No matter the state of the economy.
The Rhino’s John Hammer notes the recession hasn’t hit the City of Greensboro’s planning department:
There are some departments where people have to be sitting around playing computer solitaire or researching their family tree on line. The home building industry has hit hard times. Some of the long-time, local homebuilders such as Sandra Anderson Builders and Kavanaugh Homes have gone out of business, and some of the national builders have closed up shop in the area. There is simply a lot less building going on, which means far fewer rezoning requests, and far fewer inspections are required by the Engineering and Inspections Department.
Yet, the Planning Department and the Engineering and Inspections Department are operating with the same staffs they had in the heyday of construction. The total number of employees in those departments is 168.5, and four positions have been cut, or about 2 percent. Considering what is going on in the housing and development market, this tiny level of reduction is ridiculous.
With this in mind, Winston-Salem city planners worry that the supply of developable land will run short in, oh, 50 or 60 years. It’s a familiar warning to help justify their plans for higher-density development. Personally, I’m not worried. Hopefully the economy will turn around before 2012, but I ‘m skeptical, given the direction government is heading right now.
