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- [00:02]
A
Do you have a local decision you're stuck on? Consider applying for the Strong Towns accelerator beginning June 1st. The accelerator is for people already moving work forward in their community, whether that's a street redesign, a needed policy change, or a project that's hit a wall. Bring your current challenge and work through it with Strongtown staff and peers who understand the constraints that come with local implementation. Applications are open now. Join us and leave with a clear next step for your community. Visit strongtowns.org accelerator to claim your spot.
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B
Tedesco is like a golf course. Yeah. Are you asking me if Tedesco is a golf course? Yeah, I'm asking you.
- [00:45]
C
Last time I drove by.
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B
Okay, you don't have to get cute. So they're not going to build any houses there because it's a golf course. You can't have houses in a golf course. And in Verde Road, they already got, like, townhouses and all that nonsense. Yeah, yeah. Yes. So, like, this is a way to comply with 3A without doing any of the 3A stuff.
- [01:09]
C
Yes, it is. We tried the other way and it was rejected.
- [01:13]
B
So. But, like, when we're preserving, like, the character of Marblehead, it's like, it's a bad. We're selfish. We're doing a bad thing. Like, we're not doing any housing. Is that a question? Yeah, kinda. Like, are we kind of being tricks? Like, not like, we voted last year.
- [01:38]
C
How many.
- [01:38]
B
How many times can we. Like, I don't. Like, are we trying to do nothing? Because it seems like we're doing nothing. So I'm not an expert on this. I didn't even know it was a golf course. I hadn't driven by. But, like, what do we. We're trying to make sure we build. No. No houses. Like, I don't. I don't get it. Like, people live in houses.
- [02:00]
C
Sir, this is the plan before us tonight. So that's what we're voting on.
- [02:04]
B
Okay. I just want to make sure we're voting on nothing substantive.
- [02:08]
C
I was afraid you're not missing anything. Thank you.
- [02:21]
D
Got my bus pass. Been arrived first class streetcar downt. The fine ladies in the peeps are og don't hurt nobody looking this damn thing. I'm a bit.
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A
Hi, this is Carly, and welcome to Upzoned, a podcast from Strong Towns, where we take a current news story about cities and use it to explore deeper concepts about how our cities work and what we can do to make them work better. With me today, I have frequent guest and Strongtown's chief technical advisor, Edward Erfert. As well as Lafayette City Councilman Thomas Hooks. Thomas is joining us today and was elected almost three years ago to represent Lafayette District 4. He is an attorney, a longtime Lafayette resident, and someone who has thought deeply about local government and the principle of subsidiarity, which we talk about a lot here, the idea that local citizens should be empowered to address local issues. Thomas, welcome. Thanks for joining us and of course, thank you. Edward. Good to have you back.
- [03:22]
D
Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.
- [03:23]
A
So we're going to get started today with an article that I expect a lot of our listeners have stumbled across. If you spend time online talking about housing or local government, you've probably seen clips from a town meeting in Marblehead, Massachusetts making the rounds over the last few weeks. Marblehead is a historic coastal town north of Boston with a strong local identity and a town meeting form of government where residents directly debate and vote on major issues. And the town recently was discussing how to comply with the state's Communities act, which requires many communities connected to the Boston area transit system to allow for multi family housing. The clip that took off and made this national news as opposed to local news featured a resident named David Modica who basically said out loud what a lot of people were already thinking. At one point he says, we are trying to make sure we build no houses. I don't get it. People live in houses. And then later he asks are we trying to do nothing? Because it seems like we're doing nothing. And what made that clip resonate with so many was not just that he was frustrated, but it was really how much he exposed the tension that underlies this whole debate around housing. While the town's trying to comply with the law and the residents are questioning whether anyone actually expected housing to be built as a result of the law, the state continues to increase pressure on towns that are not complying and communities are really struggling to respond to both comply and then have the conversations that they need to be having around housing. This this story has a lot of strong towns threads between the the issues around housing and but also the original issues around the role of public comment and really listening to our citizens. So I thought this was a great article for Upsound. We'll make sure it's linked. It's in several places, the Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, several others. We'll link those in the comments and I'm excited to talk to Thomas and Edward today about about their thoughts. So I'm going to start really basic and I'll start with Edward as our frequent contributor. Edward when you watch this clip, what did you think? What stood out to you?
- [05:41]
C
Well, my first reaction is that the YIMBY movement all of a sudden had the new person they could put a crown on. And this is what I would expect out of these pieces. David said out loud what all of us are thinking on this stuff. And so that was kind of the first, first piece I thought. And then I looked at the work that we've been doing at strong towns with the housing ready city toolkits and the countless communities I've gone to to talk to about the all of the housing traps that they are stuck in and how they're climbing out of it. And for me this just resonated that these kind of top down approaches, as well intentioned as they are, really have no traction. They are not going to achieve what we want them to achieve. If we can't do this at the most local level where we're asking folks to operate. And for me that was the thing that I think people have missed in this and where I know we at strong towns are most focused is that local level at City hall. And that's really one of the more complicated places to start. But where, where I think David pointed out that if this town is not on board for housing, if they're not comfortable with this stuff, it doesn't matter what the state legislature does, there's always going to be somebody smarter on the ground locally to figure out how not to comply.
- [07:22]
A
Well, Thomas, the reason I was so excited to talk to you about this is you're, you're in City hall at least twice a month, if not more often. What did you think when you listened to Mr. Monica?
- [07:35]
D
Yeah, definitely an interesting video. Chuckled at the end because I think it had the impact he was looking to have, not being intimately familiar with the situation. You mentioned subsidiarity in the introduction and this looks like a piece of that playing out here where the state identified a problem. A lot of folks in the local community identify the problem. They came up with a solution in a top down approach like Edward just said. And when they went to push it locally, it's not working for that community. And whether that's through it being impractical or it not being politically possible, don't know enough about the locality to say which one is which. It's like it's good that we aligned on the problem but probably got to a solution too quickly instead of figuring out what's actually going to work there. Like how do you actually deliver a solution to the problem and not Just say that you did.
- [08:36]
A
I think one of the most interesting things and you know, I'll share, I've probably shared on, on this show before. I worked in local government for a little bit of time and you know, I think the sympathy that I have when I see what, what the town was, was trying to do is, but also what the state legislators were trying to do is people often work with the tools that are in their own toolbox. Right. So the, and, and the legislators in the state of Massachusetts, I'm sure, are hearing from their constituents about the challenges around housing and having enough housing. And so they got the tools in their toolbox to address that problem. And the problem, you know, I think that what is so interesting when the rubber hits the road is that, you know, the, the communities that were going to be impacted by it weren't quite ready for those tools in that toolbox to come out. And so they're, they're adapting. Thomas, how do you experience that as a local legislator? Just maybe talk generically about like, you know, you have, I'm sure, great relationships with many of our state legislators who are in policy making seeds trying to solve problems just like you are, but their tools are different than your tools. And how do you, how do you, how should we be working with people at, with different toolboxes for, for community solutions?
- [10:11]
D
Yeah, I think I rely on sports analogies a lot. I feel like at local government it's a lot of chopping your feet because you know you're going to have to be adaptable because national wins, state level wins. They do influence a lot of what happens at the local level. Rightfully or wrongfully, a local issue that we're dealing with. Right now we're in the middle of an election and it's about the inventory tax. There's a state level push to get rid of the inventory tax in order for the state to be more business friendly. That's a tax that is imposed at the parish level that benefits parishes or for non Louisiana folks, counties, the school systems, the sheriff's office as well as the municipalities. This is going to give, if it passes those parishes, the ability to opt out of that inventory tax. And if that happens, then we have to, you know, chop our feet, be adaptable and figure out how we're going to plug that hole. So the issue is how do we become more business friendly, attract more investment. The solution might be one where we have to figure out how to fill a $2 million budget hole in the city's budget next year or over the next few years. And for me, it's knowing that's coming, other than being able to vote at the ballot box, will not vote on the parish level issue, but knowing that we've got this $2 million hole potentially coming up. And part of my job, I'm on the Finance Committee, is to figure out how we're going to fill it. So I think for kind of the local elected officials, especially really, really closely to the municipalities, a lot of it is being adaptable because some of those trends, national, state level, they will play out. You can have those good relationships with the state legislatures, but you can see some things that are coming, and you just know that trying to get ahead of it and being thoughtful about how you implement it is probably the most important thing. And seeing how things played out in that video, it seems like they were thoughtful about how to implement it, but more the form of the law, not the spirit of the law.
- [12:29]
A
I think in Louisiana, we may even call that, like, can I, you know, just a little bit, A little bit, you know, shrewd or, or mischievous in terms of implementation and compliance. Right. That was, that was my, my vibe. Edward, I'm curious. From a, from a strong town's perspective, how did, what would you say to, to the balancing act that Thomas describes of, of watching what's happening at the national and state level and, you know, thinking about the strong town's philosophy of really trying to invert and not thinking of local government as the lowest level of governance, but instead like the highest form of collaboration. What, what did, what was your reaction to Thomas?
- [13:19]
C
Yeah, I, I think when I look at this, I hear this all the time, and I, I know I talked to many of the Massachusetts legislatures as this legislation was mo. Something was invited to speak to a couple of their different groups that were working through this. And I think that these are really smart people that, that I met with that were moving through local government at that high level. Yes, they're at a state level, they're under stress to deal with housing. How do you deal with it? You deal with it at a statewide level. You come up with the best components that you can for that legislation. And I think everything in it, you know, on a high level would align with the many things that we're talking about in strong towns. What it misses is that the folks that actually have to take action, the folks that actually have to make all of this work, are at the local level, that they're at the block level. I think the legislation isn't a failure. I think the. And I don't think the city is doing anything nefarious. I think the city is playing the game. Our friend Joe Mudakozi would say, don't hate the player, hate the game. I mean, we set up a system. I was in Florida when they went and did what Thomas is talking about, where they started to cap what cities and counties could do in taxes and when they added the additional homestead exemptions and all those different things to go and give us that sense of accomplishment. What I can tell you is working within local government. When they cut revenue to our county, we suffered for the first year until we figured out how to recoup that revenue and we found somewhere else to do it. I think the planners in Marblehead, if you listen to the comments and you listen to the speaker talking to David speaking here, he's like, well, why don't we make it so we can have other different types of housing? And they said, I think this quote was, we've tried that. It didn't work. This is what is going to work. When I hear that, what that tells me is that the thing the state legislature can't do as a body, but the legislators can, the thing that we as strong citizens can do is work at that local level, at the level of the street, at the level of the block, and figure out how to address the objectives of this housing policy. So I think the flaw in this is that the state legislature has enabling actions that have led us to zoning. That zoning has restricted the type of housing that we can produce in our communities. They're now trying to go back to that legislation which is completely flawed and fraught and adding something that was once restricting housing and go and mandate that you do housing. And it is going to fall in the same pitfalls as we've seen here, where we're going to take golf courses and upzone them. We're going to take places that are already fully built out. And like in Florida, they're doing things like industrial parks. They're now allowing for high intensity residential. You know, these are places that people don't want to live. They're not overly successful, but hey, we've accomplished something.
- [16:51]
D
No, it's like that. If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. It's like, yes, we want to increase housing. When I think about it locally, you know, at the end of the day, I think what we're trying to do is have more people. Like we want more people to be able to live here, stay here, have homes and work here. And housing is a limiting factor to some extent. Price wise, I would say that's the bigger one. Because in Lafayette, you know, we've got kind of a landlocked city and then some smaller municipalities and unincorporated area outside. And if you're looking for the cheapest land on which to build a house, it's outside the city limits. And that is true. But from a density perspective, that's one of the things that drives me crazy in some of the conversations we have is that like, well, if we want more people, where are they going to build? Because we don't have huge acreages of empty land on which to build subdivisions. Looking at their solution, which was, well, we need to rezone some empty acres that could be housing one day. That was how they thought to do it. And they went with the golf course scenario. You know, we've been incrementally. Carlis played a role in this and a lot of others, chipping away at lot sizes, chipping away at density requirements, allowing the accessory dwelling units and trying to make housing more affordable and more available through not rezoning things necessarily, but just creating a little bit more freedom, a little bit more flexibility for people able to be able to build the things they want and afford what they can afford. And so that's a really interesting piece. Listening to you talk about how they were trying to solve this problem, I think maybe it's not appreciating the full kind of range of solutions that could actually achieve what they're looking to achieve.
- [18:58]
C
I just think about how I would be in the City hall where there's no but I'm just guessing, but feeling how many people are in the room and how viral this has been. There's not a single planner that wants to go out now with a proposal in that town of Marblehead to say, hey, you know what, you could put an extra floor in a building or you could go and pull out. Like, they probably have suggested that and lots of people came roaring out and told them where they could put that idea. And so now when I think about, like, I can't imagine in this place, like these planners are sitting there, they've done that plan, they got roasted, they've now gone out and they've come up with another super ingenious plan. Probably hours with the city attorney and trying to figure out how they're not going to get sued and not going to lose their state funding, if I was there, I would be pulling my hair out and I would be saying, look how much energy we are spending to solve another problem that has been mandated on us. And none of this gets us more housing. What if we just took an hour and looked at one block? I don't know. If I look at downtown Marblehead, there's lots of, in their kind of core downtown, a lot of big parking lots. There's areas that are around some schools and churches that have big open fields. There are some suburban neighborhoods that have little sheds and oversized garages. What if we were to find one block and we just started talking to residents and explored what they could do? I think the first thing you'd find is they're probably folks that have already converted that garage or rear cottage or converted the parking lot to something else without a permit, you know, or they've come in and split up a house and heaven forbid it's an Airbnb or a rental. But these are the things that they're doing kind of already under the books that may not be allowed. What if we looked at that and just made it less scary for people to know that this kind of increment, that old community like Marblehead had done for 100 years until we adopted zoning, if we yielded one additional unit, like the lowest bar, one additional unit, that's 100 times more than what we've achieved with this zoning, you know, so we can run the numbers. Maybe we could inspire a second person. And now we're at a 200%, like, increase of housing stock in our city. I think that's a viral way. That's the type of viral approach I wish all of our partners in the housing field, like, instead of battling and lawsuits and showing up at meetings and filing complaints and the energy we spent making this viral. What if we made it viral for the family that added an additional or the person that took the risk and found that they could put a duplex on a lot? What if we made them viral as, like, the not scary people that are tackling our housing problem, like the everyday folks? I mean, that's how I would be. I would be losing my mind and having to go back to basics if I'm in that. And I know, speaking to planners and elected officials and. And policymakers all across North America, we are all. Every city is having this debate and battle, and we shouldn't. We should really just be trying to figure out where can we get that extra unit, that next increment in.
- [22:48]
D
I see that playing out in a few different ways right now. Like, there are, as a local elected official, a lot of the job can feel reactive. So you've got planning cases that are coming up for appeal. You've got rezonings that are coming up. So you're spending time preparing for those and getting up to speed. And so that's very much a reactive process based on what already is happening. Some of the work's proactive, but it's more set in the right conditions. So like we just did amendments to our local development code to allow things like density. And recently we had done some things around adus. And then there are a couple of proactive things going on in partnership with local quasi government entities, nonprofits of doing sort of the overall housing analysis of like, what's our housing stock, what's the age, what do we need more of? But then some things that are, you know, hopefully soon especially focused on our downtown that are very much site specific. So looking at those particular lots where, you know, what could this be, what's the red tape, what are the barriers, is it utilities related? And you know, coming up with the plan for just getting a handful of sites developed. So not a broad sweeping change that impacts the entire parish, the entire city. But how do we get this lot into something that it could be.
- [24:16]
C
I always found it easier for me when I was doing development review to just draw what was possible than to go and do a 12 page report of why whatever they submitted wouldn't work. I was always the oddball. I got called into the principal's office all the time. I even got a nasty gram from the AIA because they thought I was practicing architecture without a license. But for me, when I had relationships with folks on the ground and started to show them what was possible, and I'm talking of boxes, where could you build and how does that fit with the code that started to change the conversation on the ground. And every place I go, you could easily lay over a piece of trace paper, that clear translucent paper that I do in my little sketches, you can draw, I would just kind of draw where the parking lots were, where the open spaces were, where the buildings were too far back from the street. And there, there was just so much extra space in all the cities I looked at that we could just fill in and that wouldn't require a new pipe, it wouldn't require a new road. It's just gradually thickening up. And I was always surprised how many of those properties were owned by somebody that just couldn't figure out what to put on it. They just, they had, you know, some people when they, when they're buying new houses on those house Hunter shows, they walk in a house, they're going, oh my gosh, the kitchen's orange. This, I can't afford this house. And it's like, well, no, like, you could repaint that. Like, you need the visualization of what is possible. And the, the easiest trick, and I've experienced it myself, but also my friend Rebecca Kick up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, her trick was just to take the houses that everybody liked in the neighborhood and they would just kind of color them a little bit differently and draw them by hand and put them in the empty slots. So it was like, everyone's like, oh, that looks so familiar. Oh, that looks just like our neighborhood. And it's like, well, let me tell you a secret. It's on Maple Street. But it helps with that kind of visualization.
- [26:36]
A
You know, I love listening to this discussion because it's really, you know, Edward, some of your comments about, like, visualizing on the ground, what can change and how that can be such a way to kind of break down barriers, make progress. I'm curious to kind of turn this in a direction of the public comment. One of the reasons I asked Thomas to join us is he's two and a half years into a term on our city council, and, you know, he used a word earlier, reactive. And how a portion of the job is reactive. And I feel like the, the feedback that we hear from residents is often that they are also reacting. And I'm curious, Thomas, how you think a couple years into the job, your thoughts about public engagement and public comment and how to make it more empowering? How do we, how do we shift it so that residents don't feel. Feel ineffective by the time that they are showing up to a council meeting? You know, I think in, in the video, it was like he, you know, Mr. Monica said, what are we really doing here? Or something like that. Right? How. How do we make public engagement, public comment empowering? And what, what's your perspective, Thomas, now that you've been serving as a. An elected official for a couple years?
- [28:13]
D
I have lots of thoughts. I don't know that any of them are coherent. And so I will give you my stream of consciousness. I mean, I think for the big issues, it's a muscle that local government needs to have to be able to go out into the community, explain what might change, gather feedback, be honest with people and say, like, I hear you, but I, we, the community thinks this is the best for the community overall. And that is a muscle that if you're not very deliberate, it atrophies. And so I think as local government, we have to be better at identifying what are those Big changes. We've had some pop up locally where we haven't done that well. We've had some pop up locally where we have done it well. And like, that's very much a muscle that needs to be exercised regularly. I think a functioning local media helps with that as well, because people feel like it's reactive when they only find out about something because there's a green sign posted on the property that says, hey, this is happening. Or their neighbor gets a letter that says, in two weeks there's going to be a hearing and this is happening. And so local media plays a big role in staying abreast of what's coming down the pipeline and letting people know about it. But there are the things that happen because they see the green or the blue sign indicating that this property is going to be rezoned, there's going to be a new development up there. And for those like, that's where, you know, it really, the rubber is hitting the road because it's impacting property near people's homes. I've lived through some of those cases that have gone well, I've lived through somewhere they haven't because, you know, it's very personal to people. Their homes are very personal to them. If there's a field that was a scenic view for many years, decades, and now somebody wants to put some sort of development, it doesn't even matter what it is, people will have a reaction and they'll scrutinize it rightfully so they want to make sure that it's proper for that location. But they may ask for things that just aren't appropriate for the developer to consider or the local government to mandate. That's tricky. My approach is always. I'm happy to take any phone call, reply to any email, take the meeting. I've tried to get better over time at giving people a quick answer on where my head is so that they're not in the dark and they can kind of reset their expectations accordingly. But another thing is, if you've been in government or planning and zoning for a while, you kind of understand the way the process works out and the way that a homeowner who's encountering it for the first time doesn't. So when we're talking about zoning and it's just about what's an appropriate use for this property, not what does the developer actually want to build. And you're saying that there's another part of the process where we're going to discuss those issues, but it's not. Now, some people don't like that answer because they're like, well, we know why they want to rezone. We know what they want to build, so let's just address it. Now you're like, yeah, but we can't or we shouldn't because it could change. So a lot of it's just engagement and trying to explain it to people and ultimately being okay with people being upset with you. I tell people all the time, if you want to go into local government, especially at the elected level, sitting on your local planning and zoning commission is a great thing because you will get a lot of experience walking into a room and having angry people yell at you. And I say it half jokingly, but like, no, it's a real thing. Like the planning and Zoning Commission. It's a good experience. It's not always pleasant, but it's a good experience to learn how these things impact people and what their concerns are. And so for me, I think it's all three. Like the big things are very much driven by that muscle to go out and engage with the public, the local media, who's engaged and informing the public about what's happening and on the reactive side being available and whether that's in the meeting or in between meetings and giving people quick answers on where your head is based on what they're telling you and how you understand the process plays out.
- [32:58]
A
Edward, I'd love your thoughts because I think one of the things that public officials have to do, and Thomas talked about this a little bit when he was talking about the Inventory Acts tax issue in Louisiana is helping. Helping community members understand the issues that are going to come down to them locally. And I think we have seen that over the last few years with housing. Housing just keeps getting elevated and keeps becoming in a. It feels like a higher and higher pressure point in communities. And how do we make it so that neither our elected officials or our residents are villains, but instead are people that are trying to respond to these pressures and incentives. I'd love, I'd love your thoughts on both how you talk to, you know, our, our local advocates when you talk to them and how you talk to policymakers and, and then how you help coach people the, you know, who are going to be interfacing with residents about this issue.
- [34:05]
C
Well, I start with telling folks that the system is completely broken when we are trying to do development. And like, the reason my personal opinion is the reason we have planning commissions is because city councils don't want to deal with the brunt force of the public. Like we asked nice volunteers to show up and do the work. But these are not generally, not technical professionals. They really want to do great things for their community. And all of a sudden now they have to equally take the abuse for the future Packaging plant coming in as the same as the rear cottage that Ms. Rosie wants in her backyard. By the time it shows up for those meetings, it's too late. There are many, many things that have been laid out, legal protections that we have on property rights, on hundreds of thousands of dollars of consultants that have gone through this process, hundreds of hours of staff time to review all these things. So there are a couple of different things. I think all of us, we've got to get engaged in our local governments more than just voting, more than showing up with a colored T shirt once a month. We've got to actually attend those meetings, watch them, and talk through what's happening in those meetings. We also need to understand the structures that are laid out for this. It's really easy to go and blame the planner, right? We can go and say, oh, well, this staff member is. You throw in whatever negative adjective to it. That is something that we train our local conversations on. That when a local conversation forms, we make them sign a don't be a jerk agreement. That's because it's really easy to go and attack an individual. And I will tell you, for elected officials, it's easier for them to fire somebody than it is to change an ordinance. That's why you see that turnover in a lot of communities because of that type of frustration. So you've got to understand where those decisions are being made and the decision about what's being put where in your community, why somebody wants to invest there. Those decisions have been made decades before. You're showing up to the meeting where they have an application.
- [36:30]
D
If.
- [36:31]
C
If I'm a citizen, the thing that I recommend all of our local conversations to do, all of our members to do, is to show up for one of those meetings. Any public meeting has public comment. And your job is to go up and take your two minutes or three minutes of public comment and talk about something you love about your community. Talk about the street you love, the park you go to, the tree that you have emotional connection to, the new aquatic center. Whatever your community has, whatever it is, talk about it in detail and about why you like it. What that does is it lays out a groundwork that nobody else is prepared to hear. Because what happens is in all those meetings, you're used to people showing up and screaming and yelling and telling all the things they don't like. When somebody says something that they like is so out of normal that you can hear a pin drop after that conversation. It allows you to build up credibility in your community. It allows you to provide a way for people positively come and talk to you afterwards. Like, oh, I love that street too. Oh, I take my kids to that park all the time. Oh, that tree. I had my first kiss under that tree. Like, all of those stories come up and you start to build a community around that. For elected officials and technical staff, when the next project comes forward and they've heard five or six things that people love about their community, they will speak to those projects in the context of, of that statement. So yes, this project is like the street that everybody likes. This project is like the neighborhood that everybody wants to live in because they can walk everywhere. Or this is completely different than where we have all of those shade trees on the street. This is really butted against a park that people like to walk to that now we're not going to be able to because all the driveways. So we're starting to empower our elected and technical professionals to insert context, not jargon. So building through those pieces. We have to start that work very, very early, even before an application is submitted and build those relationships up. That's what I share with folks when it comes to elected officials. It's helping them to navigate policy versus that implementation component. Really being hard nosed about the details. I had one of the first public sector jobs I had. The reason the position that I took as an urban designer in a county was because there was a county commissioner that was a design fanatic that had gone to all of the new communities and all the places and he said, I want my town to be built to the level of all of these other places. And how does that happen? What does it mean about design? Why is it important for parking to be behind a building? So that led to that type of work. Those were all policy directives that he demanded. Staff to create, regulations to follow that. So from, from that side, that gets us out of the weeds. It gets us out of those pieces when it's a staff piece. Draw, draw, draw and draw. I can give you all the fancy words and I can show you all the code that we've copied from Unicode from a dozen different cities. The award winning APA thing, none of that means anything. Colors on the map mean nothing until you actually draw the form and how things would be built out. Those are things that people can actually understand by drawing that stress testing your code overlapping Every aspect of your code, making sure there's no glitches in it. That's what we have to do. To help clarify, I will assert that you can do incredible urbanism and infill work with a terrible code, with innovative staff. You can have the best code. And if you have poor folks on the ground that aren't empowered to work, that don't understand the nuances of construction, that alienate themselves from the public, it doesn't matter how good of a code it is, how many millions of dollars you spent on it, how many awards you've gotten, it will be as bad as the worst code out there. It really requires working through stress testing, drawing, listening, responding that feedback loop. And we're afraid to do it in local government, but we've got to do that. That's the only way we can begin to build trust in the community. So that the. I mean I worked in places where we made sure, like we worked really diligently so there wasn't the explosive four hour meetings of public comment on projects. Well before we got to that project. Didn't mean we didn't stop all of them. But the ones that went there, I always made sure that the applicants knew that they were up against a fight for that. Like I wanted to make sure they knew it. And I gave them as much technical advice from within City hall, made sure they. I would always get the developers contact information. I would introduce them to the super citizens that always came to my office or the ringleader of a community or HOA member. I made sure they all had each other's phone numbers. So there was no. When they show up for public comment, the planning Commissioners would ask, Mr. Developer, the residents next door are concerned, have you talked to them? And they could either say yes, we called six times, we tried to schedule something, they didn't want to talk to us, or yes, we did, we walked the site. And that was a platform I could do at City hall that I didn't know people didn't do. And then I talked to folks and they were afraid to do. Made my job way easier to make those connections than it was to try to do it in a public hearing. I didn't want to be at midnight at the planning commission meeting hoping that we would like still have core.
- [43:16]
D
Right. I mean, I love that answer from a couple perspectives. One, 100% agree. Especially at the zoning commission level. If more people showed up and said, I love sidewalks, I love connectivity, I love cross access easements, I like narrower streets and slower traffic, all of that would Be great, because by the time it gets to those zoning commission meetings, and like you said, they're volunteers, they're not trained professionals. They're trying to make a decision about a sidewalk waiver without having that full context. And people who show up and say, I love sidewalks. And the staff is trying to remain somewhat neutral. So having people show up to talk about the things that they love is a great idea. The other part is when you do get to those meetings and you've got the residents on one side and the developer on the other, and those are the only two who are speaking, it's asymmetric and not really representative of who is actually a stakeholder in these conversations. Because I tell people all the time, the people who aren't here or the people who are going to eventually live on this property in this residential development or drive into or out of this commercial development are the people who will have to deal with this lack of connectivity ten years from now. And so having more people show up, even if they don't live in the area, even if they're not associated with the developer and talk about those things would be very, very helpful.
- [44:56]
A
I love that. As a, as a last note, I think if for those listening out there, the power of positive community engagement is, cannot be underestimated as far as developing, of developing your voice in a community. And, you know, I think to tie it back to marblehead, I think Mr. Monica probably has fame today that he wasn't necessarily looking for, as I've seen him comment following. But, you know, I think he, the reason his, his comments did spread the way they did is because it was so relatable to the frustrations that sometimes we experience in local government. So I think having to, you know, continually have those conversations and, and help improve our own engagement at the local level is critical. So thank you both so much. Of course. Before we go, it's time for the down zone. Edward, again, because you're our experienced guest, I'm going to ask you to go first. What's one thing you're reading or consuming right now that you want to share with our listeners?
- [46:02]
C
Well, Carly, you and I are going to be in a car on a trip out to Tulsa this week. We're on our way out to national gathering, and Carly's coordinated a little side trip for a bunch of us to meet up. I'm super excited about, and we're going to meet an author out there. His name is Carlos Moreno. And I started reading his book this week, the Victory of Greenwood, and it goes through the history of the Greenwood community, which was the black Wall street in Tulsa. What I love about these types of history books are the ones that go into the primary sources, the ones that tell me about the people of the time, and especially ones that break down all of the. The schoolyard myths that we hear in the history books that really go through it. So I'm really excited about it. But this is one of the most tragic times in our history. But I'm a history geek and to go and meet with some folks and do that, of course, the national gathering, I'm giddy already with it, but super excited to read through the Victory of Greenwood.
- [47:08]
A
Thomas, how about you? What is one thing that you are reading or consuming right now that you want to share with with folks?
- [47:16]
D
I wish I had a thoughtful answer like Edward. My guilty pleasure and real answer is the Scrubs reboot. I'm a huge Scrubs fan. I'm working my way through the first season of the reboot right now. I really encourage more people to do it so that it continues to exist because I saw it got renewed for season two, and I would really like that to continue. So the Scrubs reboot is my latest guilty pleasure and highly encourage everybody to go check it out for a dose of joy in their day.
- [47:46]
A
I feel like you just used up your platform for good right there, Thomas. Like spreading the word about, you know, something that you want to see in the world. That's wonderful. For my own purposes, Edward talked a little bit about Tulsa. I'm gonna. I often talk about something related to our work to the last couple of down zones I've done national gathering, but I'm gonna take it on a personal note now the. This locally, I'm the member, a member of a women's organization called the Junior League. And some of our listeners may. May be familiar with it. And, you know, over the last couple of years, we've had the opportunity in our community in Lafayette to start a diaper bank, which never existed before. And so. So, you know, we had kind of our annual get together this year and hearing about, you know, just seeing the power of a group of people. In this case, it's a group of women in Louisiana. But seeing what can be done when a group of people come together and decide they're going to tackle a problem. We talk about that all the times in strong towns, and we talk about it in safe streets and we talk about it in housing. And, you know, it's just I am always motivated when I see a group of people come together. And solve a problem whether it is one of our Strong Towns issues or it's something else. And so that's been inspiring me this week and want to give a shout out to all of our listeners and all the folks who, who realize a problem in their community and do what they can to solve it. So you know, that's, that's my piece for today. So I just want to close by thanking you both. This was a really enjoyable conversation and thank you for, to Mr. Monica for giving us the voice and the platform to share. To share. Thank you all for joining us and on behalf of all of us at Strong Towns, take care of yourselves and take care of your places.
- [49:53]
C
Let me show you what I'm about to do. This episode was produced by Strong Towns, a non profit movement for building financially resilient communities. If what you heard today matters to
- [50:05]
D
you, deepen your connection by becoming a strongtowns member@strongtowns.org membership.