Most residents of a given municipality probably
don’t realize how much effort and deliberation goes into the process of
creating the landscape of streets, buildings and other infrastructure
that surround them every day. Laboring away in offices at city halls,
engineering firms, and in public meeting rooms are dozens of people who
put an amazing amount of consideration into decisions like where to
place a curb cut on a street, how the construction of a new building
will affect traffic flow or whether or not a particular development
meets the requirements of local ordinance. 

     Those people must have hard jobs, especially
since they don’t usually get any attention except when they make a
decision that people are unhappy with. While developers and
aggressively pro-business types argue that there are too many hoops to
jump through and tend to claim that decision-makers are anti-growth,
residents concerned with conservation and preserving the character of
their neighborhoods often say that those in power are too lax with the
rules and under the sway of developers. But things are rarely that
simple. 

    Much of the time, decisions about what can and
cannot be done are based solely on a reading of the ordinance. Ideally,
that would be a fairly straightforward, simple matter. But as South
Portland residents have learned lately, that’s not always the case. The
code enforcement office recently found that developer Paul Vose had met
all the requirements laid out by ordinance that needed to be met in
order to be granted a building permit for his Sawyer Street property.
But many residents apparently had a very different reading of the
ordinance, and appealed the permit. Some residents I’ve talked to feel
like city officials were squarely on the side of the developers, even
though assistant City Manager Jim Gailey’s negotiations with Vose about
a possible land swap proved successful and several city councilors
expressed support for the property’s preservation. 

     The Sawyer Marsh ordeal made clear the
difficulties of interpreting ordinance again when city attorney Mary
Kahl argued that the resident’s appeal was technically not an official
appeal because it did not meet a few vaguely worded requirements of the
ordinance–such as being filed on an official appeal form. 

     All this would be much simpler if the
ordinance itself was simpler–and if it clearly reflected a vision of
the balanced needs and desires of the current residents of South
Portland. It just so happens that there is a group of people who are
steadily working at accomplishing just that. Twice a month the
three-month-old zoning improvements committee meets to discuss how
South Portland’s land use ordinance can be improved in an effort to
eventually create a new ordinance that will be easier to read,
understand and interpret. Chapter 27 of South Portland’s code of
ordinance—the section that deals with zoning—has been described by city
officials, business owners and residents as convoluted, out of date and
ineffective. Simply fixing some of its basic flaws should solve a lot
of problems. That should help to make the jobs of city officials much
easier, and their actions less likely to provoke contention. It should
also, and more importantly, result in a document that clearly reflects
the values and vision of the city’s residents. 

    The Portland City Council has recently taken bold
steps to steer the direction of land use in that city. Chain
restaurants are now restricted downtown and developments that will
increase traffic in high-traffic neighborhoods are now barred. For
approving those two changes in ordinance the council has been
criticized and accused of being brash and reactionary. Partly, this
criticism stems from the fact that both actions were driven by
opposition to two specific potential developments, instead of as part
of a longer, more deliberative planning process. 

    South Portland is in a much better position to make
such bold changes, and to formally alter a vision of its future. South
Portland might not be interested in implementing the same types of
measures as Portland has, but if the city wants to make any major
changes to its land use ordinance, this is the time to do it.

    There is already a lengthy process put in place to
ensure that any changes the zoning improvements committee suggests are
vetted by the public, various boards, the city council and other
stakeholders before they are implemented. Whatever comes out of the
process should end up being the will of the city as a whole. The real
question then, is what is the will of the city?

    Only a handful of people showed up at a public
hearing in September to offer suggestions to the zoning improvements
committee, but at every one of their ongoing meetings there is a public
comment period. I regularly interact with residents of South Portland
who have very worthwhile ideas about how the city could improve its
land use policies. Now is the time to put those ideas forward.