Chances are, if you’ve lived in Austin for a while, you’ve at least heard of CodeNEXT. It’s the City of Austin’s initiative to rewrite our existing land development code (LDC). The current LDC was written in the ‘80s and is generally considered to be outdated, convoluted, and insufficient to handle Austin’s unprecedented growth.
But that seems to be all people can agree on when it comes to CodeNEXT. Since its inception as part of Imagine Austin—the city’s comprehensive 30-year plan to make Austin a safe, inclusive, livable, affordable, accessible, engaged, and healthy city—there has been contentious debate about the $8.5MM project. Ultimately, it will drive land use throughout the city, including what, where, and how much can be built. It will dictate how large buildings can be and the maximum amount of impervious cover allowed on a given lot; establish zoning restrictions (single-family homes, mixed-use, and commercial); provide easements for different means of transportation including roads, bike lanes, and hiking trails; and the like. It’s important.
And it’s on hold. In March of this year, a petition signed by 31,000 Austin residents demanded that Austinites should have voting power over future land development code rewrites. The Austin City Council disagreed, citing state law, which prohibits putting changes to the land use code to a public vote. However, a Travis County judge ruled in July that the question of whether residents should have this power should be placed on the November ballot. Essentially, we’ll be able to vote on whether we should have the right to vote on the code.
So what’s next? If November voters determine that residents should have voting power over code rewrites, then the code approval will likely happen in 2019, followed by the implementation of the code itself.
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