[Vision2020] City Council on the Beebe Rezone tonight

[Nils Peterson]

I don't know how Omie is going to cover it, but the events reminded me of
the childhood song...
The noble Duke of York, he had 10,000 men,
he marched them up the hill,
He marched them down again.
First they voted it up, and then they voted it down,
and then they voted half-way up, which was neither up nor down.

To make matters worse, they repeated the first verse again, moving to pass
the rezone, moving to pass the rezone with 'parking mitigation' (would that
run with the land, if so how??) moving to deny the rezone, moving to table
the whole mess for 6 months. Each vote was 3-3 and Nancy sided each time
with the side that would keep any decision from getting made.

The issues seemed to be
Parking and readings of the Comp Plan vs reading of the Zoning code. The
Comp Plan says one thing about new CBD and parking, the strict
constructionists say the zone is what the zone is. So, approve the rezone
with no parking would fail because some wanted parking stipulated. Add a
mitigation plan for parking would fail with those who had problems changing
the zone with extra requirements
Denying the whole thing failed, because "My God" (quote Pall) this is
something we want. Ament wanted to put the whole project on the shelf and
couldn't get a second.

So after at least 6 votes, maybe more the decision was tabled for 2 weeks
(first Monday in October) Nobody can talk to anybody.

I can say this, there was good speaking from the audience: Bob and Betsy, a
letter from Bruce Livingston, Tom Bode, Kit Crane. They all made it a thorny
issue with multiple facets.

While it got mentioned, no one on Council really said how they think about
NSA being required to provide parking in its CUP and this rezone being (or
not) similarly required.  I think the difference is the CUP was allowing
something exceptional in a zone, this is expanding the zone.