By William C. Shelton

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.)

Q:  How do 60 different people representing diverse constituencies, values, and priorities agree on a common plan of action?

A:  They listen to each other and they have help.

That pretty much sums up the process guiding development of a plan that will steer the City of Somerville’s policy-making and implementation for the next 18 years.

Few cities and towns have ever developed comprehensive plans. Those that do, most often work with consultants. But consultants rarely have the deep understanding and lived experience shared by a community’s residents.

Somerville’s approach is do-it-yourself. The city appointed a 60-person Steering Committee, with representatives drawn from neighborhoods, businesses, nonprofit organizations, and elected officials. Working with city planning staff, and with broad community participation, they have distilled an extremely complex plan into simple-to-understand goals for Somerville’s development:

• 30,000 new jobs

• 125 new acres of publicly accessible open space

• 6,000 new housing units, 1,200 of which will be permanently affordable

• 50% of new trips will be by transit, bicycle, or walking

• 85% of development will be in transformative areas

“Transformative” relates to the second elegant distillation of the plan. It segregates all of the city’s land into three types, in order to

• Conserve the character and livability of our residential neighborhoods;

• Enhance our squares and commercial corridors; and

• Transform Assembly Square and Innerbelt/Bickbottom into mixed-use neighborhoods.

These two summaries are the pinnacle of an enormous pyramid of public participation, thought, analysis, and the resulting products.

In workshops open to all residents, participants articulated their values and vision for Somerville. Planning staff synthesized the results into a set of draft goals. Residents reviewed and reacted to them at multilingual meetings and in online and printed surveys. The ongoing dialog, with intensive planning staff support, evolved into detailed objectives, policies, and actions.

Inevitably, one challenge to accomplishing this was that different participants and stakeholder groups had very different priorities for allocating finite resources. By listening to each other, and with extensive staff support, they came to realize that

• Any cherished goal is like one organism within an ecology. Changing one results in changing all. We can’t get substantial job growth, for example, without new office buildings and labs, efficient transportation to bring employees, affordable housing for some of those employees, and open space and other amenities that will attract employers and employees.

• Some goals can only be achieved after other goals have built the capacity required to do so. Assembly Square housing, jobs, and open space cannot be fully developed without an Orange Line station. Therefore,

• Different constituencies’ goals are not so much in conflict as they are interdependent.

Accordingly, the plan identifies implementation priorities. Among them are developing the area around new T stations, continuing to improve our infrastructure and, perhaps most meaningful to me, overhauling our zoning ordinance.

Planning Director George Proakis explains that it was written 20 years ago. It is 20 years out of date with regard to modern zoning technology and practice. Since it was written, amendments to it have been cobbled together, resulting in a confusing and unpredictable set of regulations.

“The existing regulatory framework doesn’t work for people who want to protect their neighborhoods,” he says, “and it doesn’t work for people who want to build new neighborhoods and invest here.”

Zoning regulations that apply to a business that wants to change its façade or expand, for example, are located in a variety of places. Add to this the other slow and meandering permitting hoops that a new business must jump through, and entrepreneurs can be discouraged from locating here.

Mr. Proakis anticipates how development project approvals would be handled in the future. “You start with looking at every project on the basis of how it fits with the comprehensive plan. Doing so raises and changes the level of debate.”

Brad Rawson, the city’s Economic Development, has led much of the comprehensive planning effort. He points out that implementation of the different priorities will require an interdisciplinary approach.  “Sustainability,” for example, is not just about the environment. It includes sustaining the local economy, infrastructure, and population diversity.

So many plans have absorbed great effort and then gathered dust. This one will only be effective if city officials rigorously advance and enforce it. Past decisions based on short-term fiscal expediency, personal relationships and favor trading have resulted in retarded job growth, displacement of life-long residents, scant open space, and a structural fiscal deficit.

Long-time smart-growth advocate Wig Zamore suggests the creation of quantitative measures to monitor each of the quantitative goals. If implementation is not on-track, then city officials must identify why, and what to do about it. They must adhere to the planned segregation of land areas instead of approving whatever development project comes through city hall’s door.

Alderman Bill White has proposed creating an ordinance requiring special permits to be issued only if projects conform to the comprehensive plan. I propose making the Board of Alderman, who are our elected representatives, the Special Permit Granting Authority, instead of the Zoning Board of Appeals, whose members are appointed for five-year terms and lack accountability.

If our city’s leaders faithfully follow the plan over the long term, then we can make Somerville a shining city on seven hills rather than merely achieving a short-term public-relations triumph.

Mr. Rawson observes that the city’s planners have conducted 50 public meetings involving hundreds of people who have given thousands of hours of time. Yet we are still at the beginning of public dialog regarding implementation.

Indeed, it is Somerville’s citizens who will ultimately determine whether the plan is faithfully implemented.