Planning in the Fastest Growing Town in America: Lessons Learned from a year of record-breaking growth

The intended lessons for our session would be to provide the audience with key lessons produced by rapid growth in Georgetown, primarily learned during 2022 when we were designated by the Census as the fastest growing city in America and experienced continuously record-breaking app submittals.

Below is the proposed outline for our session:
Introduction: Define the Setting and Context
- Discuss our status as the fastest growing town in America for the period of 2021-2022 per the US Census.
- Discuss our application in-take data (see attached; in 2019 we received 1025 applications while in 2022 we more than doubled it at 2056 applications).
- Discuss our staff composition (August 2021 we had 15 total department staff, 7 in Current Planning that managed applications and 178 apps that month. March 2022 at our lowest we had 9 total department staff, and only three in 3 in current planning able to review applications and 175 apps that month.)
- Introduce the four primary subject areas where lessons were produced by the time frame discussed above: 1. Entitlement/zoning Improvements 2. Administrative and Process Improvements 3. Teamwork and Interpersonal Improvements 4. Growth Opportunities going for the present and future
1. Entitlement / Zoning Improvements
- Rapid demand for controversial uses such as car washes, gas stations, and self-storage undercut the approval success of needed commercial zoning to accommodate our rapidly growing population. The solution to this was a rapidly approved text amendment to our Code to require those uses to seek an SUP (Special/Specific Use Permit) , which then resulted in a high number of SUP’s for fuel sales and Self-Storage that then produced opportunities for compromise with developers so as to achieve the city’s commercial goals. See attached Conceptual Plan from an SUP for Indoor Self-Storage that was approved, staff worked with the developer to add retail spaces along the first floor facing towards the roadway to help meet the area’s need for retail space.
- Good, Bad and Ugly of Planned Unit Developments: the City processed more than 40 Planned Unit Developments in 2021 and 2022. We will cover how our experience with these produced helpful knowledge, such as things to look for in successful PUDs, dangers and risks of poor wording, deceptive imaging, etc., their use as a short term fix to issues in our code that was not written to properly address the growth and demand for Georgetown.
- Discuss how the high volume of entitlement applications exposed flaws and created improvements in our messaging for our P&Z Commission and to developers.
- Discuss how our use and understanding of our Future Land Use Map and Comprehensive Plan guidance evolved over the course of 2022
2. Administrative and Process Improvements
- Consistent Agitation with the Shot Clock bill produced improvements such as Shot Clock Waivers Shifting our In-take time to avoid cramming that was occurring on Monday Mornings
- High Demand made consistent responses and conversations with applicants difficult, one method we created to help consolidate conversations and improve efficiency was the creation of the In-App Meeting in addition to our Pre-App meeting we were already using.
- Favors and “just let us do it this one time” was made impossible in the spring and summer of 2022 at our application peaks, and so our team had to buckle down and utilize stricter but fairer review processes to ensure success. For example, prior to 2022 if someone received an approved with conditions from P&Z, we would then waive the application fee for submitting the resolution of those conditions. But this ended up getting abused and creating wasted staff time because developers would submit without actually resolving the conditions hoping that they could sneak in the resolution at the last second. To nix this, we ended that informal process and stuck to what was our written process and ended a lot of wasted submittals.
3. Teamwork and Interpersonal Lessons
- Collaborative Zoning and Entitlement Review at our "Planner Hour" to ensure multiple sets of eyes ensure consistent and complete analysis
- “Planner Lane” positioning of staff members created an informal collaborative process that naturally occurred between staff in adjacent cubicles and “open door” environment
- Management supported informal “fun” such as impromptu ping pong once agendas were posted at the end of the week, gave space for stressed out staff to take short walks to destress and clear their heads
- The high volume of applications led us to take a long hard look at meetings and cut a lot of the unnecessary and redundant meetings and only meet on an as-need basis during busiest times
- Friendly work environment – management provided trust to staff to get work down and allowed for a friendly work environment that was open to joking, comradery and friendships that helped forge a positive work environment that could cope with the high application volumes.
4.  Growth Opportunities
- Better tracking of trends in development (density levels, types of businesses through CO’s, common variances requested in PUD’s)
- Better onboarding and training (creating flow-charts and timelines for new staff to follow, “mentored” land use review between experienced staff and new)
- building a culture of enforcing standards, and recognizing where standards are hard to enforce and need to be reworked, such as Heritage Tree requirements in the ETJ being impossible to monitor, numerous PUD’s creating confusion for commercial and residential plan reviewers in permitting department, etc.
Conclusion and Questions to end session.