Lubbock committee recommends against including amortization in Unified Development Code

KCBD
By Joshua Ramirez
Published: Jan. 23, 2024 at 8:34 PM GMT-7

LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) - The Lubbock City Council is left with recommendations from a committee of citizens tasked with studying ways to deal with zoning in the Hub City.

The committee suggests the council rely on what’s in place now, rather than integrate a new tool into the Unified Development Code.

That tool is called amortization, and some residents want it utilized to keep industrial businesses away from family homes.

“Will you now impotently throw up your hands and fail to protect many thousands more people from a much greater risk to their health and safety,” one resident said during public comments. “I supposed we’re about to find out.”

Lubbock’s City Council heard from those citizens along with the recommendations of the Amortization and Strategic Down Zoning Study Committee at its latest council meeting.

Committee members voted amongst themselves 3-to-2 against integrating amortization into the UDC.

“You charged the committee with several tasks to help you make determinations about this issue,” the citizen said. “They came back with one deliverable only. Do nothing because it’s already state law, which isn’t so much a recommendation as something we already knew.”

Residents of north and east Lubbock are hoping the process of amortization would be used to keep industrial companies from affecting the quality of life for homeowners in those areas.

“Respectfully, it isn’t a slippery slope to require that your neighbors not negatively impact your property or health,” one woman told the council. “To suggest otherwise is an insult to everyone’s intelligence.”

Still, after four meetings the committee recommends against incorporating the process into the UDC.

Part of the committee’s reasoning behind that is the existence of state law that already dictates how local governments can use the tool.

“Your recommendation,” councilwoman Shelia Patterson-Harris said, “is that the city itself not take any action with regard to amortization because the state allows that action.

Committee Chairman Thomas Parker says while they voted against integrating amortization, they unanimously recommend the city conduct a zoning map analysis to fix areas across Lubbock.

“We encourage you to do the rezoning and look at it,” Parker said. “Please, it needs to be done in this city. There are eyesores, I’m gonna use a word that was said, there are things that are not right.”

According to the committee’s recommendations, if a business is rezoned to a more restrictive district, it will be allowed to continue operating in that zone in perpetuity as long as it doesn’t stop operation for more than a year.