‘Plan to plan to plan’: Austin could spend millions on ‘Imagine Austin’ revamp

AUSTIN (KXAN) — The city of Austin could spend millions of dollars editing a comprehensive vision plan that some think has so far failed to produce results.

The Imagine Austin Comprehensive Plan, which was adopted by Austin City Council in 2012, was intended to serve as the city's guiding document, or blueprint, over a 30-year period. A little more than a decade into that 30-year plan, the city's planning department is trying to edit it.

The city set aside $3 million in previous budget processes to make those adjustments, but when KXAN asked exactly how much a amendments could cost, the city did not answer directly.

"Once we complete the outreach phase, we'll develop the scope of work to update the plan, and that will help us understand the costs," a spokesperson for the planning department said in-part.

The Imagine Austin Comprehensive Plan includes elements such as: revising Austin's development regulations and processes, making Austin a more affordable place to live and making Austin more climate friendly.

Many of the major goals within the vision plan have been looked at by city council over the past few years. For example, we've told you the city is well behind on its Strategic Housing Blueprint goals (which look at housing and affordability) and its climate goals .

When we asked why the city feels the need to update the Imagine Austin plan now, they sent us the following:

Adopted in 2012, the Imagine Austin Comprehensive Plan is more than a decade old. A lot has happened since that time. For example, we've:

It's time to check in, incorporate our accomplishments, and conduct an equity, sustainability, and resilience assessment to make sure that we are considering everyone's future. Check-ins and updates are considered best practice for long-term comprehensive plans.

Greg Anderson, who's worked on housing in Austin for 25 years and has served on the planning commission since 2017, believes the city should focus its time and money on achieving some of those goals — Anderson specifically pointed to a land development code rewrite — instead of tinkering with the plan itself.

"Right now it does feel like it's a plan to plan to plan to plan to plan and it's not looking to be actionable items that come from this," Anderson said. "Meanwhile, you have a very action-oriented council. We have problems today, we have a backlog of issues that city staff are trying to work on."

KXAN has also learned from multiple sources that the planning department is looking to shore up city council support on this in the form of a resolution that could go before the dais next month. We got mixed feedback from some council members on that, but overall, elected officials seemed unclear on why this is happening now.

"It doesn't seem like any council members are pushing for this, planning commissioners, I don't even know of any community members pushing for this," Anderson said.