Proposed plan for Fayette growth does a ‘disservice’ to this community
The recently released Goal 4 Report has raised alarming questions and fundamentally incorrect assumptions about expansion of the Urban Service Boundary to allow future growth. It proposes a map that destroys the concept of the USB and suggests a legally questionable process for determining how future expansion decisions will be made. Further, the report was developed on a fast-tracked timeline without the broad community input essential to public policy decisions. Before any growth proposal is considered, the community deserves more information, better data, public input, and a hard look at the impacts, necessity and appropriateness of development in the Rural Service Area.
Lexington-Fayette County has again begun difficult but necessary conversations about growth. If done carefully, discussions can be grounded more in data than politics and result in policies that meet our community’s needs and protect the prime farmland that is the factory floor of the multi-billion dollar agriculture industry and also provides its unique identity. If not, discussions put at risk the irreplaceable land that sustains thousands of jobs and provides a special quality of life that sets us apart from cities across the country without creating more affordable housing, sustainable infrastructure investments, or supporting jobs leveraging Fayette County’s key attributes.
While the community should have research-based discussions about where and how to grow, it is irresponsible to make public a map proposing over 27,000 acres of land in the rural area for future development. In the 26 years since the last expansion of the USB, a little over 2,500 acres has been developed; just half of what was brought inside the USB at that time. Using this rate of development, the Report identifies enough land to accommodate growth for over 200 years before determining how much might realistically be needed, when, where, and for what reasons.
The proposals in the report are not only irresponsible, they are inefficient. The report indicates land could be developed in multiple directions outside the USB at the same time, incentivizing scattered development throughout the rural area, unsustainable infrastructure investments, and negative impacts to agricultural businesses that local, state, and federal dollars have invested tens of millions to support through the Purchase of Development Rights Program.
The last time Lexington-Fayette County failed to consider the relationship between development and infrastructure capacity, overflowing sewers caused serious harm and the EPA sued, resulting in a consent decree settlement which will cost taxpayers close to $600 million to correct (until completion in 2026). The process set up by the 1996 expansion to ensure developers pay their share for infrastructure to serve new development outside the USB, like roads and sewers, has failed and the report doesn’t propose a new one. This leaves major questions for LFUCG and Lexington-Fayette County taxpayers that must be answered.
The work group process resulting in the report may have begun with good intent, but ended abruptly, failing to include updated data, key stakeholders, public input, or analysis of major issues that now must be addressed. While reliable data is important for public policy decisions, even more important is the involvement of the community in making them. A decades-long plan for growth is not as simple as drawing lines on a map, nor is it appropriate for a small group of people in a closed room to decide where and how growth should occur. The report does a disservice to our community if the fundamental issues aren’t acknowledged up front. There must be a review of the process, a commitment to updated research, and an opportunity for input from those who will be most impacted by future growth decisions.
The best next steps to informed discussions are: 1) an update to the Sanitary Sewer Capability Study that was used as a basis for the report, 2) an update to the 2017 Rural Land Management Plan, the most comprehensive resource and guide to the rural area, and 3) an updated Cost of Community Services Study to explain what growth outside the USB will cost the community in the long term. In the meantime, Comprehensive Planning efforts should focus on infill and redevelopment of vacant and underutilized land inside the USB, using existing infrastructure to meet the needs of a growing population, and updating zoning policies to incentivize new development.
Lexington-Fayette County has been a national model for planning and zoning since 1958. Let’s continue to lay the groundwork necessary for truly responsible growth. To make your voice heard, attend the Planning Commission meeting on Thursday, December 8th at 1:30pm at the LFUCG Government Center, 200 E. Main Street, 2nd floor.
Brittany Roethemeier is executive director of the Fayette Alliance.