Lexington council throws years of planning out the window on urban boundary vote | Opinion

The LFUCG Urban County Council’s recent first venture into local land use policy-making was less than impressive. It is a rookie Council, and it made a major unforced error in deciding to give developers a 5,000 acre expansion of the Urban Service Area.

First of all, the Planning Commission, not the Council has legal responsibility for deciding about any expansion. Kentucky law (KRS 100) says so. The Council’s responsibility stops at requiring the PC to find “enough” land for Lexington’s projected growth, not a specific acreage. For more than two years the Planning Commission and Staff collected and analyzed thousands of data points and hundreds of citizens’ opinions to arrive at a fact-based conclusion that no enlargement of the US Area is needed to accommodate Fayette County’s growth for at least the next five years. This thoughtful process replaced the traditional and ugly political “arm wrestling for acres” that occurred with every update. Now, developers have convinced the Council to get back into the mud pit of political fighting.

Having struck out with the Planning Council, developers decided to take their unwarranted demand for more land to the new Urban County Council. Under the spell of Developers’-Lawyer-and-Council Member Preston Worley and developer-backed group “Lexington for Everyone,” they threw all that work out the window in order to produce Comprehensive Plan language that orders the PC to find 2,700 to 5,000 acres to add to our city. Most Council Members seemed to vote with their hearts, not their heads, responding to the developers’ self-serving cry that more land is needed in order to build lots more “affordable” housing. They appear to be true believers in the discredited basic idea of “trickle down economics:” treat the rich (developers) good, and they’ll do good things for people of lesser means (the rest of Lexington). The choice of some Council Members to believe developers’ false claims and hollow promises, while ignoring the conclusions of multiple official studies of our growth needs—paid for by Lexington taxpayers—would be misfeasant, if they weren’t so sincere.

What most of these folks don’t seem to know is that in 1996, developers were given another 5,000 acre expansion, without justification, in a political process just like this one, and today, 27 years later, only half of this older acreage has been developed, and despite the same promises about building “affordable” housing, that didn’t happen. Today, the verifiable facts about our growth needs say that there is right now enough land inside the boundary to accommodate our expected population growth, and the job growth that goes with it. What is needed to take advantage of this opportunity are developers who will build the kind of housing and commercial buildings that fits on, and looks good in, the thousands of acres of “infill and redevelopment” land already available inside the present area.

Developers and Mr. Worley have baited the Council into leaving the right path of deciding future growth issues in Fayette County, by offering vague promises of relief for the needy, based on wrong assumptions and fake “facts”. And the Council fell hard for it, threatening Lexington’s high quality of life, and putting themselves in a position to be sued.

If the Council wants to take over the duty of deciding USB questions, it should start the entire process of Imagine Lexington over again, with public input and all, and plan to spend a couple of years gathering and analyzing data before making policy decisions about growth.

It is not appropriate for Council to arrive at the eleventh hour of this multi-year undertaking, and make decisions that essentially hijack the proceedings. If this unwarranted expansion of the Urban Service Area stands, the very least the Council can do to actually help Lexingtonians is to formally require verifiably “affordable” (even “permanently affordable”) housing be built on at least half of any included acreage. Lacking such a commitment, it can be conclusively said that expanding the USArea will not increase the supply of affordable housing, and if given more land to build on, developers won’t be building affordable houses, anyway. The Council should know better.

David B. Powell is a retired physician, a Lexingtonian since age 4, and wants to make living in Lexington truly good for all of us.