehensive city wide attainable housing strategy that includes attainable housing supply, demand by neighborhood, regulatory review, public outreach and recommended policies for funding."

This is an excellent requirement in the proposed comp plan change. If we were to follow this, we would have community consensus on what elements would work for downtown and the nearby neighborhoods.

Putting the cart before the horse, in this case putting "solutions" in place before developing a strategy that the community buys into, just causes further division and mistrust. Particularly among those neighborhoods and residents that already have a good deal of skepticism.