FEEDBACK: Charleston City Council shouldn’t diminish power of city planning commission

To the editor:

One of the great legacies left to us by the Riley administration is a highly competent city planning commission comprised of knowledgeable appointees, each of whom brings a valuable skill set to our city’s planning process. This process ensures that any development proposal heard by the city planning commission is thoroughly vetted and that their decisions are as far removed from the political arena as possible.

Once the public has been heard and a decision has been made by the planning commission, city council then hears the case and can decide whether there are other considerations that are beyond the purview of the planning process that need to be taken into account. Should the city council decide to overrule the planning commission, it presently requires 10 out of the 13 votes on council to do so. This is a basic safeguard which ensures that the entire development process is weighted more heavily toward the planning process rather than the political process of money, power and politics, when major community issues are at stake. At least two of our city councilmen have expressed a desire recently to upset that balance and remove those safeguards that protect our community from inappropriate influence by developers.

In this day of “Citizens United,” Charleston would be foolish to allow a process that has unfailingly protected our citizens against bad development to be scuttled in an effort to give more control of the planning process to the more politically and financially motivated players in the development process. In fact the best argument in favor of leaving the system exactly as it is is the fact that planning commissioners, because of their appointed status, do not have campaign accounts which provide a sometimes irresistible avenue of influence for well-heeled developers.

Any diminishment of the power of the city planning commission diminishes the system of checks and balances that was built into our planning process and which has protected us from such things as the junkyard that was proposed two years ago next to the firefighter’s memorial on Savannah Highway and the inappropriate proposal recently made by the Beach Company for the redevelopment of the Sgt. Jasper property.

As the redevelopment of West Ashley unfolds and with the continued improvement of our entire city, it is imperative that the City of Charleston Planning Commission remain firmly in control of the planning process. If the power shifts, then out-of-balance politics will prevail and we can look forward to major campaign contributors having considerably more influence on what gets built in Charleston and what does not. What a loss that would be for all of us and at the worst possible time.

— Charles Smith, West Ashley, Charleston, S.C.

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