By Moses Leos III
A nine-month overhaul of the city’s Unified Development Code is on the horizon for Buda.
With a price tag of $150,000, the code revision should be easier for the public and city staffers to digest after the consulting firm Friese and Nichols completes the job.
“It’s planning in plain English,” Chance Sparks, director of planning for Buda, said. “[The UDC] should be easy to use. I don’t want to have a situation where our code creates a cottage industry because [business owners] can’t understand it.”
Freese and Nichols were tabbed as the consulting firm by a 7-0 Buda City Council vote on Aug. 5. The firm plans to use a three-phased approach to fix the existing UDC. The UDC is a series of codes and guidelines that assist a city with current and future land development.
One of the primary goals, according to Dan Sefko, project manager at Freise and Nichols, will be addressing the city’s “character areas” in downtown. He said it would be accomplished by reviewing the city’s 2030 Comprehensive Plan, along with understanding what the city is “trying to achieve and the type of character and development they want in those areas.”
Ensuring land use regulations within the UDC don’t infringe on property rights will be the challenge.
“We want to create the right set of development regulations without creating hardship on owners,” Sefko said. “We are trying to achieve the best possible development in Buda as we can.”
Utilization of a “hybrid” approach – combination of conventional and form-based code – is what Freese and Nichols will try to accomplish. Gaining public input on the way the codes are structured is also key for Sefko. Reaching out to developers and planners, along with holding public hearings, will accomplish that, according to the consultants.
“We’ll spend the effort in that process,” he said.
Reasons to change the UDC were many, but tantamount was replacing portions of the UDC that are obsolete. The city’s UDC was composed in 2002 when it was a general law city.
General law cities, which have a population under 5,000 residents, operate within bounds set by the state. It wasn’t until 2008 that Buda became a Home Rule city, where it created its own charter and structured its own government.
The goal, according to Sparks, is to ensure the city’s vested interests and visions are in the UDC. That includes an adherence to the 2030 Comprehensive Plan.
Cognizance to growth also played a major role. Since 2002, Buda has grown from 3,627 in 2002 to well over 10,000 in 2013.
“It’s important to revisit the (UDC) periodically. Cities go through a lot of growth,” Sparks said. “The market changes, and there has been a lot of activity since the code was done in 2002. You need to make sure the development code reflects the changes that need to take place.”
Two of the biggest issues are flexibility and ease of understanding. Sparks said many new approaches have surfaced in land development since the UDC was written. The mechanics of the UDC, which is strictly conventional, “could scare people off.”
Comprehension is also a recurring problem. The need to ensure everyone could understand it – from city staffers to developers to potential business owners – became paramount.
Sefko said the projected completion date is August 2015 – a normal timeframe for code rewrites. He said the rewrite is a “wonderful” opportunity for the city.
“Cities in general don’t get to rewrite their codes like this but every decade or so,” Sefko said. “It’s an exciting time for Buda to rewrite their code to match their vision in their comprehensive plan.”
