The Planning Department is responsible for developing plans, policies, and programs to guide the physical design and development that aligns with the vision and goals of the Comprehensive Plan.

Over the years, the city has developed a variety of plan and policy documents, many pertaining to a specific subject matter or geographic subarea. These documents include guidelines used in the day-to-day review of development plans, policy documents used to review zoning change requests, and specialized studies or reports that were often used as the basis for updates to the city’s comprehensive plan.

Even though the documents are no longer relevant to current development goals, their status as an official city policy or regulation remains. The presence of these documents often results in confusion/uncertainty for staff as they are providing guidance to the development community and preparing recommendations.

At the April 18, 2022, meeting, the Planning & Zoning Commission (P&Z) recommended a process to review these long-standing policy documents. P&Z separated the documents into four groups based on: priority, ease of review, and potential need for document updates.

• Group 1 includes documents that are clearly outdated and/or the objectives are largely complete. These items were considered and repealed by the City Council on June 13, 2022 through Resolution No. 2022-6-1(R).

• Group 2 includes documents that are considered outdated, but may contain information relevant to future priority planning activities that meet the city’s Comprehensive Plan objectives and will be reviewed as part of those initiatives.  These will be brought forward for repeal as part of updates to other plans and studies.

• Group 3 includes documents that may still be relevant for decision-making and more direction is needed if they should be retained, retired, or incorporated into other documents. These were reviewed in detail by the P&Z (see Supporting Documents) and are recommended for repeal as part of this agenda item, with the exception of certain items retained as indicated in the footnotes below.

• Group 4 includes current policy documents, documents that are actively being updated, and those that have not been formally adopted and can be maintained as a reference document without the need for formal repeal.

Review of Group 3 Documents

The P&Z formed three subcommittees to review the Group 3 documents. Recommendations from the three subcommittees were presented to the full Commission’s review on September 6, 2022 and October 3, 2022. In accordance with the subcommittee recommendations, the P&Z recommended repeal of 10 documents that are obsolete or include topics or policy direction now covered by the Comprehensive Plan. Two other documents were moved to Group 2 for consideration at a future date.  More information about these documents is included in the attached P&Z write-ups. The purpose of this agenda item is to adopt a resolution repealing 10 documents (including 12 resolutions with associated amendments) included in Group 3.

P&Z Recommendation:

On September 6, 2022, the Planning & Zoning Commission recommended (8-0) repeal of the following documents from Group 3:

1. Multi-Family Design Guidelines      91-1-26R
2. Workforce Housing Study               2006-12-14R

On October 3, 2022, the Planning & Zoning Commission recommended (8-0) repeal of the following documents from Group 3:

1. Plano’s Land Use & Transportation Study for the DART Parker Road Station      97-12-21R
2. Plano at Maturity Report¹               2003-11-18R
3. Urban Centers Study                      2006-6-32R
4. Future Dimensions Report              2008-10-23R
5. Douglass Area Study                      89-9-16R and 92-12-13R
6. Downtown Development Plan        91-9-18R and 92-12-12R
7. Ten Big Ideas for Eastern Plano²   97-9-19R
8. City Center Plan³                           2001-8-6R

¹The P&Z moved seven actions from the Plano at Maturity report as an item on the Commission’s work plan to consider incorporating those actions in a future update to the Comprehensive Plan.

²The P&Z approved adding two remaining priorities from the 10 Big Ideas for Eastern Plano to the Commission’s work plan as long-term items.

³The P&Z approved adding an update to the City Center/Downtown Vision to their Work Plan as a long-term action.