There was an interesting story last week in the Ogden Standard-Examiner newspaper, titled Ogden Valley Planning Commission comes under scrutiny as growth booms.  The story was about the makeup of the membership of the Ogden Valley Township Planning Commission, under the jurisdiction of Weber County.  The Ogden Valley, home to Pineview Reservoir, Snowbasin and Nordic Valley ski resorts, has been under substantial growth pressures.

The story piqued my interest for a couple of reasons – first, it is the body which until recently included the state legislator who in the last year or two has become the go-to guy for land use issues at the state legislature, Steve Waldrip; and second, it rang a bell about the presentations I’ve been giving at conferences for several years about how small groups, like planning commissions, make decisions and how to do it better.  I’ll explain.

The news story features a couple of letters written by an Ogden Valley resident, Kay Hoogland, to the Ogden Valley News about those who are on the planning commission:

 In her view, the planning commissioners — gauging by their professional backgrounds — are skewed too heavily to the interests of builders and developers, and therefore aren’t representative enough of the broader population.

Shanna Francis, one of the members of the OVPC who is also the operator of the Ogden Valley News (and who has an urban planning minor from the U. and worked for a short time at the Ogden City planning department), noted:

…the heavy representation from developers and the construction industry on the body. But that’s not the only thing — she also notes the lack of women and people of color.

I was able to get access to the letters Kay Hoogland wrote, and they are generally about the conflicts of interest she sees of those appointed to the OVPC, which is a debate I’m not particularly interested in getting into the middle of here, but she does emphasize in her letters that, in her opinion, a more extensive outreach to the community might have broadened the pool of potential PC members:

“It would have been easy and consistent with past practice to post the recent opening in The Ogden Valley News, but the county did not. It would have been easy to announce the opening at a Planning Commission meeting, but the county did not.

“Such outreach would have resulted in a larger pool of applicants who are longer-term Valley residents, not involved in either development or the construction industry and with greater knowledge of the Valley.

“The pool also might have brought a broader skill set to the table, instead of more building industry occupants. There might even have been a female applicant or two (currently, 6 out of 7 commissioners are male, although it has been reported that about 50% of the Valley is female).”

My interest in this debate is about the makeup of our planning commissions.  For years now, I have given a presentation on the group decision making process, such as for planning commissions, and how that process can be improved.  One of the aspects driven home from all the social science research I saw on this was that diverse groups make better decisions that uniform ones.  Get your group to have a diversity of experience and background, culture and identity.

Over the course of my career, I have often heard mayors say, “I need to appoint people to the PC who have backgrounds in land use and development.”  Actually, I say, no, that’s not the answer.  All the research says it’s better to have a PC made up of a soccer mom, a businessman, a retired school teacher, a renter(!), and one or two realtors or builders.  Group diversity is the better way to go, it gives a better representation of the views of the entire community.  This runs somewhat contrary to the statement made by one of the OVPC members, who said:

“It makes sense to have people in the industry,” he said. “It wouldn’t make sense to put a poetry major on there.”

Actually, that poet, if he/she is interested and willing to serve, is just who we should be looking for, among many other backgrounds.  In fairness to those being pummeled by these letters and the news story, the response has been,

“We’re definitely not trying to stack the development commission. We like diversity,” said Rick Grover, director of the Weber County Planning Division.

Much of the criticism against having development industry people on the PC is that they give blanket approvals to development applications.  In truth, for administrative matters (subdivisions, conditional uses, site plans, etc) it really isn’t a factor.  The Weber County staff and a couple of the OVPC members correctly noted,

…planning commissioners have limited leeway to act. Planning commission members must determine  if they agree with recommendations from the Weber County Planning Division staff and whether development proposals comply with land-use law.

It’s when the PC does its real planning-related functions, like amending the general plan or recommending on rezones, that the diversity becomes more important.  But for these kinds of actions, the ultimate decision-makers are the elected officials.  The PC members just recommend, they don’t decide.

Power to the people!