Planning for growth and development in Lawrence is being influenced by politics more than it has been in nearly 30 years, says Linda Finger who recently resigned as the city-county planning director.

“We are in a much more political scene than I have ever experienced here,” said Finger in her first interview since she resigned from the department she had worked in 28 years.

Finger resigned as leader of the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Department at the end of the year amid concerns that the city hadn’t planned well enough for growth in the northwest area of the community, and generally wasn’t being active enough guiding development.

Finger – who served as the director of planning since 1994 – has said she wasn’t forced to resign, but did so after being told by city administrators that her future with the city had dimmed.

Last week, Finger said planning in Lawrence and Douglas County had become very difficult because the planning process had become politicized.

“The Planning Commission, the City Commission and the County Commission all have political activists now,” Finger said. “That is not the way it always has been. It used to be that one would clearly be the most politically active and the other two would be less so. Now they all see politics as the answer.”

The result, Finger said, has been inconsistent messages on where and how growth should occur.

“There are so many moving parts,” Finger said. “It is very difficult on staff. It has to be difficult on the private sector, too.”

Search for new director

Leaders who are helping guide the search for the next planning director acknowledge the environment.

“The man or woman you are recruiting will be in a very difficult position because the two boards (city and county) have strong opinions,” County Administrator Craig Weinaug said. “Then you add the Planning Commission to the mix. You have appointed some really strong leaders who have some really strong opinions, and they aren’t always the same as the governing bodies.

“It is a partnership that can lead to some really exciting things, but it also can lead to the disintegration of the process.”

A major part of Finger’s job was to write recommendations for or against specific developments. Planning, city and county commissioners use the recommendations in deciding whether to approve projects. Finger said she never was ordered or told by a commissioner to write her recommendation in a certain way.

But Finger said there were subtle signals sent. She said she had no interest in pointing fingers at particular commissioners, but said there were many times she felt commissioners did not want her honest opinion.

“There were times that you would be in a meeting, and you could tell that they only wanted a response that bettered their argument,” Finger said. “They didn’t want the whole truth. That was frustrating.”

Some current commissioners, though, said Finger and staff members might be misinterpreting tough questions as political pressure.

“I have been in meetings where I get one set of interpretations, and you feel like you need to hear what the other set of interpretations are,” City Commissioner Sue Hack said. “You need to hear both sides. That’s the tough part about this job. There are many, many decisions that are subject to interpretation.”

Political planners

Hack said she agreed with Finger’s assessment that the planning process was much different than it was. But Hack said she thought more of the changes had come at the Planning Commission level.

Finger agreed the Planning Commission, which is appointed by city and county commissioners, had taken on a more political feel.

“You’ll have planning commissioners today who will tell you they have a constituency,” Finger said. “That was a different way of looking at a planning commissioner for me. I’m not saying it is good or bad, but it is different than how it used to be.”

What is bad, Finger said, is that several planning commissioners do seem to lack faith in the planning staff. It has become much more common for the Planning Commission to reject staff recommendations, and to scrutinize what generally have been considered technical details best left for trained planning professionals. Planning Commission meetings have frequently become marathon sessions that last more than four hours, and commissioners have had to begin meeting twice monthly.

“Everybody says they want us to plan more like Johnson County, but I can tell you that their planning commissions don’t get into that level of detail,” Finger said. “I think it comes down to how much commissioners trust and respect staff.”

But Finger said people who tried to place all the blame on the Planning Commission weren’t correct either.

“Everyone we have on the Planning Commission, while I don’t agree with each of them, I do think they are all trying to do a good job,” Finger said. “They just have different ideas about how to do it.”

And Finger said the development community had played a role in the current state of affairs. She said there were developers in the community who will submit proposals they know don’t meet regulations but still try to push through.

“Everybody has a piece in baking this pie,” Finger said.

And some commissioners would say that includes Finger. City Commissioner David Schauner said one of the more important qualities the next planning director needs is strong management skills.

“Linda tried to do so much of the day-to-day work it made her job a lot more difficult than it needed to be,” Schauner said. “The strong suit of the next person needs to be to direct, supervise and manage the activity of his or her staff.”

Community changes

Finger said she believed the community was genuinely looking at a new way to plan. She mentioned efforts to adopt a more proactive annexation policy as a positive sign. She said plans to create a “vision” for the community were good, but said current commissioners needed to realize a process needs to be in place to carry it forward.

“Elected officials are here a short period of time,” Finger said. “You have to have someone on staff to carry it forward.”

Finger also said she hoped a visioning process would cause the community as a whole to think about making some changes.

“As a community, we never let old battles die,” Finger said. “Somebody could be mad about a zoning battle from years ago or about a tree that was cut down years ago, and we hang onto that forever. We are our own worst enemy in that way.”

She said she also hoped the community had learned something from the controversy surrounding the city’s sewer system and whether it could support additional growth in the northwest part of town. She said the situation clearly showed the need for the city to have someone to ensure all the various plans created by different departments – from utilities to parks and recreation to the planning department – complemented each other. She declined to point fingers at why she thinks that hasn’t happened.

One other issue Finger declined to go into detail on was her resignation. She didn’t want to comment on whether she had been made a scapegoat for broader problems.

“If I have any regret it is that I know the turmoil that planning staff has been in from all of this,” Finger said. “I love all of them. My heart goes out to them. They are still under the stress that I got out from under.”