DURHAM — City Council members say they want to review and perhaps change their government’s policies and practices when it comes to extending water and sewer service to new development.
They instructed City Manager Tom Bonfield and his staff Thursday to “take a comprehensive” look at the issue, a job Bonfield said later he wants to complete in 60 days.
The move follows the N.C. General Assembly’s consideration of a bill that would have forced Durham and other cities to allow new development in their out-of-town urban growth areas to hook up to water and sewer networks on the same basis as in-town customers.
A reaction to the ongoing 751 South dispute, a bill implementing that proposal passed the N.C. House but stalled in the state Senate.
Legislators wound up re-writing to remove the urban growth area reference, but on a 19-18 vote early Tuesday the Senate wound up killing the bill.
The debate in Raleigh underscored the need to “go back and be more definitive about the city’s policies and practices” regarding the service of out-of-town development, Bonfield said after a closed-door council meeting that lasted about an hour.
Those include “everything from what relevance the urban growth boundaries do and don’t have,” how the city should deal with developers who want their project annexed and those who don’t, and the issues involved in adjusting the county’s zoning of annexed properties to the city’s standards, Bonfield said.
The manager added that he intends to bring the council “action items” for members to vote on in the late summer or early fall, not a study paper.
It’ll be up to the council to decide on a process for gathering public comment on what the staff proposes, he said.
Bonfield in talking to reporters after the meeting resisted the idea that the move is a defensive one to uphold the city’s refusal to offer services to the controversial 751 South project.
“To be defensive, you have to anticipate an offense,” he said. “This is not a matter of out-thinking the General Assembly or [a] developer’s representatives.”
The 751 project’s would-be developers, Alex Mitchell and Tyler Morris, have secured a promise of county sewer service but need city water if they’re to avoid a legal mandate to re-work their site plan to provide more open space.
The manager’s comments aside, it’s clear the council was prepared to do battle had the pro-751 bill as initially drafted cleared the Senate.
City clerks had issued notices that the council had scheduled a special meeting for July 10 to hold “a public hearing to consider modifications” to Durham’s existing urban growth boundary.
That took House Majority Leader Paul Stam, R-Wake, at his word that cities would be welcome to change their urban growth areas to avoid a legislative service mandate.
It wasn’t clear whether officials had been thinking of a change affecting just the 751 site or one affecting all the land on the city’s edges. But the Senate’s decision mooted the point for now, and council members on Thursday agreed to cancel the July 10 meeting.
By Ray Gronberg
(The Herald Sun)
July 17, 2012
