Municipal News & Jobs

Does growth pay for itself?

No, it doesn’t sound nearly as fun as finding the answer to the cheeseburger question. But if you care about how much houses will cost in Douglas County in the future, or how high your tax bills will be years from now, it is a really important question.

City commissioners will start debating it at their meeting on Tuesday. Specifically, they will consider approving Plan 2040, which is a new comprehensive plan for the city and the county. Basically, it provides a set of rules for how growth ought to happen in the future. Among the new rules is that the city would seek to limit growth near the edge of the city and instead force as much growth as possible into older, existing parts of the city. A major reason behind this rule is because there are concerns about whether growth — especially housing growth — pays for itself. In other words, does the cost of providing government services to new residents total more than what they are paying in taxes and other government fees?

Read more: LJWorld.com.

…commissioners will consider putting a six-month halt to the subdivision of large, rural parcels of land into smaller residential lots.

During the commission’s meeting last week, zoning director Tonya Voigt said there had been a dramatic increase in applications to develop residential property in the rural parts of the county. She asked the commissioners to consider a temporary moratorium on processing of those applications until new zoning regulations are installed.

Voigt told the commission that some rural residents suggested the regulations are too lax and the county needs to make changes to ensure it protects a distinction between rural and urban areas, which is a goal in the county’s comprehensive plan.

Read more: LJWorld.com.

The rural areas of the county are where the Douglas County community least wants development to occur, but the county’s zoning regulations make it one of the easiest places to be developed, Karen Willey said.

“The processes we have in place are absolutely turned on their heads, in terms of how easy or difficult that process is,” said Willey, who is a county appointee on the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission.

Soon, the county may start to change that with a temporary moratorium that would halt efforts of rural landowners to divide their property into new residential lots.

Read more: LJWorld.com.

City leaders will soon consider a new growth plan that prioritizes infill development and that some say will make Lawrence housing more expensive.

As part of its meeting Tuesday, the Lawrence City Commission will consider the new comprehensive plan, Plan 2040, which lays out policies that will shape how the city grows for the next 20 years. Plan 2040 prioritizes development within the city’s boundaries and requires developers to meet several requirements to annex land to expand those boundaries.

Proponents of the plan maintain that the city cannot afford to grow in any and all directions, and that growth needs to be focused in certain areas to manage city infrastructure costs and costs to taxpayers.

Read more: LJWorld.com.

After a decade with the City of Lawrence, Public Transit Administrator Bob Nugent will soon move west to oversee Topeka Metro’s bus service, the organization announced Monday.

Nugent came to Lawrence from Murfreesboro, Tenn., in spring 2009 as the city began to coordinate its bus service with the University of Kansas. During Nugent’s time in Lawrence, the city increased overall ridership by 250%, introduced some hybrid diesel-electric buses to its fleet, added late night service and implemented new mobile tools for riders, according to a press release from Topeka Metro.

He will take over as general manager of Topeka Metro in October, the release said.

Read more: LJWorld.com.