‘Twas a curious clash of old ways and new ideas at last night’s City Commission meeting, which may portends more awkward deliberations destined to take place over the next ten years as the Strategic Plan’s various tasks are implemented.

The meeting, which followed a “work session” where the commissioners were presented with the current draft of the Strategic Plan, included a request by a property owner looking to subdivide a large lot with an existing apartment building. Shaving off a currently undeveloped portion, the subdivision would result in at 38′ wide single family lot, which is substandard according to the R-60 zoning.

But here’s where it started to get interesting.

Even though much of Oakhurst is zoned R-60, the majority of its lots are closer to 50′ wide and some are even smaller than that. In consideration of this, Commissioner Patti Garrett noted that, though substandard by existing regulations, the request presented some interesting parallels to the Strategic Plan goals presented just minutes before. Most notably that the plan recommends adjusting the city’s zoning to allow for more types of homes in a wider variety of sizes as a tool for fostering age and income diversity.

Commissioner Baskett countered by saying that, in all the years he’d been involved with city government, they had always rejected substandard subdivision requests because allowing one would lead to a flood of others.  And later in the meeting, Mayor Floyd suggested in an aside that perhaps smaller lots in a new subdivision – like the one just approved on Lenore Street – were a better way to accommodate the Strategic Plan goal of provide a more diverse array of housing, as opposed to “cramming” them in around existing neighborhoods.

If you blinked you may have missed it, but THAT was an important, yet brief, clash of new ideas presented in the Strategic Plan vs. Decatur’s historic precedent.  Both sides make reasonable points, but this is obviously an unresolved conversation that has only just begun to rear its head.

In the end, the Commission–all voting together–rejected the request, which seems a perfectly valid call, all things considered. We don’t need to have a debate over the specifics of this one request, I just find the contrast interesting and am curious how things will play out over the next ten years as the ambitions of current residents periodically don’t jive with the way we’ve always done things.