LANGLEY — The Langley Planning Advisory Board needs to back up and try again, according to the city’s new planning chief, because its efforts to write new development regulations have resulted in rules that are “too complex for a small town such as Langley” and “legally questionable.”

The setback is sizable. The PAB has spent much time in recent years getting the rewritten regulations for new neighborhoods just right, only to have that work bounced back as inadequate.

Planning Director Larry Kwarsick told the city council at its meeting Monday that it should send the proposal back to the PAB, but also with an agreed-upon strategy for what should be done and a timeline for getting everything finished within four months.

The advice this week followed a memo sent April 13 to the council, one that included an outline of the streamlining strategy and a pointed critique of where the earlier effort to craft new development regulations had gone wrong.

In his memo, Kwarsick says city officials should keep the rules simple, offer incentives over mandates, set priorities, seek flexibility and realize that some work should fall to the hands of others.

The reasons for the do-over? Plenty.

Kwarsick said several must-do’s for developers in the PAB’s proposal “are legally questionable.” Those mandates include requirements for a fixed amount of open space to be set aside when property is developed, and requiring certain projects to have a percentage of affordable housing or mixed-density development. Kwarsick warned the council in last Wednesday’s memo that those issues had already been dictated by state and case law, and the city could face legal challenges.

Other streamlining efforts suggested by planning staff last week include a proposal to eliminate square-footage requirements and to use design guidelines to figure out a building’s bulk or scale, and reducing the number of residential zoning districts.

The memo also included the suggestion for relaxing the environmental review that’s required for short-plat subdivisions on in-city development, raising the number of lots from four to nine before builders would face higher hurdles on permit reviews. Planning staff said the idea could be used as an incentive to get more benefits from new but smaller subdivisions — such as getting more undeveloped open space — because it helps cut costs for builders.

Planning staff also set out a stair-step scenario depicting “tiers” for how urban growth should be handled, from commercial centers inside city limits that already have needed infrastructure, to fringe areas on the edge of town that don’t.

While there was general pleasure that the code work was moving forward again, some on the council worried about the focus on residential development and granting builders some leeway.

“I do feel that it’s putting incentives in the wrong place,” said Councilman Robert Gilman.

“We don’t need more subdivisions,” Gilman said, adding the city has a hundred vacant lots that are ready to be built on.

But it takes more than a grassy field to make a rabbit hungry, and Kwarsick reminded the council about carrot appeal.

“Fundamentally, there is nothing wrong to find incentives,” Kwarsick said.

Gilman, however, continued to question if the benchmark for changing the environmental reviews for small subdivisions had been set in the right place.

The suggestion for a remand of the revised code back to the PAB follows an oft-delayed rewrite process that included the longest moratorium on new subdivisions in city history, plus Gilman-championed reviews at the PAB level of complex proposals for density land-banking and subarea planning, as well as the creation of rules that covered everything from what direction the front doors on new homes would face as well as where the mailboxes would go.

Council members did not vote to remand the code back to the PAB, but there was general consensus on Kwarsick’s broad package of recommendations.