Planning officials are considering a new rule they say would end “piecemeal” development and help the city better decide future placement of streets, sewers and other infrastructure elements.

The rule would require developers to plat all the land they own in a parcel at once, rather than in incremental pieces as they are developed.

“The purpose  is to try to ensure that when development occurs, the city can have the knowledge it needs to do infrastructure planning,” Bryan Dyer, long-range planner for the city, told the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission last week.

But developers said there was often no way to know the future of an entire piece of ground. And they’re concerned such platting would create an unexpected tax burden for them.

“As much as we would like to master plan everything all at once, I don’t think it’s realistic,” said Marilyn Bittenbender, a real estate agent for Lawrence’s Grubb and Ellis/The Winbury Group.

Platting dictates how subdivided land will develop, with the plat addressing everything from lot sizes to the location of streets in the development.

There’s no clear requirement in the joint city-county regulations for an entire piece of ground to be platted at once, Assistant City Manager Dave Corliss said. As result, developers often break the platting process into bits and pieces as they prepare to develop specific parts of the land.

Officials said that approach has created a problem for the city on the southeast corner of Monterey Way and Peterson Road, part of the 160-acre Fall Creek Farms residential development. Planning roads and other city services there has proven troublesome to the city, Dyer said.

The problems can be passed on to the taxpayer.

“If it’s not planned appropriately,” Corliss said, “it’ll cost the public more to build it right in the future.”

But Bob Schulte, sales manager for Fall Creek Farms, said the proposed platting rule would have been the enemy of good planning at the development.

“To have platted all that land six years ago, when at this point about half the land has been developed  it would make it difficult to develop the ground in a thoughtful way,” he said.

Schulte said platting land in the city would increase its assessed value and the taxes paid on it.

“That could be a lot of money to pay for land that’s not developed,” he said.

Douglas County Appraiser Marion Johnson said mere platting shouldn’t change a property’s valuation unless the use changed. Instead of appraising the whole parcel, though, the county would determine the value of the subdivided lots.

“But the two values should add up to be pretty similar,” Johnson said.

Bittenbender said some large developments take years, not months, to be completed. The platting requirement might force developers to do multiple replats as market conditions change.

“That’s a huge cost,” she said. “And to what gain?”

The planning commission is expected to discuss the proposed rule at its next meeting, at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 23 in City Hall, Sixth and Massachusetts streets.