Norman — We are three members of a subcommittee of the Norman Greenbelt Commission asked by the city to draft an amended Greenbelt Ordinance. In 2004, section 4-2023 of the City of Norman code established a Greenbelt Commission to “advise the city council on policies pertaining to the promotion, acquisition, maintenance and improvement of the open spaces, greenways and trailway systems in the City of Norman.” As part of their duties, Greenbelt Commissioners were asked to establish and review Greenbelt Enhancement Statements to be submitted by developers to determine “how the goals and objectives of Norman’s Greenbelt System plan are met by the proposed development”.

During the process of creating enhancement statements that are useful as guides to implementing the city’s greenbelt goals and objectives, we as commissioners have been reviewing plans and forwarding our recommendations to the Planning Commission and City Council. However, we have done this with no written guidelines to assist us with our evaluations or the developers with formulating their plans.

The amended draft Greenbelt Ordinance, which was presented to the public by the Greenbelt Commission at their regular meeting Jan. 25, is meant to provide these guidelines. We would like to address several comments made at the Jan. 25 meeting. 

· “The ordinance gives the GBC regulatory powers”. This is simply not true. We are an advisory commission. We make recommendations to the developer, the planning commission and the city council. The amended ordinance gives the Commission no regulatory authority.

· “The ordinance adds unnecessary cost and time to a project.” Greenbelt enhancement statements are intended to be submitted by developers quite early in the development process, before plans are submitted to the planning commission and before detailed engineering is required, thus, when submitted at the proper time, they should not add significant cost or time to a project.

· “The ordinance is vague… criteria are too broad.” The ordinance lays out guidelines, not regulations, and thus they are by necessity somewhat broad in order to allow flexibility to development. Not all criteria will be applicable or even feasible for each development application, and they are not meant to be. It is not in the best interest of either the City of Norman or the development community to impose detailed, restrictive quantitative criteria to guide greenbelt development. However, guidelines are needed to enable developers to know what is helpful and to enable the Commission to evaluate Greenbelt enhancement statements and make appropriate recommendations.

· “The subcommittee has not considered input by the development community.”  This, again, is not true. Commission meetings are open to the public and members of the development and real estate community have attended and presented their concerns. In addition, we as a subcommittee met with members of the development community at their request, listened to their concerns and considered their suggestions. We incorporated their suggestions when they were consistent with the goals of the city to enhance and protect open space without blocking development, and we think the draft ordinance is stronger because of this process. However, we did not wholesale adopt all of their suggestions because it would have rendered the ordinance ineffective.

A great deal of thought has gone into the crafting of this draft ordinance. We as a subcommittee of citizen volunteers have spent many hours on it over the past year. We have received a great deal of input from the development community, but not as much as we had hoped to get from the other citizens of Norman. However, in multiple community surveys and planning exercises over the past 15 years Norman citizens have identified greenways/trails and greenbelts as a high priority for the city. A greenbelt system will not happen by itself; it will take a concerted effort on the part of Norman’s citizens. The draft ordinance is a significant step in establishing this system. We invite you to review the ordinance at: www.normanok.gov/content/greenbelt-commission and send the Greenbelt Commission your comments and suggestions through the e-mail address on the Web site above or to Greenbelt Commission, P.O. Box 370, Norman, OK 73070.