City of Lancaster, not just school district, in catch-up mode

Regardless of how one feels about current — or past — Lancaster School District administration(s), I don’t think rational people will argue that the district is behind the curve on maintenance at older schools, and at least getting closer to the curve on additional classroom space.

However, it’s also arguable that the city of Lancaster is behind the curve on development issues, has been for more than a decade, and with less justification than the school district.

School growth takes bond issues, which need voter approval.

Improved and enhanced city development codes simply take city staff and a consultant coming up with ideas for where and how a development code needs to be improved. After that, it’s off to a vote by a city’s planning and zoning commission, then its city council. No voter approval needed.

The city development code update approved last year in Lancaster was good as far as it went, but could have gone further, especially on things like green building standards, which are not only good for the environment, but a value-added factor for new homes well beyond their actual construction cost, as places like Frisco know. I begged the city’s consultant to get something in; I can take a good guess why it wasn’t, but if you have city leadership that’s not always big on environmental issues, that can happen, if my guess is correct.

Point is, even that should have been passed at least a year before it was. Unfortunately, the Mills Branch Initiative didn’t spur the thought of updating the entire development code at that time, which would have gotten something on the books almost two years earlier. That, in turn, would have slowed down the number of low-cost homes. It is true that the city increased lot and house sizes for various zoning categories earlier this decade, but that by itself wasn’t enough.

For that matter, when Lancaster residents started complaining about how developers treated Lancaster, nearly a decade ago, why weren’t city staffs and elected city officials already working to upgrade the development code at that time?

I have no doubt there’s a lot of blame to be thrown about. On the other hand, looking ahead, it’s not too late to ramp development standards up even tighter before the end of this decade.