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Steamrolled!
Neighborhoods pay price for City Hall schemes and clueless Council
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"And City Council approved this?" Burgess asked. Not only did City Council approve it unanimously in October 2001, but Burgess voted for it, although she doesn't recall doing so.
Council members Don Lochman, Patrick Cannon, Nancy Carter, Malcolm Graham and James Mitchell also voted for it.
Like Burgess, Carter had never heard of the Turn Around Committee and didn't recall voting for the ordinance change either.
"Oh, Lord," she said when CL read her the changes she voted for.
Lochman, who also voted for the ordinance change and was equally in the dark, says the Council deserves an explanation.
"What we need is a good explanation as to who precisely did it, why they did it, who authorized it and what's the benefit from it and what's the detriment to it," said Lochman. "Someone ought to explain all that."
Linda Beverly, the staffer who brought the Turn Around Committee together, was uncertain why wording that would protect neighborhoods was slashed.
"I can't really react to it because it was three years ago and I can't remember exactly what the thinking was," said Beverly.
Given all this, says Paul Andrews, his Stonehaven neighbors quickly became frustrated when talking to City Council members who often seemed as confused as they were.
"If citizens like us who spend basically 10 or 12 hours looking into this already have more information than every Council member I've spoken to, I think that's amazing," said Andrews. "Actually, I think that's frightening."
Connectivity Policy MIA
Unfortunately, that's not the only problem the neighborhood ran into. For months, the residents of Stonehaven were told that their case would be a test of the City Council's commitment to its connectivity policy. When covering this case, two local newspapers also reported the same thing -- that this would be the test case for the city's connectivity policy. There's just one problem, and it's a big one: the city doesn't have a connectivity policy.
Sure, "connectivity" is loosely defined and referred to a couple of times in the city's subdivision ordinance, but the city doesn't have a formal policy defining what kind of development you can connect to what.
That, again, was news to Council members who say they've voted on at least 12 rezoning cases in which they thought they were applying the city's connectivity policy.
It's easy to see how they could have become confused. City and planning staff often refer to whatever they're doing in regard to connectivity, which at this point isn't entirely clear, as the "connectivity policy." City planner Tom Drake even called the Stonehaven case the "poster child" for the policy. But that doesn't mean the city actually has one.
When CL asked the seven City Council members we interviewed for this article if they had actually read the city's connectivity policy, four -- Lochman, Susan Burgess, Warren Turner and Patsy Kinsey -- initially said they had. Council members John Lassiter and John Tabor said they hadn't read the policy, but thought the city had one. Only Carter said she was aware that the city didn't have a formal, written connectivity policy.
"I feel sorry for them," said Stonehaven resident Jonathan Alix, who has spent a lot of time studying city ordinances related to the case. "I don't know how City Council members can wade through all the material they are expected to consider. Council asks the staff, "What do you think?' and they say, "Oh yeah, this is great,' and they vote on it. They don't understand what they're voting on. They give staff the benefit of the doubt. The way things are done there just seems to leave a lot missing."
Kinsey said she ran into a similar situation during a controversy in Plaza-Midwood over sidewalks the city wanted to install.
"City staff said our policy is five-foot sidewalks with four-foot planting strips and this was on a street where houses are very close to the street," said Kinsey. "So we all met out there, the neighbors and engineering and the Charlotte Department of Transportation, and finally, point-blank, there were two of us that said, "What is the city's policy? Is this the city's policy? Where is the policy?' Well, come to find out, there is no written policy."
Who's In Charge Here?
Because of the way the system is set up, the final decision on whether Levine can open a driveway to his business park in the middle of the Stonehaven neighborhood will ultimately be made by one person -- a person who, because the Planning Commission and the city have almost no formal rules on the matter, has virtually no rules to guide her.
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