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Counties can and should do more to manage growth, Jeff Barton told a Central Texas gathering of elected officials and staff recently.
Barton was one of the featured speakers at the Capital Area Council of Governments seminar on how to deal with subdivision development and rapid growth. Attendees included city council members, county commissioners, staff, and candidates from a 10-county region.
Barton and the planning group he manages have helped pioneer ideas on how to use the limited, existing tools under Texas law to better plan for rapid growth in the state's "ring counties" - places like Hays that ring major urban areas.
Specifically, statues such as Senate Bill 873 give certain urban and suburban counties more authority to deal with growth problems than most county officials realize, Barton said. Only a handful of counties in the state have thus far have adopted new regulations based on Senate Bill 873 - and Barton has consulted with most of those.
Local government should not look at developers and business people as the enemy, Barton said, noting that most business leaders want to do the right thing as well as make a profit. But local government should establish regulations that set a high bar for ethical and sustainable development, and then enforce the rules so that good builders are on a level playing field with the bad.
While historically counties have had fewer tools at their disposal than cities, Barton notes that changes to state law allow for counties to be more creative - just as changing demographics mean more and more urban issues will be confronting county governments, at least in the fast-growth areas of the state.
Barton believes that innovative "ring counties" can use the new tools to preserve local character and natural resources - and to ease the burden of growth on existing taxpayers. He has put together exhibits and a slide show to illustrate how Texas law evolved and examples of how better regulations might be designed.
His ideas have attracted considerable attention around the state. Barton has been a guest lecturer on subdivision regulation, growth management, and the history behind the changing authority of county government for a wide range of groups - the Hill Country Foundation, CAPCOG, the Texas Association of Counties, the Conference of Urban Counties, the Texas Sierra Club, the Interstate 35 Growth Conference, the state land trust, the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center, engineering groups, and many individual counties, from the DFW area to the Texas Valley.
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