New state law limits Austin’s Parkland Dedication Ordinance

The city’s Parks and Recreation Board on Monday learned about the impacts of Texas House Bill 1526 on Austin’s existing Parkland Dedication Ordinance and the future of Austin’s park system.

The Parkland Dedication Ordinance, first established in 1985, orders the developers of three or more residential units to provide a certain amount of public parkland in the development or pay a fee-in-lieu. Last year, City Council voted to start the process of including commercial developments within the ordinance.

HB 1526 passed the 88th Texas Legislature in May and was signed by Gov. Greg Abbott. It limits the fees cities can impose on development in order to fund parks and prohibits cities from imposing the fees on commercial development entirely.

In a presentation to the board on Sept. 25, principal planner Robynne Heymans explained the impacts of the new law on the city’s updated Parkland Dedication Ordinance and the timeline for the city coming into compliance.

“The bill requires Austin to make substantial changes to the current parkland dedication ordinance to be in compliance with state law,” Heymans said. “And there’s very little room for the city’s discretion in the new ordinance language.”

HB 1526, which goes into effect Jan. 1, 2024, applies to cities with populations of more than 800,000. That means Austin, San Antonio, Houston, Dallas and Fort Worth are impacted by the changes.

The new law impacts only multifamily and hotel-motel developments. Single-family development requirements for parkland may remain the same. Affordable units are exempt under existing code and continue to be under HB 1526.

“The bill preempts the city from requiring parkland dedication on commercial developments, reversing the recently adopted changes to the PLD ordinance that occurred last year,” Heymans said.

According to the presentation, the most significant impact of the new law is that it reduces the required acres of parkland per 1,000 residents from today’s 9.4 acres to just 3 acres or as low as 0.075 acres, depending on the location of the project within the city.

“This is because unlike with the existing ordinance, which is based on a nexus between the new development and its impacts on parkland, the state bill is written with the assumption that residents expect less acres of parkland per person as the density of their neighborhood increases,” Heymans said. “This creates an inverse relationship between the density of the city and the amount of available parkland to use.”

Additionally, the new law caps parkland dedication citywide at 10 percent. Currently, Austin’s rules cap parkland dedication at 15 percent in the urban core and do not have a cap for projects in suburban areas. Finally, instead of PLD fees being paid at the time of development permit (site plan or final plat), the new law requires fees to be paid at the time of Certificate of Occupancy. That will result in a one- to five-year delay in fee collection.

The law requires that all areas of the city be designated as either “central business district,” “urban” or “suburban.” CBD will require 0.075 acres per 1,000 residents, urban areas will require 0.75 acres of park per 1,000 residents and suburban areas should have 3 acres per 1,000 residents. The city of Austin’s goal is to provide 24 acres of parkland per 1,000 residents.

“The overall impact to Austin’s park system is that we’re going to see our park level of service decline as our population grows,” Heymans said. “We’ll have fewer parks dedicated annually, up to 75 (percent) to 97 percent less in the urban core and the CBD areas, respectively. Maintaining our park system’s level of service will rely more heavily on our existing residents through general obligation bonds, rather than the new residents impacting the level of park service. Existing residents will be subsidizing Austin’s growth or sacrificing quality of life through less parkland.”

The new PLD requirements must be adopted by Dec. 1 and go into effect for all new site plans and subdivisions with hotel-motel and multifamily uses.

Photo by Larry D. Moore, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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