November 1, 2022 letter to Council
Mayor Arndt and Council Members,
I see you are scheduled to consider the second reading of the renamed Land Use Code this evening. This is, as you are aware, a massive change. I think parts of this change are unacceptable for a Council that prides itself on public process, and I think the majority of the voting public would agree with me. Specifically, the changes take many initial development review decisions out of the hands of the appointed citizen Planning and Zoning Commission and place them in the hands of unelected staff members.
You have limited the feedback on these changes largely to those who are likely to gain financially from them - and I'm not talking about regular citizens who hope for more housing affordability. For those citizens, you have promoted what I find to be a misleading narrative of how this will increase housing affordability. I predict that these changes will not lead to any measurable improvement on housing affordability. The "law" supply and demand applies only in specific constrained circumstances (a closed system). Fort Collins and Northern Colorado are well-known to be desirable places to live; the pressures caused by that location-based profit bonanza far outweigh simple-minded "supply and demand" considerations. Council would be well-advised to take a much stronger regulatory and fee-based approach to providing housing for 80% AMI households. Instead, it is pretending to solve the problem via zoning and development standards. This will lead to even more time lost before any effective solutions are considered.
I have concerns over what I've heard of other changes - effectively eliminating single-family zoning - but it is hard to comment specifically when Council has made it so hard to access this information. You are taking this action during the same time frame that you are considering the budget - another heavy lift with many moving parts. Your staff and P&Z commission have recommended an extended time between first and second reading; you have chosen to ignore them. Finally, you have buried the information needed to fully evaluate the changes. A pointer to the full "Land Development Code" is nowhere to be found on your agenda website for either the October 18 or the November 1 regular meetings. And you have failed to even consider summary minutes for the October 18 Council meeting.
In addition, your new agenda software is an epic failure - it is hard to imagine that we could make our old website harder to use, but you have somehow succeeded. Also, the agendas I have looked at contain many typographic and other errors, leaving a far-less-than-professional impression. Whatever you are paying for this new software, it is too much.
Regardless of the merit of the changes to the Land Use Code, your actions create the appearance of an attempt to sneak this change past the voters of Fort Collins while they are occupied by other things (the budget - the fall elections - and so on). Good deeds are done with full transparency, not apparent skullduggery. I expect many of these voters will be as disappointed as I am when they find out about how this all happened.
Thanks,
Ross Cunniff
District 5 resident (speaking on my own behalf)