After months of gathering information, members of a planning commission subcommittee reviewing proposed floodplain regulations say they're ready to start making decisions.
Despite complaints from City Commissioner David Dunfield that the review is proceeding slowly, they also indicated Thursday they don't want to rush the process.
"I feel we're getting pressured to hurry," said Planning Commissioner Jane Bateman, chairwoman of the subcommittee. "To me, that is not what we should be doing. We should be having good discussion and doing good planning."
Dunfield, who said Wednesday that he was frustrated at the pace of the review, attended the first hour of Thursday's subcommittee meeting. He left before Bateman made her comments.
The city has temporary moratoria in place on annexing new land in North Lawrence and in floodplains. The moratoria are set to expire Jan. 15. City commissioners have said they would extend the deadline until regulations were completed.
The proposed regulations, which would virtually ban new construction in the floodplain, were first unveiled in the fall. Opponents say floodplain property values will be diminished and that the community will be deprived of a potential location for affordable housing. Advocates of the regulations say the city could save millions of dollars spent on flood recovery.
Planning commissioners said Thursday they were ready to proceed.
"We need to take on the larger issue of what we want these floodplain regulations to be," Commissioner John Haase said. "And then we can talk about how to get there."
"To me, it's pretty simple," Bateman said. "We don't want people to flood."
How to get there is the tricky part, she said.
"That doesn't mean we don't build" in the floodplain, she said. "It means we create a set of standards that we live by, so that people don't flood."
Bateman noted the city already has flooding problems.
"I'm not sure how, in these regulations, we can fix all the problems that have happened in the past," she said.
Haase, however, said he favored strong regulations.
"I've not seen convincing information that we ought not to restrictively regulate the floodplain," he said.
Haase said homeowners would benefit. Federal regulations mandate that owners of mortgaged homes buy flood insurance. Those costs improve if a city has stronger floodplain regulations in place, he said.
"It does result in lower premiums for those people who need it," he said.
Commissioners will resume their discussion at 8 a.m. Wednesday.
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