With 40 people signed up to testify, the mind-boggling array of issues, interests, and politics involved should be on full display in Council chambers Wednesday morning.
Councilman Bill Green, who has placed himself at the center of the issue, said many community and neighborhood groups were just coming to grips with the meaning of the proposed changes.
"The only thing I'm hearing is a call for us to slow down," he said.
Last week, Green produced a 13-page memo outlining 10 amendments he described as the "middle ground" between the new code and its critics.
Other Council members, including Brian O'Neill, Blondell Reynolds Brown, and Marian Tasco, have raised concerns. They may offer their own amendments.
Green doubted Council would take any action Wednesday, but he said he wanted a new code passed by year's end.
"I think it's got a good shot," he said. "I'm certainly pushing to get this accomplished by December."
The Nutter administration supports the rewritten code and hopes to shoehorn the plan through the lame-duck Council rather than start over with up to seven new members taking office in 2012.
Cities began using zoning a century ago to control undesirable land uses, such as junkyards. Zoning has become a primary way that neighborhoods get defined by outlining what is permissible in which areas.
But the current, 650-page code is so outdated that 40 percent of projects in the city must receive a variance from the zoning board to be built.
"The scary number is, we have more zoning-board cases than New York City, and they're five times our size," said Alan Greenberger, deputy mayor for economic development. "The zoning board, inappropriately in our view, has become a de facto planning agency."
In 2007, voters created the Zoning Code Commission by referendum, with a 10-month window for the work. It took four years to write a slimmer, 384-page code.
