"Citizens Against 2020 Plan" To Challenge City Council

will discuss their "plan of attack" against the City Comprehensive Plan Update during a meeting tonight at 6:30pm at the Pipac Center in Cedar Falls.

The group plans to ask Cedar Falls City Council to postpone passing the comprehensive plan until a Property Rights Council could be established, an idea they will pitch Wednesday evening at a special city council hearing.

Judd Saul, one of the group's leaders who works in finance and plans to go into full time political activism, said the purpose of the Property Rights Council would be to "oversee proposed zonings plans and ordinances and make recommendations according to property rights."

 "The (comprehensive) plan calls for equal income housing and it's failing miserably. Neighbors aren't happy, and the crime rates are up," Saul said. "The government should stay out of relocating people and putting them into neighborhoods to diversify them."

Citizens Against stated on their social media page, "the [city council's] plan calls for diverse neighborhoods, "equal income" neighborhoods. So in the next few years, we are going to see a spike in Section 8 and low-income apartment housing right next to our upper income neighborhoods."

Marty Ryan, Cedar Falls City Planner, said that mixing housing types is not a unique idea, and it's occurring right now. He gave the example of Greenhill Village where apartments, duplexes, condos and single-family homes can all be found.

"We are mixing rental people with home owners, but is that a bad thing?" Ryan wondered. "I think any community plan will look at a number of issues like fair housing for example…are we supposed to discriminate against socioeconomic sectors?"

Ryan noted that Citizens Against the 2020 Plan are also not using the correct terminology; the actual name of the plan is the City Comprehensive Plan Update that will cover a 20 to 25 year period.

"The plan is more of a guideline, it's not an ordinance, it's not a law, but the plan is used to help guide future decisions or help future ordinances. That's their [the group's] concern I think."

Ryan said the plan has three main components: natural resource conservation, transportation and land use or city development.

This is Cedar Fall's second comprehensive plan update since 2002.