City Lawsuit – New Evidence

Previously Unpublished Transcript of Special Council Meeting

    Central Citizens have turned to the courts to require the City of Central to abide by the Density Calculator contained in Central’s Zoning Code. Citizens Dave Freneaux, Mike Mannino and Mike Stephens maintain that there is nothing in Central’s Zoning Code to justify the City Council in allowing 250 apartments to be built in the Shoe Creek Development when the Density Calculator calls for only 41.
    On October 1, 2013, the City Council held a special public meeting to discuss the ordinance to implement the Density Calculator and overhaul Central’s Zoning Code.  Much of the two-hour meeting was spent understanding the intent and effect of the new Density Calculator.
    This Council Workshop, which was also attended by three of Central’s current Council Members, provides the best evidence of the City Council’s intention when it incorporated the Density Calculator into Central’s Zoning Code. In 1986 the U.S. Supreme Court stated “We have repeatedly recognized that the authoritative source for legislative intent lies in the Committee Reports on the bill.”
    There is no discussion in the entire two-hour meeting of any City Council discretion to deviate from the number of units allowed in the Density Calculator.  In the meeting there were numerous references to the strict and limited variance that is built in to the Density Calculator.  On Nov. 12, 2013, the City Council unanimously voted to enact the Zoning Code changes, including the Density Calculator. 
    The full two-hour recording of the meeting, as well as an edited ten minute version containing only the statements below, is available at www.CentralSpeaks.com.  The times correspond to the full recording of the meeting.
    Mayor Pro-Tem Ralph Washington (01:30): “This is going to control growth. It is going to look at the safety of the city.  But most of all, I wanted something that the people were going to be happy with.”
    School Board Member Will Easley (52:00): “The biggest thing I got involved for was because of the school enrollment and I saw a big crisis happening there . . . So if the school [enrollment] is that far up, the traffic and your population is that far up. I see a big need for this.  We want it to be correct.  I’ll give it to the city, we have a mechanism in place to control our growth.  We’ve gotta use it.”
    School Board Member Easley (1:00:00): “I think it helps the City.  It reinforces what you’ve got, and I think it will help a developer because he can look, they have a calculation sheet, he can go and look and put it on there.  This is what you are going to do if you are in R1, this is what you can have, it’s no loosening up, changing this, ‘Can I put this many houses or what?’  It pretty well tells you what you can do and I think any developer would want to know if he’s buying a piece of property, ‘what can I put on it?’
    School Board Member Easley (1:46:55): “I’m saying [growth] needs to be controlled, and everybody on the same playing field.  I think when a developer goes back here and he looks at this back sheet [the density calculator] and he fills it out and he knows how many lots he can put in there, homes he can put in there, and that’s it.  That’s why I think this is so good.”
Council Member Moak: “OK”
    Planning & Zoning Director Woodrow Muhammad (1:07:50): There is a little variation in the density calculator based on amenities. You can reduce that a little bit, not a whole lot, I don’t know the percentage right off hand.  But you can go a little less than the minimum lot requirements but it’s not to the next zoning district.  
Council Member Moak: But that’s what you are giving them. You are letting them increase their density 
Muhammad: In a bonus for amenities
Moak: For a bonus for them giving you a park, green space, and all kind of other stuff.
Muhammad: It causes developers to add those extra amenities so it’s just for us to compensate that for extra density
School Board Member Easley: I know it’s going to change but you are going to start out with the basic R1, R2, and R3 and those little things give you a little extra stuff, it’s not much.
Muhammad: Right
    School Board Member Easley (1:11:30): “I think what it will let you do is it will let you go in and if you start giving some extra acres and things it might give you another lot or two”
P&Z Director Muhammad: “Correct”
Easley: “If you give so many more acres here you are going to gain maybe a house or two, they don’t gain much” 
    Citizen Dave Freneaux (1:20:30): “Can a PUD be more dense than the underlying R1 zoning?”
School Board Member Easley: “Very little.”
City of Central Chief Administrative Officer David Barrow: “Very little, that is where the Zoning Density Calculator comes in and you get to plug in some numbers and if you give more amenities than what’s required you can get a density bonus, but, it’s also in the formula that your percentage of the lot that you shrink cannot exceed a certain amount, so it is only a very small amount that you would be able to change the lot size.”
    CAO David Barrow (1:05:20): “I think that the Density Calculator, which is on the last page, that’s going to address some concerns that if you follow what this Density Calculator tells you by taking out the wetlands, the detention pond, the street right of way, all that, and giving you that net density it helps us get more quality development and you do have some rules that they can still apply and if they are meeting that then it should meet the PUD requirements and it should be approved.”
    Council Member Wayne Messina (1:12:15): “[L]et’s say that the most that a contractor or a developer could put in there, houses-wise, would be, we’ll make up a figure, 32 houses, and they go spend the $10,000 and whatever, and they go to the Planning & Zoning and they want to build a subdivision with 49 houses . . . if I am a developer and I want to take that chance and I want to spend that money then I do it, and if it’s rejected, well, then I knew going in what the regulations were.  . . . when it clearly states that the available usable land they can only develop 32 houses”
    Citizen Ted McCulley (1:23:55):– “[School Board Member] Will [Easley] has said in the past, I’ve heard him say, ‘we are one big apartment complex from busting our school system and really overcrowding it.’ And so this document is essential.”
    Mayor Pro-Tem Washington (1:25:00): “We talk about Central busting the School System open.  I’ve never heard anyone say… the Central School System goes outside Central.  I’m just asking a question.  Has anyone talked to the Council that is outside of the Central School System and what are they doing?
    Future Council Member Kim Fralick (1:27:20): “People are dying to get in Central, I mean that’s why we have overcrowding of the schools, because as many problems as we have, people still do not want to be in East Baton Rouge.”
    Future Council Member John Vance (1:28:20): “I tell my wife all the time, the biggest thing that concerns me about the City of Central is that my kids are not going to be able to go to school here by the time they get ready to graduate because the schools are going to be overrun, and overcrowded. . . . Because when we have 50 or 60 students crammed in the classrooms that we’ve got right now with 15 or 20 they’re not going to get the quality education. So, some of the ways we do it, I’m loving what I’m hearing about controlling the growth.”
    Future Council Member Vance (1:42:08): “The tract builders, you know, like we have a couple of in the city now, that’s what overran Denham Springs, there is no doubt. . . . Now they can build houses so fast, there is no way our schools can keep up with it.  If you approve a 300 unit development . . . Within a year to 18 months you are going to have all 300 of those homes occupied.”