It wasn’t hostility that filled the Council Chambers last month, when the committee on law and government held a hearing to consider a proposal to restructure the local government and create a new Department of Planning and Development.

It was more circumspect than that. A collective furrowing of the brow: Is this what we’re doing? Right now?

The proposal, from Council President Darrell Clarke, calls for an amendment to the City Charter that would place the Planning Commission, the Zoning Board of Adjustment, the Historical Commission, and various functions of the Department of Licenses and Inspections and the Office of Housing and Community Development under a single Director of Planning and Development, who would be appointed by the mayor. Like any charter amendment, it would need to be approved by a majority of voters through a ballot question.

Clarke had also announced the proposal on the same day that Mayor Michael Nutter received a report from the commission he’d appointed to recommend changes at L&I in the wake of the building collapse at 22nd and Market streets that killed six people in the summer of 2013.

The half-dozen-or-so witnesses who testified at the hearing weren’t outright opposed to a restructuring of the agencies that regulate planning, zoning, and development. But they sounded uncertain about the purpose of the bill, and about how it would change doing business with the city day to day. Most seemed like they hadn’t had time to digest the proposal.

So when the committee voted to recommend the bill after about an hour of testimony—promising amendments—many in City Hall were surprised.

“When they first briefed me on it, it was not supposed to get moved out of committee,” said Councilwoman María Quiñones-Sánchez. “So like everybody else, I was surprised that it was passed out of committee.”

Sánchez said she’d had just one meeting about the bill with Herb Wetzel, a staff member in Council President Clarke’s office and former head of the Redevelopment Authority, who did much of the research that led to the proposal. She says she’s still waiting for answers to some questions she had at the time.

Some of those questions have to do with streamlining development, which is the stated purpose of the proposal. Specifically, Sánchez said, any consolidation of development functions should include the Water Department and Streets Department and other review agencies. Some developers and development advocates testified to that effect at the hearing as well.

“If you’re going to pull a development unit together you would think that all the permitting gets in line …” Sánchez said. “The other piece that they could not answer for me … was how does this impact our legislative framework?”

If L&I were to be moved into a Department of Planning and Development, for example, what would happen to Council’s Committee on Licenses and Inspections (which Sánchez chairs)?

Clarke’s office said amendments are in the works and conversations with Council members and other interested parties are ongoing. He’s still hoping to get the charter change on the May ballot.