What the hell is Bill Bell thinking?

Ray Gronberg, in yesterday's Herald-Sun, tells us:

Thanks to a push from Mayor Bill Bell, officials are considering a developer-backed procedural change that would allow them to vote on rezoning requests before hearing about a project's traffic impact from state road planners.

The idea could shave from one to six months off the time it takes the city or county government to review zoning requests, administrators say.

But it would also cost Durham leaders a chance to make sure developers, local officials and the N.C. Department of Transportation are on the same page about the road and sidewalk improvements new neighborhoods or buildings might need.

The change would result in a system for reviewing traffic impact that's "absolutely less coordinated" than the one Durham already has, Deputy City Manager Ted Voorhees told City Council members earlier this month.

So, what's the rush? Considering that Durham is pretty far behind the curve of growing American cities in planning for the transportation needs of the 21st century, how does not even waiting to look at the traffic impacts of new sprawling development benefit anyone except a small group of developers?

My gut instinct is to think there must be a very specific project out there on the books that will benefit from this change.

Here's the kicker:

Nonetheless, Bell said the group that initiates land-policy changes, the Joint City/County Planning Committee, should review the proposal and offer a recommendation.

The committee has looked at the idea before and refused to support it. But members like City Councilwoman Diane Catotti fret that it lost influence with the council and the commissioners. Bell isn't a member of the panel.

)Deputy city Manager Ted) Voorhees noted that the city could, theoretically, make the change on its own. He also noted that city officials in Raleigh don't wait on DOT to finish its work before acting on zoning requests.

Which should be the prime argument against adopting this policy in Durham.

There's also been some interesting conversation about this topic in the Inter-Neighborhood Council listserv today. I'll have more to say about that later.