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Okay, so I realize a lot of you may not be familiar with Anderson, SC, but I got to thinking about the way our council has been doing zoning and planning lately, and wanted to see if anyone in larger areas (50,000 +) agreed. My main question is, do you think urban planning should be left up to the dedicated zoners/planners or the county council?
We currently have a road that will be finished within a couple months to a years. When it's finished it'll be four lanes with turn lanes and a bike path. It's three miles long and connects Clemson Blvd (four/six lanes with turn) to Greenville St (four lanes with turn), thus you can imagine the traffic that would be expected. However, it went up for a vote three times, but each time the council voted to keep almost all of the land zoned residential...the planners said specific commercial zonings would have been the best option (the council also did this in the face of a lawsuit if they zoned residential). You don't even have to be a resident to come here and see that their favorite business areas are along Clemson Blvd, Greenville St, and Pearman Dairy Rd.
Also bus service only hits limited areas with service restricted to weekdays between 6am and 6pm with the usual wait between buses being about an hour. At the same time, we sit about 20 minutes away from the town of Clemson which has a population just a little over half of ours, but they have almost 24/7 transportation with very low wait times and the fare is free. Oh, did I not mention, our deputy administrator for the council heads the transportation division.
So...do you think it should be for developers to do their jobs, or take a risk with your council and hope they do what's right?
I'm sorry, I was pretty confused by your post. I checked out your town on google maps, but it's not obvious to me what the path of the new road would be, so I can't really say what would be best.
Essentially, what are you asking? Are you asking whether or not city council should have the powers it does? If they didn't, is the alternative for developers to do whatever they want and not have zoning? I'm having a tough time understanding exactly what question you need answered. If you're not happy with your council, vote them out or run for council yourself. If they're making bad decisions, that's democracy in action and you should work to change the outcome through the democratic means you have at your disposal, like organizing public pressure against their decision if it's unpopular.
Usually there's a system of checks in place. While a City Council should have some power, they should be able to be overruled by some governing body which can be overruled by another governing body. They should not have unlimited power over a development.
I know up here, many cities have planning departments that handle a lot of stuff like this. City Council can weigh in, as can the mayor. In addition, zoning changes are usually mostly dealt with by a zoning board and many significant ones are put out to vote. Historical commissions and the Army Corps. can also significantly impact a project.
So in short, I would say it's not unusual for a City Council to vote down a zoning change, but that shouldn't kill the momentum of the project. If it's important enough, there should be a way for another segment of city government to overrule them OR to get it on a ballot for people vote on.
I'm sorry, I was pretty confused by your post. I checked out your town on google maps, but it's not obvious to me what the path of the new road would be, so I can't really say what would be best.
Essentially, what are you asking? Are you asking whether or not city council should have the powers it does? If they didn't, is the alternative for developers to do whatever they want and not have zoning? I'm having a tough time understanding exactly what question you need answered. If you're not happy with your council, vote them out or run for council yourself. If they're making bad decisions, that's democracy in action and you should work to change the outcome through the democratic means you have at your disposal, like organizing public pressure against their decision if it's unpopular.
Oh my bad...the road would start at SC 81 like not even 1/8 mile south of Sam McGee Rd and do like a small loop down to Beltline Rd at Clemson Blvd. The area as you can see is half in city and half county.
What I'm asking is if the council goes against their assigned zoning committee, which is part of their own staff, even in the face of a law suit, should something be put in place that allows the people who's sole job is to insure proper zoning to get around this? It just seems very 'easy and conveient' to me for a council member if they're appealing to their own personal ideals to prevent certain areas to develop by zoning them incorrectly.
Oh, I also understand where you're coming from there, but that's not a solution for everyone. Would you vote for a unemployed 21 year old to run your city/county? Even if what he had to say was very well informed and appealing, especially compared to the others? You also have to consider our voting demographic...it would seem our methods aren't as imporant as the 'R' behind the candidates name...even though the Republicans have been causing chaos rivaling that in Washington down here for the past couple years.
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