This City is experiencing and will continue to experience a period of extraordinary growth.
We saw this coming. The citizens of Denton, hundreds of us, came together in the Vision for Denton process, a process which led to the Denton Plan, an award-winning long-range plan for this City’s growth.
Goals were set during that process. Unfortunately, during the last two years, nearly all of the City staff most directly involved in writing and charged with implementing this Plan have left the City. The quality and direction of growth which were key goals of the Denton Plan have made no improvement during these years. The International Property Maintenance Code debate that began two years ago started with a general concern over the deterioration of property evident around the City.
What has been done? The property maintenance code issue and the problem which sparked it have been left unaddressed after being punted to the Chamber of Commerce for over a year by the City Council. An aborted attempt by the Mayor to create a Council committee of two (and thus not subject to public scrutiny under Open Meeting laws) to review property maintenance issues was stopped when the whole matter was made public. This is a leadership problem.
Growth was to be carefully managed to encourage positive growth while limiting development inconsistent with existing neighborhoods and growth objectives in the Denton Plan. However, when a tile plant was proposed in an area of concern to the citizens’ Airport Advisory Board due to the close proximity to a future runway expansion at the Denton Municipal Airport (a critical asset to the City’s future economic development), the Board itself was threatened with possible dissolution or reorganization by Council leadership.
The single most controversial issue considered by the City Council recently was the proposed Fry Street pharmacy drive-through. The process surrounding this decision was problematic. Hard feelings were engendered, and a lack of clarity now exists for any future developers with projects requiring Council review and approval.
The City’s development review process, the means by which significant construction and development is managed by the City, has been viewed by many as anything but user-friendly for several years now. Coupled with the wholesale loss of City planning and engineering staff (with resulting loss of institutional memory), the lack of Council-level leadership, and the confusing, mixed signals of development examples such as Fry Street, the City’s development process has lost ground over the last two years.
This City needs to regain the vision, the inspiration and the excitement we had only a few years ago when we set our community’s goals and took the first few steps to implement them. This is what the Mayor and City Council are charged to do: direct and oversee that City management pursue the goals and objectives established by and for our citizens. Unfortunately, in several critical, essential ways, there has developed a disconnect between our citizens’ long-term planning process and effective implementation of the fruits of that process.
Another serious flaw in leadership, perhaps the most glaring that only peripherally made it before the public’s eye, was the City’s Charter Amendments process initiated two years ago. The Charter is to a City what the Constitution is to our federal government. Nothing is more important or more central to the conduct of future Denton municipal government processes than our Charter.
When the Charter Amendments Committee was formed by the leaders of the City Council, it was not even designed to represent the citizens of Denton. For example, our City’s five-year CIP Bond committees have been comprised of 50 citizen appointments. This “constitutional committee” for Denton was comprised of only seven members representing each of the six council members and the Mayor. That committee was also severely limited in the time given to do their job. The result? Key proposed amendments (some of which were primary reasons to consider amending the Charter) were summarily dropped in the face of a rising storm of controversy. The remaining amendments were watered down and the whole matter left the clear impression that the Council was making a concerted effort to minimize or eliminate broad citizen input in favor of consolidating power into the Council itself. This is a leadership problem.