Most residents of a given municipality probably don’t realize how much effort and deliberation goes into the process of creating the landscape of streets, buildings and other infrastructure that surround them every day. Laboring away in offices at city halls, engineering firms, and in public meeting rooms are dozens of people who put an amazing amount of consideration into decisions like where to place a curb cut on a street, how the construction of a new building will affect traffic flow or whether or not a particular development meets the requirements of local ordinance. 
     Those people must have hard jobs, especially since they don’t usually get any attention except when they make a decision that people are unhappy with. While developers and aggressively pro-business types argue that there are too many hoops to jump through and tend to claim that decision-makers are anti-growth, residents concerned with conservation and preserving the character of their neighborhoods often say that those in power are too lax with the rules and under the sway of developers. But things are rarely that simple. 
    Much of the time, decisions about what can and cannot be done are based solely on a reading of the ordinance. Ideally, that would be a fairly straightforward, simple matter. But as South Portland residents have learned lately, that’s not always the case. The code enforcement office recently found that developer Paul Vose had met all the requirements laid out by ordinance that needed to be met in order to be granted a building permit for his Sawyer Street property. But many residents apparently had a very different reading of the ordinance, and appealed the permit. Some residents I’ve talked to feel like city officials were squarely on the side of the developers, even though assistant City Manager Jim Gailey’s negotiations with Vose about a possible land swap proved successful and several city councilors expressed support for the property’s preservation. 
     The Sawyer Marsh ordeal made clear the difficulties of interpreting ordinance again when city attorney Mary Kahl argued that the resident’s appeal was technically not an official appeal because it did not meet a few vaguely worded requirements of the ordinance–such as being filed on an official appeal form. 
     All this would be much simpler if the ordinance itself was simpler–and if it clearly reflected a vision of the balanced needs and desires of the current residents of South Portland. It just so happens that there is a group of people who are steadily working at accomplishing just that. Twice a month the three-month-old zoning improvements committee meets to discuss how South Portland’s land use ordinance can be improved in an effort to eventually create a new ordinance that will be easier to read, understand and interpret. Chapter 27 of South Portland’s code of ordinance—the section that deals with zoning—has been described by city officials, business owners and residents as convoluted, out of date and ineffective. Simply fixing some of its basic flaws should solve a lot of problems. That should help to make the jobs of city officials much easier, and their actions less likely to provoke contention. It should also, and more importantly, result in a document that clearly reflects the values and vision of the city’s residents. 
    The Portland City Council has recently taken bold steps to steer the direction of land use in that city. Chain restaurants are now restricted downtown and developments that will increase traffic in high-traffic neighborhoods are now barred. For approving those two changes in ordinance the council has been criticized and accused of being brash and reactionary. Partly, this criticism stems from the fact that both actions were driven by opposition to two specific potential developments, instead of as part of a longer, more deliberative planning process. 
    South Portland is in a much better position to make such bold changes, and to formally alter a vision of its future. South Portland might not be interested in implementing the same types of measures as Portland has, but if the city wants to make any major changes to its land use ordinance, this is the time to do it.
    There is already a lengthy process put in place to ensure that any changes the zoning improvements committee suggests are vetted by the public, various boards, the city council and other stakeholders before they are implemented. Whatever comes out of the process should end up being the will of the city as a whole. The real question then, is what is the will of the city?
    Only a handful of people showed up at a public hearing in September to offer suggestions to the zoning improvements committee, but at every one of their ongoing meetings there is a public comment period. I regularly interact with residents of South Portland who have very worthwhile ideas about how the city could improve its land use policies. Now is the time to put those ideas forward.