The draft comprehensive plan, which was supposed to be ready in February, is now available on the City of Hudson website. Click here to access it. The document is 135 pages long.
A thirty-day public comment period begins today and continues until July 10. The form for submitting comments can also be accessed here.
Here's a preview of the plan: Guiding Principles and 12 Big Ideas. (Click on the images to enlarge.)
While I appreciate the work that has gone into this plan, I am concerned that its overemphasis on ‘equity’ and ‘anti-displacement’ comes at the expense of Hudson’s taxpayers, homeowners, and small business community. There is no clear fiscal plan for funding these ambitious programs except through higher property taxes. We need a balanced approach that respects property rights, maintains neighborhood character, and supports economic growth—not more bureaucracy, red tape, and unfunded mandates.
ReplyDeleteUpdating the zoning code is the #1 "Big Idea"? Are the members of the comp plan board totally detached from Hudson? This has been discussed by the council for years (I recall there was a committee a few years ago that never met- go council!). But maybe if enough committees say the same thing, the council will act?
ReplyDeleteThis Comprehensive Plan is so incredibly flawed it cannot be used.
ReplyDeleteJust to show one of a dozen major problems... why was Michelle Tullo (the mayor's gf and "Housing Justice Director") shepherding it and the main marketer and driver?
If Rob Perry (DPW), or Mishanda Franklin (HPD), or Tracy (City Clerk) played a similar role in terms of time and planning, then this plan would arguably look very different. None of them live with Kamal in Galvan housing.
Obviously those 3 have more integrity than Kamal and Michelle, but if they operated the same way then this plan would be very biased towards public infrastructure, public safety, and public administration, respectively.
More residents voted for Charter Change, signed Loyd's Mayoral candidacy petition, or buy coffee at Supernatural on a busy day, than took part in this survey. It is not representative.
The funniest / scariest thing is that the private group behind the survey refuse to share their core data. So they clearly fudged the numbers.
This is $200k wasted. And the City will have to start all over again.
I appreciate that this draft mentions form-based code as an especially high-priority idea but they somehow shoehorned affordability into it in a way that I've never seen done elsewhere. They thus turned it into a weird hybrid between form-based code and incentive zoning.
ReplyDeleteFBC is modeled on the French zoning which designates desirable properties for a designated area. That generally is limited to physical properties such as building size and style, intended use (often mixed-use since it increases walkability), the type of greenery to be planted etc.
In a few rare cases in the US, it has led to more affordable housing but that was purely incidental. It was not because the form-based code prescribed affordable housing.
Anyone who wants to see how FBC would look like in practice and how it manifests in the written code, look at Cincinatti which started ten years ago to gradually transition to FBC. It bears no resemblance to traditional zoning codes: https://formbasedcodes.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Cincinnati-Form-Based-Code_FinalDraft_Web.pdf