This is the second of four interviews with City Council District 7 candidate Leslie Pool on her candidacy and the issues identified in the AustinDistrict7.org candidate scorecard. The interviews are organized as follows:

*   Top Priorities, Experience, Community Involvement
*   Livability, Affordability and Housing
*   Transportation, Open Space and Infrastructure
*   Public Safety, Small Business, and City Budget

How do you define a neighborhood? What features make one successful?

It’s the sense of community. My neighbors – they make me feel welcome. Our neighborhood’s walkable. I actually liked as a single mom that there’s a certain amount of traffic on Shoal Creek. I knew that might build over the years, but that was ok with me, so I was clear-eyed about what the circumstances were. It was close enough to walk up to Burnet. At the time there wasn’t as much going on there. But it’s really a lovely place to go and shop. For me there’s a sense of community. Communities of interest as well. There’s a lot of diversity as far as age and viewpoints, but everybody pulls together. We’ll go across the street and help Norma [Pool’s neighbor] if she’s fallen. George at one point – I left my garage door open and he walked across the street …

So when you say communities of interest…

Communities of interest for me are people who have similar viewpoints, so that could be politically, it could be on city issues, it could just be how the neighborhood grows. Where we align in a thought process.

I know that my precinct tends to be very Democratic, but I didn’t pick my house for that reason.

And then features of a neighborhood, for me, it’s a sense of security, safety. I don’t feel like I really have to lock my doors, but I do. Will gets really concerned if I don’t. The kind of thing where if you happen to leave your keys in your car in the driveway, your car will still be there in the morning. I don’t actually test that.

There’s no vandalism. We all have eyes on the street. If a dog is loose on the listserv, you’ll know about it and people will help you find it. If you need a chiropractor, that sort of thing. We share news in our yards. Somebody’s out trimming, we’ll chat. It’s that sense of comradery that’s really for me what a neighborhood is. It’s not nosey, but you’re there to support them if they need something – a cup of sugar. Watering or feeding the cat when you’re out of town.

Is Downtown a Neighborhood?

It can be, absolutely. The kind of folks who choose to live Downtown are not necessarily who are going to live up with their families in Rosedale or Allandale. But that doesn’t mean that there’s any value judgement there. We need that activity downtown. It needs to be vibrant. We need to be vibrant. We need to have people on the streets.

I can remember when Downtown closed up at 5 PM on a Friday afternoon. Everybody just left. There wasn’t anything going on down there. I wasn’t used to that – I came from Pittsburgh and Philadelphia suburbs. There was stuff always going on in these larger cities. So I supported Kirk Watson’s vision for revitalizing downtown, which meant bringing more and different kinds of businesses to Congress Ave. It meant Great Streets, so that you felt like you were really walking on something beautiful. It meant having outdoor concerts.

It meant, and this was kind of pushing it but I think we’re getting there – the little restaurants and cafes can put their tables and chairs out on the street, so it’s like a café, kind of European that way. I like that. Royal Blue Grocery is kind of piloting. There was some controversy about the fact they were taking up parking. That’s a big issue Downtown of course. Parking. But they built a little deck. I don’t know if you’ve been down to Blue Star Grocery on Congress, about the 600 or 700 block, east side?

Is it near the convention center?

This is on Congress. I know they have one over on 4^th and maybe Colorado.   Where they built some condos and apartments. What Royal Blue does is they stock up to the ceiling – it’s a fairly small space. They have all kinds of cool stuff. They have food that they cook. They have kombucha, and wine, and beer. It’s like the little bodegas that you go into in New York City. They’re just fun. They have almost everything you need. Austin is kind of moving in that direction.

As far as neighborhoods downtown, absolutely. Part of me is like, when I retire someday, would I like to live in one of those high-rises, and not have a yard to worry about. We’re not anywhere near that – we’re probably 20-25 years out, and I don’t even know if we could afford it. But that’s something we would think about. You’re steps away from the cultural area, which is what they were trying to do with Seaholm as the anchor. Zach Scott was across the way, and there were changes going on with the Long Center. And the vision back in the 90s was to create this cultural center on both sides of the river down there around Lamar and 1^st Street.

One of the more controversial votes by the current Council involved a proposal to regulate how businesses can offer single-family homes for short-term lease – in effect micro-hotels in residential neighborhoods. Many Austin residents oppose Commercial Short-Term Rentals (CSTRs) for fear that they will undermine the strong sense of local community that helps to make Austin so livable. Tourism and real estate groups, some homeowners, and especially the Austin-based company HomeAway, countered that some regulation is better than no regulation, but that restrictions shouldn’t undermine the economy. Council approved an ordinance that defines CSTRs, regulates them, and restricts their number in a given census tract to 3% of single family residences.   Did they get it right? How would you have voted?

I haven’t asked for a review of how that’s working, but that would be the first thing I would say, is how is it working. I followed that controversy really carefully. I have friends – I have done AirBnB. In Portland we’ve stayed in a home that was definitely a short-term rental. We liked the fact that it was within walking distance of the Hawthorne District. I have a friend in Martin Hills who rents out her 2-1. I think she converted something in her backyard. So when ACL comes to town, she can make some money.

The hard fact about that is that it might be one of the few ways for some people to stay in their homes. By the same token, they can’t be unregulated. I kind of like the idea they’re limited to how many you can have in a neighborhood. I think that’s really neighborhood friendly. As long as everyone knows which house it is, it’s not a party house, it’s not a stealth dorm, and everybody has a sense of community and the eyes on the street, and the land lord owner is responsive. Even if they don’t live in town, if they have a management company that gets on it immediately, so that there isn’t a noise distraction or there’s noise on the street or there’s too many cars, or just anything that would be a problem long-term for neighbors. Everybody’s going to have a bunch of cars in front of their house at one point or another – there’s a funeral going on. So everybody’s over at that house. It’s not a party, it’s a funeral.

So as far as a lot of cars parked in a neighborhood street, that are there for a few hours on a Saturday night, that’s one thing. But if they’re there all the time, they’re parked on the lawn, which is against ordinances in Austin anyway, then that’s definitely a problem. So the City in its regulation needs to be very aware, and very immediately responsive if there are complaints that are filed. And then I would say, how has that first year gone.

Another controversial vote this last year involved approval of a local bar, Little Woodrow’s, on Burnet Rd. Rick Engel, the bar owner, said he was drawn to the changing demographics along Burnet, and that his bar would help to activate the corridor and still be family-friendly by sharing the site with a pizza restaurant.   Opponents charged that the bar’s 2 AM weekend hours of operation, lack of sufficient parking, and proximity to an existing bar, would start to shape a SoCo-style bar district with serious livability impacts for adjacent residents. Council voted 4-3 to approve a conditional use permit, with restrictions including 1 AM weekend hours, noise restrictions, and a bigger parking requirement. How would you have voted?

The neighborhoods were so adamantly opposed to it, I would have sided with the neighborhoods.

They have a compromise as far as the time – 1 AM. I think the neighborhoods wanted it at midnight or eleven.

The neighborhood position was to oppose the permit.

They just didn’t want it. That was, as I understand, very difficult and very contentious for Council. I would have been in the minority on that one. But I would have voted with the 3 on that.

One of the proposals floated for the CodeNext zoning reform involves scrapping rules like the tree ordinance that protect mature trees on properties subject to redevelopment. Developers argue that rules like this hamstring their projects, hurt the economy and affordability. They want more flexible rules, in this case the option to replant trees of equivalent value at a different location. Many residents argue that large trees are priceless, and fear replacement trees will be somewhere other than where they are needed, in dense urban areas. Would you keep the tree ordinance or revise it?

I would make it stronger. I hate the fact that if you go in in the middle of the night, which has happened more times than you can count, and just bulldoze the trees, that it’s a slap on the wrist. It doesn’t cost anything for them to have done that. And it’s right – they are absolutely priceless.

I’m really emotional about this. The canopy is priceless. And we lost it in eleven, when the drought was so bad. I called 3-1-1 to see if they would send the water trucks around downtown to see if they would water the trees that are in concrete. I don’t know if they did. But we lost a whole lot of the canopy downtown.

They didn’t water them.

No. The arborist himself said they didn’t have sufficient staffing to go out and do the inventory that they wanted to do.

And it was during the recession…

I’m sorry – they could have gotten the boy scouts to do it. There are ways to do it. You can’t go and replant a mature live oak. I lost a live oak a year ago from canker, which is the result of them putting the sidewalks on Shoal Creek. I said when they were doing it – I’ve got this tree here that is already land locked. Be careful of the roots. Within 3 years I had to have it completely taken down. It was probably a 70 year old tree.

So for me it’s personal and emotional. I worked at the National Wildlife Federation for seven years. I actually know the trees, I understand why the ones that grow here do, and which ones shouldn’t. Like we really shouldn’t have magnolias, though they’re lovely.   They’re a Houston tree – they’re not really meant for a semi-arid area.   But those live oaks are a magnificent tree. And it physically hurts me to hear the stories about when, I think they did it down in Southwest Parkway, and the Y at Oak Hill. And of course they did it Downtown. And they knew they weren’t supposed to do it. And in the middle of the night, they go in with their bulldozers, and like “Ohhh, we didn’t know we were supposed to do that.”

How would you make Austin affordable?

Currently there is a lot of interest and energy around the tax reform issue. What has happened with that issue is that the conversation is now something that happens at the dinner table. And I don’t remember that ever being the case. Nobody really wanted to talk about taxes. It was death and taxes, nothing you could do about it. I feel a lot of energy around that issue, I feel a lot of hope. I’m not sanguine about it. I have worked at the legislature, and I know how difficult it is to affect any kind of change up there.

And you’re talking about property taxes and the state rules around that.

Because that’s the one that it’s narrowed down to. I see taxes in a larger context. Most of them are regressive. Sales tax is certainly regressive. Bob Bullock took the income tax off the table for everybody. And I was there when he did that. So I know what that was about. Taxes for me is a larger issue, but specifically it is the property appraisals, and then the taxes on that, and the perceived inequities, between what we as residential homeowners pay, versus the corporations.

So with that energy there, I fully expect there to be a lot of things happening at the capitol. It will be totally engrossed and follow that. If I were on the Council I would absolutely testify in support of change.

But I also know that as of today, I think it was the Association of Business, Kramer came out and was pushing back on why it isn’t all that it seems. They did an analysis in the last four weeks, and looked at what the real values for Texas folks and for Austin were saying, and then compared it against what they said they know about business appraisals. I don’t fully buy what they’re saying, but now we know what the other side is going to say about that issue.

Is that an issue where someone on Austin City Council can have much effect?

Elected officials have a lot of effect.

Even Austin City Council members, who the Legislature traditionally…

Austin bashing? It hasn’t been as bad in the last few sessions. When I was there in 2000-2003, that was when the changeover with Bush and then all of the, and then Perry came in as Lite Gov, and a lot of things changed there. So I was there for that sea change when Pete Laney retired. Since then the opposition, and frankly the tea party, has solidified. It’s really difficult to get anything to change.

Whether or not this succeeds, it’s still a useful action. People need to be raising their voices. They need to say what they feel. It has to be an organized effort. And yes, absolutely the local officials everywhere around the state have to come in and have their say. It’s not just Austin. It’s affecting everybody state-wide.

As far as affordability, that’s an effort that’s happening right now. It’ll take a while – probably won’t pass in the 84^th session, but it might in the 85^th. So it won’t affect affordability in the short-term.

Locally, and more short-term, there are things we can do with tiering fees – making them more progressive, rather than regressive. When I was on the water-waste water commission, the water fees were – you pay one fee for under 2,000 gallons a month, and one for over 2,000 gallons a month. It didn’t matter how much you used – you could use 5,000 gallons and you still paid just a little bit more. Water I’m told used to be free. It was unmetered and it was free here in Austin.

We don’t really pay very much for our water. That helps with affordability. I live in a household where we use less than 2,000 gallons a month. We have a really low water bill. Our energy costs are low too. I think our highest this month was $160 a month. But I know that we do things to make sure that that happens. There’s ways you can work within the existing structures.

But I also think the City has to be careful with how they price things so they don’t force people out. Keeping property taxes that people are paying now as flat as they can is a difficult – that’s hard for municipalities for a lot of reasons. We’re not getting help from the feds or the state that we used to get. That’s on purpose – they’re pushing it lower and lower until in the end it’s the local governments that are bearing the entire weight. And it’s right there, right in front of you, and you know that council member because you’re at the grocery store and the dry cleaners. You don’t see your congressman. That’s been going on for the last ten years at least, since Bush went. Because under Clinton we had a great economy – we had a surplus. There had never been a surplus in the budget. The deficit had never been gone in my lifetime. Then under Clinton it was. Then after Bush came in it went down in a hole.

So there’s some short-term things we can do – it’s not easy. It’ll be some tradeoffs. There was a time when I remember when we were in a recession. The City said we’re not going to pave any roads. The inventory of unpaved roads just ballooned. What do you do when you can’t not pave the roads and the sidewalks are all broken up, and you don’t have enough of them anyway, and there’s ADA and you’re failing on that.

So they got some federal money and were able to try to get back up to speed. Of course the water/waste-water system was failing because it was over 50 years old. That was happening in Rosedale, but elsewhere too because the pipes were really old. There’s basic infrastructure stuff that you can’t ignore.

For the Council in the short-term you have to be really cognizant of the fact that the revenues come from the people who live here. We need to remember that there are a lot of people who are struggling. As long as the work force is healthy, and we have a low unemployment rate, people have jobs, there’s a sense of hopefulness, they’re not scared and backed into a corner and lashing out, they’re willing to consider $5 more this quarter that I’m willing to pay for water. Ok, yeah, I’m willing to consider that. It’s a trade-off. There’s a lot of education that has to go into that. The City has to be very transparent in how they work, and explain why they’re doing what they’re doing. Of course before that you have to be very open to hearing the input from the people who live here.

So short and long-term, I think there’s some things that can be done short-term to ease – it’s going to be an upward progression though anyway because the land appraisals went up everywhere. In the long-term – are we going to really revisit the tax structure in this state? I don’t know. It’ll be fun to watch. It’ll be really frustrating to watch. If I can help with that in any way, I’ll absolutely put my energies towards that.

A prominent affordability goal of the CodeNext zoning rewrite is to expand middle-density zoning categories, like duplexes, four-plexes, eight-plexes. It has also been proposed to simplify building accessory housing on SF properties, like granny flats. Opponents argue that such housing tends to suffer maintenance problems, brings in short-duration residents uninvested in their communities, strains infrastructure, and adds more traffic to residential streets. Do you support or oppose such housing, and why?

Well one of the issues there with code compliance is that it’s set up on a complaint system. If you file a complaint, the code compliance people will come out and have a look at what’s going on, and maybe make some changes or write someone up. That seems inefficient and pretty ineffective.

Adding different price points [for different kinds of housing] is something I would support. The question is how deep into the neighborhoods do they go. Which neighborhoods would be interested in having more of that mix. I think above 183 it would be a different result than if you were talking about Allandale. Different neighborhoods have unique concerns about what is coming with CodeNext. There are certain things that they want and don’t want. There may be some neighborhoods that would support having the densification and the additional type of living units. And then on the flip side – it helps everyone if they’re maintained properly, not just the neighborhoods but the landlords are better off, the buildings are better off, if you live there you’re better off.

One of the things I was reading, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Congress of the New Urbanism, is a concept called pedsheds, the area that’s realistically within walking distance of say a transit stop. Burnet scores very high on their pedshed scale. It’s all kind of interrelated. You were talking about the concept of village centers.   You have an assisted living center near North Loop and Burnet. It’s by the library, there’s some green space behind the library. That makes sense for transit. You place things where they’re walkable and the sidewalks are where you can use them – well paved and attractive. I just don’t have any real issue about putting various types of housing on the edges. I think that it’s up to the neighborhoods to be very clear in their preferences for how deep into the neighborhoods those go. The planning process has to be comprehensive to include the village center concept, the catchment areas, where things are, how close the transit stops are to places where people want to go. It’s an entire fabric of planning.

Austin is losing families. We have a feedback loop where childless households with more money and desire shape market demand, the market builds mostly 1-BR units that exclude families, the retail and services become less family-friendly, school quality suffers, and so fewer families try to enter that market.

Should we be zoning in a way that adds more family-friendly housing in areas that want to remain family-friendly, or should we zone for housing that best meets market demand?

I think that as a part of the planning process, the neighborhoods’ voice should be heard, and that would influence the zoning decisions.

For me it’s a bottom-up, where the neighborhoods say what they want. I know the real estate folks are giddy over the boom on Burnet, and that’s all about the money there, and bringing in more people. But we don’t want the schools to close. If you narrow down choices for living spaces to 1- or 2-BR apartments that cater to college students or young adults with no families, then when they do get a little bit over and they decide where they want to live, are there going to be homes in the interior of the neighborhoods to move just three streets in to live in Brentwood or Allandale, some of those neighborhoods, and can they afford to do that.

Those issues go to the property taxes, the affordability of services, whether we’re pricing people out of their homes, and keeping the new families from moving in. My vision is that these are helping neighborhoods, and they continue to renew. The people who live across the street from me who are elderly and original homeowners, when they eventually go to a nursing home, I hope even though it’s on Shoal Creek, which is high traffic, that the home will be priced so that a family with younger kids would be able to move in. There has to be a match up not only in the housing availability but the wages people are paid.

See also:

District 7 Candidate Page

This is the second of four interviews with City Council District 7 candidate Pete Salazar on his candidacy and the issues identified in the AustinDistrict7.org candidate scorecard. The interviews are organized as follows:

* Top Priorities, Experience, Community Involvement
* Livability, Affordability and Housing
* Transportation, Open Space and Infrastructure
* Public Safety, Small Business, and City Budget

How do you define a neighborhood? What features make one successful?

I think a neighborhood is kind of like a culture – it is a subculture of the city and a place.

For me it’s kind of where I live – I grew up in the neighborhood, I grew up off of Grover. So from my birth to 15, I lived in this neighborhood. To me that’s the aspect. I can’t really give you a Webster’s dictionary version – I just remember how I grew up. In my neighborhood where I grew up, I knew my neighbors. Our neighbors came by and had coffee with my grandfather every day. We knew everybody on the block, and if somebody needed something, regardless of whether you hung out with them a lot, the neighborhood found out about it and you assisted them. Whether it was a dead in their family, that means you cooked a little more than you normally would and brought it over.

I mean we were lucky. We had parks – parks are an important part of community. I remember going to Brentwood Park. I remember flying kites and playing frisbee, just throwing the football around. That was important, my family was very large. My dad had six brothers and sisters and they were still in the house. And we were there. It wasn’t like you had your own area – it was one big family area. Going to the park was something we could do, and it established us with our community. We couldn’t just invite five friends, there wasn’t room. This was before video games. We could give my grandmother some relief – oh, we’ll go to the park, run around for four or five hours.

And you got to meet people, talk to people, meet other families, even culturally. It didn’t matter. You’ve got to understand – Austin in the 80s – it was just a different time. But when we were in that place, all these other things that matter – we were playing a game, we were playing football, soccer. All these cultural things that were negative, didn’t infect us. We were part of the community – we could go to the pool, Bartholomew. That became us, that became our place. That’s the importance of neighborhoods, even when you move out, you remember the things you did, not only as a child, it’s funny walking around the neighborhood now, older, because when I’m walking around these houses, even though their beautiful new neighbors and beautiful new people, my mind automatically shifts to the neighbors that I knew – the neighbors who would grow things from the ground, whether it’s watermelons or whatever, and bring them to the house.

That’s one of the biggest adjustments I have to make, coming back, moving back into the neighborhood, I pass by my grandmother’s house every day. And it’s not in my mind what is now – I see – even though I know it’s 2014, I see those things, I see my childhood every day. And that makes me want to fight more, be the best I can be to represent District 7. You have to understand it’s not some political journey that I’m going on just for the sake of going on. It may sound corny, but I’m fighting for the home, I’m saving my past, my future, my present all in one. That’s why I fight, that’s what a neighborhood is. A neighborhood in general is home. As Austin grows, you kind of lost that. The more apartments, the more single dwelling homes, people nowdays, they go to work, and then they insulate themselves. When I grew up in Austin, there was no insulation, by virtue of survival. You needed one another.

Is Downtown a Neighborhood?

I think it strives to be, but it misses important cultural components. Part of that is you have to be attached to the area in which you’re from. You can build buildings, you can add parks, you can build all these things. But what attaches you traditionally, what attaches people or schools, churches, and other areas in the community. It’s funny – I laugh, because my friend the other day gave me a Wooten Warriors shirt, cause he works for the school system. “That was us.” I remember the first day I went to Wooten, they gave us some little button with an Indian on it, said, “Here – you’re a Wooten warrior.” I’ve known my friend since I was two. And we still talk about that.

Do you see Downtown becoming a neighborhood in time, as you start to have more people who live there as longer term residents?

It depends. Is it just going to be a place for people to dwell, or people to live? That’s a big distinction. If people are living there, then you need schools. If people are going to raise families there, then you need to establish schools, parks, cultural concepts that are going to bring people to that community. If it’s just supposed to be this young, urban professional that’s just going to be able to have access to downtown, and just live and whatever, then I don’t think it will be. Ultimately, having that community’s a part of every person’s soul. They can live in Austin for a little bit, but if they still want that, and we don’t give them that as a Council, then they’re going to go somewhere else where they can establish that.

Should neighborhoods specialize, or should any neighborhood appeal to anybody?

I think it’s a personal conversation. I have a bias towards this neighborhood because it’s a part of my background, not only as an Austinite, but as a Texan. There are fundamental things that we consider as quality of life issues that other people may not, given where they come from, be it the East coast or West coast. Austin’s this big international hub, and people come here for different things, but they’re things that you and I define here for quality of life.

Being from Texas, green space is important to me. Having some place to show my little cousins and nieces trails, track little animals, that’s a cultural importance to me because that was a skillset in the tradition that I was raised on. Having places to BBQ and recreate in greenery is important to me, it was a value we were taught as Austinites and Texans. If you grew up in Las Vegas, or some other capacity, that may not be important to you.

One of the more controversial votes by the current Council involved a proposal to regulate how businesses can offer single-family homes for short-term lease – in effect micro-hotels in residential neighborhoods. Many Austin residents oppose Commercial Short-Term Rentals (CSTRs) for fear that they will undermine the strong sense of local community that helps to make Austin so livable. Tourism and real estate groups, some homeowners, and especially the Austin-based company HomeAway, countered that some regulation is better than no regulation, but that restrictions shouldn’t undermine the economy. Council approved an ordinance that defines CSTRs, regulates them, and restricts their number in a given census tract to 3% of single family residences. Did they get it right? How would you have voted?

I think first off, if you’re going to use a home in a commercial capacity, for whatever time, if that’s your intent, then it does need to be regulated. You’re not speaking to your right as an individual how you want to express your home, you’re bringing it in for a commercial purpose. For that commercial purpose, there needs to be a structure that – whoever’s coming in to stay in your house, there needs to be oversight of that.

In that regard they got it right. But also we need to be respectful to one’s right to privacy and home ownership as well. I think there’s a distinction between STR’s and commercial things of that nature. If you’re going to use it for profit, by taking that money, by that process, you’re kind of going to this other realm. You do need regulations.

But also, that’s why it’s important to have neighborhood groups’ input in this. Those are the people that you’re directly affecting. People in one neighborhood might not have the same zeal for SXSW as somebody else does. You need to understand what the concerns and needs of that neighborhood association are. That’s also why it’s important to have people from every neighborhood on the commission, and a commission to address this issue as well. It’s not just a representation of a City Council person, but who we’re going to put on commissions to oversee all the aspects of these. They need to come from every part of these 10 districts, so they can appropriately verbalize the needs of their communities.

Another controversial vote this last year involved approval of a local bar, Little Woodrow’s, on Burnet Rd. Rick Engel, the bar owner, said he was drawn to the changing demographics along Burnet, and that his bar would help to activate the corridor and still be family-friendly by sharing the site with a pizza restaurant. Opponents charged that the bar’s 2 AM weekend hours of operation, lack of sufficient parking, and proximity to an existing bar, would start to shape a SoCo-style bar district with serious livability impacts for adjacent residents. Council voted 4-3 to approve a conditional use permit, with restrictions including 1 AM weekend hours, noise restrictions, and a bigger parking requirement. How would you have voted?

It goes back to your question about what is a neighborhood. In the neighborhood, we’re trying to bring things away from the Downtown areas. So part of that is recreation. So yes, I think people want to be able to recreate within their own neighborhood, whether that’s going to the movies, having a good time at a bar with friends. And do that within a reasonable area of where they live.

But in doing that, it doesn’t mean that a Little Woodrow’s gets to operate like they do on 6^th Street. When you come into a neighborhood area, if you want to service this community, then you need to change your structure to meet the needs of that community.

Obviously the City Council passed it. I think I would have passed a different version of that, – limited more the hours – 1 o’clock was ok – but given that it was a neighborhood bar, we could bring it down a little bit, 12:30. And that’s why the neighborhood associations are so vital. You can have neighborhood bars, but you have to understand that it’s not this big 6^th Street – it’s I’m here to service this community, these peoples’ happiness with me is what’s going to make me successful. So their input is important.

So yes, I would have voted for it, but with more restrictions. And as a District 7 representative, I’ll look to kind of limit that. If you come into District 7, whatever area it is, then you need to go talk to that neighborhood association. The needs at the Domain, what they’re able to move to, what they will allow, will be a little different than what you do in Brentwood or Allandale.

The neighborhood associations opposed the bar completely.

Obviously if the neighborhood association opposed it directly, I would have to vote against it. Regardless of my personal desires to want to have a beer or something with my friends, our first duty is to be representative of our people who put us into office. And that’s the thing, that’s the hard decision, some people in that district, who say “Yeah, that’s great, I would love to go to Little Woodrow’s and have a drink over there.” But faced with tough decisions like that, I would let which neighborhood it directly affects the most, and make sure that neighborhood association did its due diligence to get the feeling of the neighborhoods. It’s not going to be just because some president of the neighborhood didn’t happen to like it, but I would go and get a sense of the community. Our first duty is to protect our constituents.

One of the proposals floated for the CodeNext zoning reform involves scrapping rules like the tree ordinance that protect mature trees on properties subject to redevelopment. Developers argue that rules like this hamstring their projects, hurt the economy and affordability. They want more flexible rules, in this case the option to replant trees of equivalent value at a different location. Many residents argue that large trees are priceless, and fear replacement trees will be somewhere other than where they are needed, in dense urban areas. Would you keep the tree ordinance or revise it?

That is a difficult question, because when you say trees, I think developers for the most part don’t understand the connection to the neighborhoods that we have. And part of that is just the natural landscape. When you talk about trees, the first thing that came to my mind was Treaty Oaks. That was the premier thing that showed not only Austin about its care for itself, but to the world, of how important our natural aspects are to us. I think we set a precedence just on the handling of that case.

So bringing that back to here – there does need to be a new evaluation, but we can’t just give them a carte blanche thing, that you can just take away trees however you want. What people don’t realize, and I have a history degree and so I study some of this stuff, is that there’s certain trees in Austin in certain areas throughout Texas that have cultural significance beyond it just being a beautiful tree. For instance, that Treaty Oak, that was a meeting place for Commanches, and their ceremonies. That oak tree that’s been around for 300-400 years, that has more significance to a person who lived in this community because he established connection – maybe his father planted that tree. It can’t be – “oh, you can’t cut this tree just because whatever – this ordinance.” There has to be some accommodation, but we can’t just have people cut everything down and replant it. It has to be a case-by-case basis. We already have a procedure.

How would you make Austin affordable?

In the short-term, Austin needs to redefine what it says about affordability. One of the catchewords that we have right now is “affordable housing”. Oh we just need more affordable housing, but that’s a misnomer. Because that goes to the median cost of what it costs to live in Austin. We have new developments, the houses are literally selling for $600,000. So what was affordable two years ago, based on this calculation, is not going to be affordable now.

First off, we need low-income housing. But just because we say low-income housing…

Are you saying that because a lot of the new housing is drawing people with more spending power, the bar keeps…

Yes. I have some experience because I was a placement specialist with Caritas, and I worked with people who were receiving a spending voucher or public utility voucher, because there was some incident that happened in their household that put them into homelessness, or a potential for homelessness, because a car broke down or there was a death in the family. So we had these vouchers to help them with the rent and utility payments. When that started your average rent was $550 to $750, depending upon your capacity. So now days, that went from $750 to $950, to over $1000, because they use this calculation of the median range. What was once affordable – $550, $600, the same property, shot up to $950. There was very little change – the only change during this process, is the amount of people who are moving into Austin. That goes into the question of resources. We have more people migrating in, with more resources, so then that comes onto the market.

We can’t stop people from migrating to Austin. What we can do is say, as a Council, it’s not just a District 7 thing, we have to look at where we can best make investments, to low-income housing, and also have a community. It’s not going to be the same for every neighborhood. I don’t think low income housing works in District 7. Let’s say the Triangle, for whatever reason, the developers have a change of heart, “I’m going to take 200 units, because I’m just such a good guy, and we’re going to keep that rent at $400.” But can that family shop, can they enjoy themselves? Have we set those renters up to be functional in the economy in which they live? I don’t think they’re set up for that.

There’s other ways to do it. There’s other communities where we can do it, and make sure that both coincide, and work and be prosperous.

You would target affordable housing in areas that also have affordable services?

Yes.

Will that mean that you draw more of those housing opportunities, say to East Austin?

We can establish new ones, but it needs to be within a structured community that already has those parameters in place to assist. Technically we can go to west Austin, if we had magical powers. But are those people going to be able to fully enjoy that community?

You’ve got to understand that there’s not just a financial, but a cultural element in which people can feel successful and develop themselves.

What do you do to keep Austin affordable long-term?

Long-term is basically investing in Austin. It’s not just investing in housing, it’s investing in industries, and people. It’s investing in small businesses. I think for the most part, our issue is that everybody wants to come to Austin, we want to be welcoming. We can still do that, but instead of importing people, we need to export the culture of Austin. And the best way we can do that is investing in small businesses. The way you do that is, you talked about tax incentives. We need to redirect tax incentives. Instead of giving [breaks to] some major corporation to come to Austin, we invest in independent businesses, and put them in areas that they can be seen more. That could be a great Little Deli over here in Crestview. You may have some issues, coming and being on 6^th and Congress or whatever. As a City Council, we kind of facilitate that – give them a tax credit to subsidize their rent. Things that are truly Austin, for instance the airport, the airport is a perfect example. When they built the airport, everything was local – you had Salt Lick. People’s first arrival in Austin, they got an immediate sense of the local flavor. We take that same business model, and we put it down on S Congress, 6^th and Congress. And that way, they don’t only get to experience Austin, but people that want to do these things, we bring it out.

That approach gives us a chance to stabilize our housing market. Because right now we just have flood after flood of people that have excess money. You see it in new housing over on Airport, across from where my grandparents live. Those new houses are going to go for $600,000. That’s a price that was unheard of. But when you look where these people are coming from, in California, your average house is a million dollars. So they’re thinking, “Great – we got this great deal.” We got a house for $600,000, have money to put $200,000 into renovations or whatever we want to do, and still pocket $200,000.” If it keeps on coming, there’s no way we can establish an affordable capacity.

But how do you stop that? You do have those huge income disparities

You invest in small businesses and our cultures. When doing that, it kind of pushes Austin into other areas, hopefully whereever someone is in Barstow, Barstow becomes a better place. We kind of permeate ourselves out. We grow little Austin areas in other areas, so you don’t have the need for migration here. Or, they become acculturated to the point where they don’t need a $600,000 house. Maybe my mind said that where I was coming from, wasn’t the correct way, if I want to live in this community, participate in this community, be a part of this community, I need to restructure of what I define as valuable.

A prominent affordability goal of the CodeNext zoning rewrite is to expand middle-density zoning categories, like duplexes, four-plexes, eight-plexes. It has also been proposed to simplify building accessory housing on SF properties, like granny flats. Opponents argue that such housing tends to suffer maintenance problems, brings in short-duration residents uninvested in their communities, strains infrastructure, and adds more traffic to residential streets. Do you support or oppose such housing, and why?

I think these things have to be really looked at, because we are burning up – we need more housing. Right now the trend and the cool thing to do is build these condos at an expensive rate, that traditionally have one person. We need to recreate housing to have multiple families, but how do we make sure it’s not these people who just want to live in Austin for six months and get to know what it is, and then leave, versus a person who’s looking for an affordable option, that we can also build neighborhoods and communities. We support it, but we establish programs where you become more beneficial if you stay longer. There’s a way to identify the single mother with three kids, versus the musician guy who’s just coming for a year just to see if he can make a record during SXSW. We can still invest in these multi-family homes, but offer structures and incentives for people to stay longer, and people to be more invested in the community.

So incentives…

Let’s say for rent, if you stay for more than 3 years, then your rental will stay level for the next two years.

That would be a city subsidy?

No, we talk to the people who develop it, not the city. If you’re a developer, wanting to bring investment, this is like when you get tax incentives as a developer, and you can establish, ok, we want to put more families in there. Now if we get more families, if we give you certain kinds of subsidies to build these, then if families stay for 3 years or 5 years, plus you agree as a developer, because we’re giving you incentives, then you say OK.

So it’s a different kind of affordable tool?

It gives you a chance to build affordable housing, but you’re also building neighborhoods.

You’re tying your affordable housing policy to duration of residence.

For this example, you could.

Austin is losing families. We have a feedback loop where childless households with more money and desire shape market demand, the market builds mostly 1-BR units that exclude families, the retail and services become less family-friendly, school quality suffers, and so fewer families try to enter that market.

Should we be zoning in a way that adds more family-friendly housing in areas that want to remain family-friendly, or should we zone for housing that best meets market demand?

I think that becomes a slippery slope. Right now you’re looking at how you support schools systems. But if we take a blanket kind of direction to that, then there’s other areas that we can fall into. Because then you’re kind of limiting the diversity, and the cultural aspects that the neighborhood can evolve into. So I’m kind of wary, if we use zoning as a tool, it can have unintended effects.

It becomes an issue of development – how do we control development with other aspects of zoning?

So for instance, if the market is pushing for mainly 4-story apartment blocks, and that’s where the demand is, we should continue to zone to allow for more of those apartment blocks

I understand the market would ask for that, but I’ve seen it – I lived in Las Vegas for a time and caught the tail-end of a development boom. Everybody was into condos. And eventually the demand stopped. And then you had areas with nothing, it just became ghost towns. And the city lost out.

As a Council member for District 7, I’d be cautious about that – I saw it with my own eyes. We can’t just let people build without any kind of structure. Eventually, the desire’s going to stop. You don’t want to be holding the bag for these condos.

So you’re saying a mix of different kinds…

I think you do. We shouldn’t flat out prevent stuff, but we should establish – ok, you have an X amount of condos. Now for this area because we’ve established a need, we know there’s going to be a need, now we need to focus on these other areas. I think we can have that conversation with the developers.

See also:
Salazar Interview:  Top Priorities, Experience, Community Involvement

This is the second of four interviews with City Council District 7 candidate Melissa Zone on her candidacy and the issues identified in the AustinDistrict7.org candidate scorecard. The interviews are organized as follows:

*     Top Priorities, Experience, Community Involvement
*     Livability, Affordability and Housing
*     Transportation, Open Space and Infrastructure
*     Public Safety, Small Business, and City Budget

How do you define a neighborhood? What features make one successful?

A neighborhood is walking out your door, you see your neighbor, you wave, maybe one neighbor’s working in their yard, you can walk to your Walgreens, get a shake at Sonic. You’re able to walk, or if you’re leaving to go to work, you’ve got a bus stop right near the corner. Maybe you have to drive that day, but you forgot to get gas – you’re close by.   We hardly ever have to leave this area, unless we choose to. That’s a neighborhood.

You know the residents. My garage door’s open at a certain time of day, and there’s no cars. You know one of my neighbors is going to mention it, or somehow get a hold of us.

Little Deli’s – that’s a neighborhood – people come there, they hang out, everyone’s friendly. It seems kind of 50’s utopia, but it works, and it works without forcing it. That’s what we like here. We like that the homes have unique characters, even though at one time they might have looked the same. We love that character.

Is Downtown a Neighborhood?

Sure. You could have a high-rise that could become a neighborhood. In Cleveland there’s an area called Reserve Square –they have a grocery store, dry cleaners, a little police unit with an officer who knows the community. So there’s services – a work out room, a pool, and bus stops conveniently located.

You see down by Luke’s Locker at Lamar – there’s a couple of new high-rises there. They provide those amenities. Those young people – they can go jogging on the trail, walk over to Whole Foods, go shopping for their clothes. It’s all right in there. Defining a neighborhood should be what someone wants personally, but you need to have your needs provided.

Should neighborhoods specialize, or should any neighborhood be a place that works for anybody?

When you say specialize, what do you mean by that?

CodeNext talks about neighborhood character, neighborhoods have different character. But Imagine Austin expresses goals in a way that apply universally – all development should appeal to all ages, all incomes.

There’s sense of place. I was talking about that at my kick-off – Burnet Rd is a sense of place. You drive down there, and you feel when this area was developed. Even though there’s some new development, you still feel like this was developed in the 50s. There’s a charm to that.   Savannah Georgia. You see the plantation homes. You go into New Orleans and you see these homes, and even though there might be some density intermingled in there, but you still have that feeling and that charm. I think Austinites particularly like that. And I think that people who are coming here like that uniqueness about Austin.

And we’re losing it. South Austin’s a great example – Phil [Zone’s husband] has some cousins who live down there. You have those cute 900 sq ft cottages. The lots got assembled, and they’re demolished and replaced by condos. You lose that funky hippiness.

One of the more controversial votes by the current Council involved a proposal to regulate how businesses can offer single-family homes for short-term lease – in effect micro-hotels in residential neighborhoods. Many Austin residents oppose Commercial Short-Term Rentals (CSTRs) for fear that they will undermine the strong sense of local community that helps to make Austin so livable. Tourism and real estate groups, some homeowners, and especially the Austin-based company HomeAway, countered that some regulation is better than no regulation, but that restrictions shouldn’t undermine the economy. Council approved an ordinance that defines CSTRs, regulates them, and restricts their number in a given census tract to 3% of single family residences.   Did they get it right? How would you have voted?

Yeah, it’s funny, because the original resolution draft allowed CSTRs in 3% of a zip code. And then Riley changed it from zip code to census tract. That didn’t change much. The census tracts in the south are much smaller than in the north of our district. 3% CSTRs up in the area of the northwest area of our district doesn’t impact us as much as it would if you were in Crestview, Brentwood, Allandale, Rosedale.

Why is that?

Because the homes are farther apart. In the northwest there’s a section by Howard Ln, they’re on an acre tract.

So you’re saying there’s more space around the house, so it insulates you from your neighbor?

Whereas here, I’ll know if there’s cars coming in and out so often.

What I found interesting about that, is that we’re giving short term rentals, and it serves a purpose – I understand that, because it was inherently here, people have always used it for ACL and SXSW. So in a way we’d be taking away this right that people have had. But at a time when we have shortage of housing availability, we’re now giving, we’re turning certain structures into short-term rentals, when they could have been a rental for that PhD student who doesn’t want to live on campus because it’s not their lifestyle. Somebody who’s just entering the work force and can use an accessory dwelling unit. Or the family who moves here because they got a job at one of the tech companies and they don’t want to buy immediately. So they lose out that opportunity. So, we create a shortage of housing opportunities for renters. And that part troubled me.

The other thing was they estimated this influx of short term rentals, and we didn’t get it. People aren’t registering. That’s another concern. Are we still having it but they’re not using it? The ones who are using it, there’s a lot of them who are investors and real estate companies who can charge more, so now they’re getting around the hotel taxes. And that’s money that should be cutting taxes for the rest of us.

Isn’t that part of what the ordinance was supposed to address?

It was supposed to address, but they’re still not registering.

So you’re saying enforcement is the question.

Yes, enforcement’s important. The short-term rentals, they did it too quick. In that, they put it out there without looking at everything. And I understand why HomeAway wanted it, that’s what their business was founded on. But if you’re having too many of them in a neighborhood, you’re now losing [revenue to fund] services because if you study this budget, single family homes pay the biggest property tax bill. So now it becomes rental property, or used in a different way, are they still paying their fair share? Yes, some argue that people using the STRs are going to be out spending more sales tax. There might be a trade. But I didn’t think the way they went about it was the most appropriate.

And the sides were too angry. What’s a shame is that at one time, both sides had come to a consensus. And I think we could have come to a consenus again, had they not rushed it. And that’s one of the big problems with the City is they rush through a lot of major issues. And they rush through it because they don’t want to have to deal with the public. And that’s a shame. HomeAway would have still been fine, and you know, how do we enforce that anyway. They’re not registering.

Another controversial vote this last year involved approval of a local bar, Little Woodrow’s, on Burnet Rd. Rick Engel, the bar owner, said he was drawn to the changing demographics along Burnet, and that his bar would help to activate the corridor and still be family-friendly by sharing the site with a pizza restaurant.   Opponents charged that the bar’s 2 AM weekend hours of operation, lack of sufficient parking, and proximity to an existing bar, would start to shape a SoCo-style bar district with serious livability impacts for adjacent residents. Council voted 4-3 to approve a conditional use permit, with restrictions including 1 AM weekend hours, noise restrictions, and a bigger parking requirement. How would you have voted?

The parcel could easily have brought traffic onto those residential streets right there. That’ve been a really big concern of mine.

I would have made Rick Engel work with them more. His representative said, “Oh we did,” but then you heard the residents who said he really wasn’t. Maybe where my mediation background comes into play, is you bring opposing sides together and reach a consensus. You know, Burnet Rd’s changing, and it is a desirable place. It makes sense because it’s on a major arterial. I would have definitely limited the hours, no outside amplified sounds. In terms of the parking requirement, that’s an issue where we’re trying to make it a walkable city. But you can sometimes limit a use by limiting the hours and as well as the parking requirements.

You would limit the parking?

No, I’m saying that’s the intent of Imagine Austin. But you could use parking in this manner to increase or have them make sure they have parking. They have those businesses back there. What is the intent of those businesses going to be – that pizza place back there, are they going to provide parking back there? There was just a lot of stuff that wasn’t discussed when I watched the Council session.

I don’t want it to sound like a cliché, but I really think the property owners who were adjacent should have been there at the beginning, talking with him. What about vegetative buffers? Create the setbacks and create vegetative buffers, some trees and bushes that help absorb the sound. Limit the access just onto Burnet.

I probably would have went with the residents just watching it, because they were just so passionately angry and upset, which said that they were not given the proper due process. Or at least postponed it and gone to the arbitration meeting.

One of the proposals floated for the CodeNext zoning reform involves scrapping rules like the tree ordinance that protect mature trees on properties subject to redevelopment. Developers argue that rules like this hamstring their projects, hurt the economy and affordability. They want more flexible rules, in this case the option to replant trees of equivalent value at a different location. Many residents argue that large trees are priceless, and fear replacement trees will be somewhere other than where they are needed, in dense urban areas. Would you keep the tree ordinance or revise it?

I like the tree ordinance. I don’t even like that they waiver more than they do already. I think it’s a shame. And if they were going to replant trees, they should replant them on site. They should not move them somewhere else. There are some trees that do well, even large mature trees, pick them up and plant them somewhere else. But look at the water you’re wasting, the run-off, those deep roots. If I was going to revisit the tree ordinance, I would make it harder to remove them.

How would you make Austin affordable?

We need to extend our incentives for affordable housing to the work force development housing, and not waiver. We have affordable housing density bonuses, but it’s downtown, and it’s in TOD [transit-oriented development] zoning. I think we could extend it along major corridors, and they [developers] don’t waiver and do payment-in-lieu. A lot of developers downtown have been using that payment-in-lieu option. Well it’s cheaper for them, and they don’t have to put it on site. For affordability, fine downtown, but in the neighborhoods, that’s a good one. And the reason why too, is because in the houses that sell, sell at a smaller rate which then helps offset someone else’s coming in.

I really want to explore full disclosure of commercial properties – that’s another excellent option that we could probably adopt as a home rule city.

Transportation impact fees – that gives us less dependency on bonds, which means less money we’re paying in our property taxes.

There’s another option, I don’t know how people feel about it – maybe a 10-year tax abatement for qualifying home buyers. If they move during that time and they took the abatement, you pay back those 10 years in taxes. You could put a tax lien on their house to make sure they pay it back – can’t sell your home without it.

Reform of corporate incentives. Programs that will help low-income people in low-income housing and seniors. So the incentives could then go to helping them. Tax breaks to corporations hurt us. That makes housing more expensive.

Because we’re not getting as much revenue and so …higher taxes?

So tell me more about transportation impact fees. What scale are you talking about?

New development. When a developer comes in and buys land… it might not work for us in the southern part of the district, but all that land in the northwest and northeast of the district, they’re going to need infrastructure up there. Well what ends up happening is they buy that land and we’re going to build right here, and the city has to go in and build the roads to provide the services. Well you require them to build it.

And that’s how it works in Florida?

That is how it works in Florida. Now there are council people or commissioners who will waive these fees, but the ordinance says it’s required. And it works in Ft Worth, Texas, and they’re successful at it.

It doesn’t pay for a deficit that’s already there. If it’s on a failing road, you can’t charge them money to fix the failing road. You could only charge for new impacts on the neighborhood that they’re adding. That might be, like putting a stacking lane, or fixing the intersection improvements.

So you have to be careful how you use it, but Ft Worth has a great program. It’s not as extensive as Florida’s, but they’re doing it here, and they’re doing a great job.

So how do you achieve affordability over the long term?

Now we’re providing this density bonus [some zoning categories allow developers more building height in return for providing affordable units]. So what you do is put restrictions on that housing, like a zero lien. Say you buy a home, when you turn around to sell it, you can’t sell it – the lien triggers.

So you get density bonuses. You cap your density for say a 4-story project, and they want to go higher. Or maybe they’re wanting to do a development up in the northeast or northwest. The code says 8-units per acre. The developer wants 16 units an acre to make the project work. Well 20% of the additional units need to be affordable. But we would make that in perpetuity, by putting a lien on those affordable housing units so that when they get resold, we know they will still stay affordable.

So you’re talking about a mechanism to make sure affordable units don’t get flipped at market rates.

And that’s the long term. It helps to keep taxes low as well, because it continues to stay in that inclusionary housing. You know it’s risky here in Texas, and some will say no, but inclusionary housing is a density bonus program that we can do. You’ve got to put your affordable housing on site. That keeps taxes lower too.

We’ve had a lot of examples of variance requests for higher density up until now. But if you’re going to form-based code where everything, the height, is already defined in respect to what’s next to it, are you still going to have these types of requests?

Sure, they’re going to be even worse, because you’re going to have to do density on a floor-area ratio (FAR). If you do form-based code, they’re going to come in and go, in order for this project to work, I’m going to have to go up 60 ft. Even though we’re capped at say 45 ft. Well, right there that extra feet is going to increase density.

But if you’ve already defined the transition zones around that site and the relative heights…

You don’t think they aren’t going to come in and ask for more?

You’re thinking the City’s going to allow them to do it?

No, I don’t know if they’ll be allowed to do it. But I’m saying that with these form-based codes, there’s still a mechanism to allow them to go in and ask for more. And the misconception about form-based code – they can still come in and ask for more. And you do density by floor-area ratio, so you’ll be able to determine the size. And you can kind of determine the size, unless they want to do all efficiencies.

Do you support adding more housing?

We do need more housing, absolutely. Do we need to demolish the interior of our single-family neighborhoods to provide it? Absolutely not. No. And you can’t convince me, because there’s been studies at the Brookings Institute, Urban Land Institute, there’s studies done by the London School Economics, that say, you have a greater return on sustainability and you do more for the environment and sustainability when you go from low density to mid density, than if you went from low density to high density, or if you went from mid density to high density. So your greatest impact is just from low to mid. Everything else, not that it doesn’t work, because you’ve got Manhattan and all of that. But the point is, our greatest impact is because we’re doing this to be sustainable. If you use the sustainable argument, then all these studies – I’m very impressed with the Brookings Institute and the Urban Land Institute – they’ll tell you that low to mid is where you get the greatest achievement.

The other thing, in the London School of Economics there was a study maybe a year and a half ago where they talked about in economics there’s a human factor. Once you reach a certain height, you start to lose the human factor, because it becomes just these tunnels. Yeah you can put wind turbines to help circulate the air, but you get that dark – in New York people are angry. You need that light factor.

When you say low density to medium density, what’s your definition of low?

Going from 1 dwelling unit an acre to sixteen units an acre isn’t as sustainable for a city as going from 1 dwelling unit to say, eight or ten per acre.

I think Crestview in some parts is five to six. We’re in a five. We’re about 1/5^th acre [per lot]. That is mid-range. And it depends. In New York, density’s double digits. You can’t compare us to that. But you can typically in the plan we think of eight dwelling units…

Let me take you to the next question since you’re verging into it anyway… middle density housing.

A prominent affordability goal of the CodeNext zoning rewrite is to expand middle-density zoning categories, like duplexes, four-plexes, eight-plexes. It has also been proposed to simplify building accessory housing on SF properties, like granny flats. Opponents argue that such housing tends to suffer maintenance problems, brings in short-duration residents uninvested in their communities, strains infrastructure, and adds more traffic to residential streets. Do you support or oppose such housing, and why?

An owner occupied, meaning like the owner has to be on the premises, those Accessory Dwelling Units work, because there’s more accountability. Because the owners have that person to go to. So I think having an ADU is great because if we wanted to have someone, we would be great landlords, because we’re here. Maybe Phil’s son wants to live with us for a summer or a year. That’d be a great starting point. But if we have a house and then we have an accessory dwelling unit, and then we’ve converted our garage, now all of a sudden it’s almost like a mini-hotel, isn’t it? Because we’ve got three…

We went looking for housing when we were going to buy. There were several times when there would be five guys in a three bedroom house. Some are using the living room. And it’s because it wasn’t owner-occupied. So that part I’m not comfortable with at all. I understand them restricting the parking. They said, oh, now it’s more impervious area. Correct, and there’s no way to know if that tenant who says “no I don’t have a car” if they do have a car or not.

When you say restricting the parking…

Part of the ADU requirement was to get away from the parking code.

They’re saying you don’t have to provide extra parking or a driveway…

Right. Right. And so I think you have to have 25 ft for the car. So striking that out means that now the cars are on the street. We have cars on our street all the time because of the church. Some homeowners park on the street because they use their garage as storage, and there might be four people living there. So how do you account for more parking on the street. So that part I’m more cautious about. What they do down south is the residential parking permit.   So if you’re renting to someone and they say they don’t have a car, maybe they don’t get a parking permit. That’s not a full answer, but these are things I would explore. The main thing, I think, is to have the owner on site.

Did you want to say anything about duplexes, fourplexes?

Fourplexes if designed properly, they don’t detract from a single family neighborhood. But if you’re allowing fourplexes where they choose, eventually you’re going to wipe out a whole single family row. In that case, maybe it’s limiting or spacing them. You have a duplex or a fourplex, but maybe you’re having them in the transition zones, which then that works fine. Or if you’re putting them in the interior, then they’re limited to every 5,000 feet. I’m not a complete zero-no absolutely not, but it can’t be carte blanche.

On the Ryan property next to Crestview Station, you support the neighborhood position of dedicating the entire site to a neighborhood park. Affordable housing advocates want part of the site for housing. Is that site an appropriate location for affordable housing?

We wanted affordable housing in Crestview Station. The ordinance said 20% of the housing in Crestview Station had to be affordable housing. And they adopted it – they said the Ryan Property was going to be the park.

Then Council made the decision to waiver the affordable housing. We didn’t say no to affordable housing. In fact we told them we wanted affordable housing in there. We pushed for affordable housing. Council made the decision not to do it. And then, now to make up for it, you want to make [the Ryan property] public housing. Shame on you! You waived it. The developer could have done it like Mueller. And now you’re going to take it away and say, this little parcel that was designated as a park, you added the word AFTER adoption – ‘potential’ came in.

So my issue was, you were pinning the group of residents in Crestview who voted strong for affordable housing bonds both times, and previous elections have always come out, I think we’re like 70% for affordable housing, much larger than the city as a whole. We just want them to…

Pony up the open space?

Exactly. The Huntsman tract [an industrial property that became the core of Crestview Station] included 13 acres for park space. And then the City didn’t want to maintain it, so they gave it to the North Optimists. That was [originally supposed to be] our park. You owe us a park. You chose to forego affordable housing, not us.

Austin is losing families. We have a feedback loop where childless households with more money and desire shape market demand, the market builds mostly 1-BR units that exclude families, the retail and services become less family-friendly, school quality suffers, and so fewer families try to enter that market.

Should we be zoning in a way that adds more family-friendly housing in areas that want to remain family-friendly, or should we zone for housing that best meets market demand?

Our school population has decreased by almost half in our area. That’s significant. Downtown – they almost closed a school because there’s no one to use it. I mean the few families had to fight to keep that school open. And I don’t blame the schools to say we can’t maintain this building.

It’s expensive.

It’s extremely expensive. So I do think if there’s a school in the neighborhood, you need to have something that says, this school cannot run on 300 students – we need to have housing to support the school. Otherwise it becomes a blighted area. Absolutely.

And I don’t think we should be giving incentives to developers who are building 1-BR or efficiency dwelling units either. Because you are now offsetting with the school. And that’s a health issue for the community. Because the school people are home, they’re there, there’s kids. That whole environment. If they were wanting us to be a city that is of just thirty year olds, then just come right out and tell us. Don’t try to squirrel it in the code. Just come out and tell us and then we’ll know what we’re fighting.

There’s also housing and mobility policies that we need to develop to keep seniors and people with disabilities in their homes too. So school, but then there’s also affordability for seniors – people aren’t looking at them. And I’m like – why are we not? It’s usually a family that ends up adopting that senior person. It’s not the young kid who’s so busy on the phone. Typically that family is the eye on the senior.

See also:

Zone Interview:  Top Priorities, Experience, Community Involvement 
Candidate positions and the Burnet Corridor Plan

Monday, August 18, marked the filing deadline for candidates to appear on the City Council ballot.  The final, official list is at the City of Austin website:

This is the second of four interviews with City Council District 7 candidate Ed English on his candidacy and the issues identified in the AustinDistrict7.org candidate scorecard. The interviews are organized as follows:

* Top Priorities, Experience, Community Involvement
* Livability, Affordability and Housing
* Transportation, Open Space and Infrastructure
* Public Safety, Small Business, and City Budget

How do you define a neighborhood? What features make one successful?

A neighborhood at its core level has some type of physical boundaries. There’s usually a major artery, a natural barrier, like a creek. The variety of the housing stock, the general age ranges that are in that neighborhood, schools that might be adjacent to the families in that neighborhood, of children that go to a given school. You look at the general character of the given neighborhood – where the people work, the average income of the residents.

Having said that, I’m a big believer in diversity. That’s been a part of my background, certainly my experience with AGR [Austinites for Geographic Representation]. I don’t see a neighborhood so tightly defined, that those who don’t fit the averages, on either side of the bell curve if you will, are not part of the neighborhood. I believe that neighborhoods should be very inclusive.

I think to the extent that you can, you try to enhance those qualities. I am very neighborhood friendly. I’m not anti-growth, I’m more controlled and managed growth. And I think that long-established neighborhoods where families have lived for many generations, they need to have a sense of security, that someone on the city council as always got an eye to the impact of the decisions that they make on that neighborhood. I think that in and of itself offers some enhancement to livability. The risk of staying doesn’t include constant encroachment and constant challenges to the character of the neighborhood.

Is Downtown a Neighborhood?

It is now. With the big push towards redevelopment downtown, with a heavy emphasis on making it a residence, yeah, I would consider Downtown a neighborhood. Certainly unique in many many ways. But the people there share some of the commonalities I was mentioning earlier. They share lifestyle, age, education, their personal interests – tend to be your urbanites who like the density, like the entertainment, they like walkability, and they certainly have it there.

Should neighborhoods specialize, or should any neighborhood be a place that works for anybody?

There’s a practical answer to that. I don’t think a neighborhood realistically is going to appeal to everybody. People have very individualized preferences for what they want in a neighborhood. It might be out of reach for a neighborhood to be so diversified that it would appeal to anyone who drove through it and said “I want to live here.” Human nature just says that’s not likely. That said, you do what you can to make a neighborhood appeal to the majority.

One of the more controversial votes by the current Council involved a proposal to regulate how businesses can offer single-family homes for short-term lease – in effect micro-hotels in residential neighborhoods. Many Austin residents oppose Commercial Short-Term Rentals (CSTRs) for fear that they will undermine the strong sense of local community that helps to make Austin so livable. Tourism and real estate groups, some homeowners, and especially the Austin-based company HomeAway, countered that some regulation is better than no regulation, but that restrictions shouldn’t undermine the economy. Council approved an ordinance that defines CSTRs, regulates them, and restricts their number in a given census tract to 3% of single family residences. Did they get it right? How would you have voted?

As a homeowner, I may have a little bit of a particular bias here. My initial reaction to that is that I’m rather sympathetic towards homeowners as far as their concerns about short term rentals. You have people living for a week, two weeks, in the house next to you that you don’t know. They don’t understand the neighborhood, they may not understand parking restrictions. Their concerns for your well-being end at the day they leave. I am reluctant to want to do anything to promote that.

There’s a case to be made for some restrictions being better than none. There’s value in that. Without any restrictions, the door’s wide open for anything goes. And I certainly don’t think neighborhoods deserve that. So you sort of stair-step up or down from no restrictions to overly restrictive. No restrictions for me is out of the question. So where do you draw the line?

I think that very tight restrictions on the number of houses that can be used for short-term rentals, the number of people who can occupy it, the number of weeks in any given year that a house can be used, the number of vehicles that can be parked in front of it, the number of hours that they can make sound beyond a certain decibel level.

I understand there’s a need for short-term rentals. For some homeowners that may be a way for them to stay in their home. They can use that revenue while they’re visiting grandma to help pay these property taxes that are going up. I understand there’s a need for it, but I also understand the regulations have to be extremely well-defined, and fairly extensive on a lot of different points.

You know we are rectifying the problem with the shortage of hotel space. And as we get more hotel space, we might want to revisit the idea of short-term rentals. We might not completely abandon it, but there’s some logic behind why there’s a need for it.

My concern is that we have various business interests in the city, who put a high priority on profits. I’m not anti-business. I’ve run a small business, I’ve worked for businesses. If you don’t make profits, you’re in trouble. But at some point you have to put some constraints on profits – where do you get them, and at what cost to other people, to other businesses, to homeowners. There’s got to be a happy medium in there, and at the current time I’m in favor of tight restrictions.

Tighter than what was passed?

Probably. I see the allowance of these citywide being reviewed by City Council on a periodic basis i.e. a review of the increase in and availability of additional hotel space since the previous review.

Another controversial vote this last year involved approval of a local bar, Little Woodrow’s, on Burnet Rd. Rick Engel, the bar owner, said he was drawn to the changing demographics along Burnet, and that his bar would help to activate the corridor and still be family-friendly by sharing the site with a pizza restaurant. Opponents charged that the bar’s 2 AM weekend hours of operation, lack of sufficient parking, and proximity to an existing bar, would start to shape a SoCo-style bar district with serious livability impacts for adjacent residents. Council voted 4-3 to approve a conditional use permit, with restrictions including 1 AM weekend hours, noise restrictions, and a bigger parking requirement. How would you have voted?

I would have opposed it. In my opinion, the facts clearly lined up in favor of the neighborhoods. And a lot of it stems around the fact that a bar is a different kind of business establishment. You know, it’s not a shoe store, it’s not a barbershop. It’s an establishment that’s evening-oriented, where people come and drink and have a good time. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it is a unique business environment. It brings with it certain business-operating conditions you just don’t find in other businesses.

Also, the neighborhoods felt like there wasn’t sufficient interaction with the bar owner, that a lot of the facts were misrepresented, like the proximity of the parking that they were proposing – it was within 200 ft of residences. There just appeared to be a lot of miscommunication and misrepresentation on the part of the bar owner.

And I think there’s a point to be made that if you cluster bars too close together, you start to develop an air, an attitude in the community that this is a place to drink, and if you don’t like one, there’s another one down the street. And the example that was used of a good bar, Ginny’s, illustrated that the neighborhood was open-minded. They were not “we’re anti- every and any bar”. It was the relationship with the bar owner, his willingness to work with the neighborhood, that give and take – made it a success. They are a bar, but they’re accepted by the neighborhood because they have a mutual level of respect and understanding of what the operating conditions would be.

One of the proposals floated for the CodeNext zoning reform involves scrapping rules like the tree ordinance that protect mature trees on properties subject to redevelopment. Developers argue that rules like this hamstring their projects, hurt the economy and affordability. They want more flexible rules, in this case the option to replant trees of equivalent value at a different location. Many residents argue that large trees are priceless, and fear replacement trees will be somewhere other than where they are needed, in dense urban areas. Would you keep the tree ordinance or revise it?

I’d keep the tree ordinance. Not a lot of commentary on that one. That’s kind of a yes-no question. So I’ll give you a yes-no answer. I’m very in tune with those who place a high value on their physical environment. Trees are trees – they’ve been where they are in many cases for hundreds of years – some of the established oaks. Replanting trees somewhere else is just not the same thing.

How would you make Austin affordable?

Affordability is such a broad umbrella. It covers so many topics. And it means different things to different people based on income levels and what part of town they live in. So you have to tailor your definition of affordability based on the district. Our district is sort of a middle-of-the-road district. We’re not in the more affluent parts of town. We certainly fare far better than other areas of town.

We’re going to slay that affordability giant with a thousand cuts. There are no one or two silver bullets that are going to be “the answer.” It’s a series of 15 or 20 little things.

Property taxes are a part of it. I commend City Council as of mid-May for at least considering the challenge to the tax rolls next year. I don’t know where that’s going to go – it’s a legally complex case. The ultimate decision there rests with the state. The problems with the balance of the commercial vs. residential property taxes is a state-wide issue. But Houston is taking a look at the same thing at the current time. So we’re not an isolated case.

But I think we can do something that has a quick impact on affordability, and that’s a homestead exemption. As people who are actually going to read this know, Austin is the only taxing entity that does not offer a homestead exemption. They do offer a tax break for 65 and over and disabled, but not for those who don’t meet those qualifications.

It’s very doable. You start with a small set amount. We want to put two tools in the toolkit for City Council to use every year, and that’s a tax rate and a flat amount for a homestead exemption.

There may be some challenges with using a fixed dollar exemption with state law. But Austin’s a home-rule city. So we have the authority to make any change that we want to our city charter, provided that it doesn’t conflict with state law. And we have the ability to defend our decision regarding a conflict with state law, should the state legislature or some official decide to challenge it.

But I think we can put one on the books. And I think we start small. Obviously tax exemptions have a significant impact on the budget, and the revenue that you’re able to generate. So you start small – literally a thousand, two thousand off of appraised value. In reality that results in a very small decrease in property taxes, but what it does is puts another tool in the toolkit that Council can use on a year-by-year basis and make adjustments. They can adjust the rate, or they can adjust the flat dollar exemption.

Those have very different impacts. Rate changes benefit more those who live in expensive houses. The flat dollar exemption benefits more those who live in less expensive homes. I’m going to pick a number – $2,000 off the value of a $500,000 home is nothing. $2,000 off the value of a $140,000 home is a significantly bigger decrease in tax.

So will a thousand dollar decrease in the appraised value of a $200,000 home have much impact on livability?

It’s just a tool. It puts the tool in the toolkit that can be adjusted in future years as needed. I would not recommend putting such an exemption on the books that’s excessive. It would have too dramatic an impact on the City’s revenues. You don’t get up into the $10,000-15,000 range, because the impact on City revenues is too significant.

Another way to tackle affordability is to look at utility rates. Here again, utility rates represent a larger share of income for a lower income family than for a wealthier family. One way to bring down water bills is to look at the Austin Energy transfer to the city general fund. This year I believe it was $105 million. I’d like to see that amount gradually ratcheted down. Again, you don’t do it all at once because it has a significant impact on the City budget. You ratchet it down over a five-six-seven-year period. You use that amount to offset the effect of increasing rates. You have the potential for a fairly stable billing system. You could also use part of that money to invest in renewables, that has a sizeable upfront cost, but not nearly the operational cost and almost no fuel cost.

A third opportunity is to reduce the cost of housing by increasing the amount of housing. We really need to make more housing available. In District 7, we have that space. I live on the north end of the district, and the district does extend along the northern city limits east of 35, out Parmer Ln over to Dessau. There’s a lot of vacant land out there. There’s ample opportunity to build single family homes, fourplexes, eightplexes. Maybe you don’t want to go any bigger than that. I’d like to see single family homes, or smaller multi-family homes, I’d like to see an emphasis on that. Make those homes affordable. They’re near employers, they’re near major roadways. I think right now apartment occupancy is around 96%. It’s really that, coupled with the fact that we’re not building enough new housing stock that’s causing the existing prices to skyrocket.

One of the things that’s a real issue here is the permitting process. I’ve talked to home-builders. They are quite interested in getting back to the day – I remember when I moved here, you’d listen to the radio, pick up the paper, watch the TV, they used to advertise starter homes. When was the last time you saw a developer build a starter home – we’ll pick today’s value – $170k, $190k. They’re not building those. Because one, it’s such an incredibly complex, slow, bogged down by a broken permitting process – they don’t want to deal with it. If we streamline the permitting process, we could get affordable homes out faster.

That’s one of the top recommendations coming out of CodeNext. That makes sense to you.

It does. The issue that I might have depending upon the specifics of CodeNext is where do they go? Where do we put those? I do think there’s a place for that missing middle, which I’m sure we’ll probably get into. But one of the areas of concern is that families with children in the school district are leaving. And I hate to see that happen for a whole lot of reasons. Those kinds of families tend to favor single family homes, maybe a duplex or a four-plex. Because they’re more family-friendly. You have some green space. You’re not on the 15th floor of an apartment building. I want to see us establish an environment where single family homes, small multi-family, are affordable again. Builders want to build them. We streamline the permitting process. We put them in areas where they have access to major roadways. We try to geographically disperse them. That’s one of the areas where I might have a difference with CodeNext. I don’t think we have to pack everything into one space. Just like we have employment centers, I think we can have residential centers.

As employers come into town, I would like to see the City encourage them to really geographically disperse. So that we don’t have traffic going all one direction in the morning, and turning around and going all the other direction in the afternoon. We try to put employers in areas of the city where typically there are skillsets that live close by. I’d like to see the job base significantly diversified. We have areas where we can do that. I’ll take that northeast corner again – that area around Dell, Samsung out there. There’s a lot of space – we can bring employers in there, we can add housing out there so people don’t have to travel great distances.

One little idea I have that would help a young family get on their feet and help with buying a new single family home, is to offer them, remember this is on new construction – when you build a new house the city has a new source of revenue for property taxes – waive the property taxes on the ground underneath the home for the first year. And then gradually raise it up to full rate over a five to seven year period. People will say “That’s lost revenue.” No it’s not, because it’s a new home, new revenue.

The intent being to incentivize new construction and home ownership?

It’d incentivize new construction, and make the payment on the home much lighter on the front end. It would be an incentive to builders, because they’d have a bigger market. They’d have more customers who could afford those homes that otherwise couldn’t if they were taxed at full value. The city still gets new tax revenue that they didn’t have before. The home would be taxed at appraisal value.

While we’re on the subject, you mentioned distributing housing throughout the city. What’s your take on the Accessory Dwelling Unit proposal?

Granny flats? That’s what some people call it. That’s a tough question to answer.

As far as building say a garage apartment or a little separate dwelling in the backyard. I see some value in that. I understand that it could be overdone. There’s always somebody out there that’s going to try to take advantage of that, buy a property, put an accessory dwelling in the backyard with the sole purpose of making more money. And I’m not sure what restriction you could put in the code to keep people from taking advantage of that at the expense of a neighborhood.

But I do see that as an opportunity for a lot of families, a lot of stay-at-home kids – it’s harder to get a start, kids are dealing with student debt loads unlike anything I ever had to face. Elderly parents – it’s expensive for them – they want to be close to their children that are going to be able to take care of them. It also provides for those folks who want to stay in their home an opportunity to do that. There are a lot of retired people scattered across this district, particularly in these more mature neighborhoods, who have been here for a long long time, they’re not interested in leaving, and that’s an option that keeps them from being priced out of their homes by property taxes.

You know, I don’t mind a little apartment over my garage. It’s quiet, I can control who rents there. I want somebody who’s nice, who’s quiet, who meets the restrictions that I set for them as tenants. If they’re good tenants, they provide a source of revenue that might keep me in my home.

The way you’re describing it, it sounds like you’re imagining this where the primary resident would still be on site.

Yes. I would see that as something that might be involved in structuring some type of regulations on it. If the primary residence is occupied by the live-in owner, then I think you probably have some more wiggle room on your restrictions on building and who occupies.

How would you enforce that? I build it with every intention of living here until I die, and then something happens, I have to sell. And both units on my property…

Sure – one conveys with the other. You’re kind of in uncharted territory. You really have to think that through. I think you have to put some stipulations in there, that when the property is sold, that the new owner has to meet certain conditions. Again, it kind of gets back to like the short term rental conundrum. I can certainly see the potential for abuse. Maybe if the house is sold with an accessory dwelling, a parent, a sibling, a child can live in there, with some significant restrictions on what you could do to rent that out to someone who’s not a close relative.

I see neighborhoods having the option to opt in or opt out of allowing these. If by survey of the neighborhood the neighborhood opts in, then the very tight restrictions I mentioned would be applicable, including the conveyance of the restrictions on who can occupy an accessory dwelling unit when the property is sold.

So how do you achieve affordability over the long term?

This gets into one of my top three priorities, and that’s fiscal responsibility and transparency in government. A big factor of affordability here is based on what it costs to operate this city, as far as the fees that are collected, the utility rates, property taxes, transportation cost, transit time, even things as simple as that, because if it takes you longer to get from point A to point B, and you’re in your private vehicle, or even on a bus, the more fuel’s expended.

At the core of running our city is the City budget. We need to take a hard look at the budget, how we approach the budget, at the current levels of expenditure, projected levels of expenditure, the level of staffing that we have as opposed to management – the management-to-staff ratio. The number of people working for the city that have $100,000+ salaries. Historic home exemptions.

One of the things that we can do long-term which has a very diverse impact is to look where we want to spend our money, how much we think we can allow the city budget to grow. It has a direct impact. Ultimately it filters down to a lot of cost. If we do a lot of expensive things… and I’m going to put a little bit of the burden on the backs of the residents. It’s not all “The city all bad, the citizens all good.” I really think it’s imperative that the citizens of Austin as these bond packages come up – we’ve been pretty generous over the years. And I’d like to hope and think that the city, and those people who are stakeholders involved in the process of things that make it more expensive to live here do everything they can to be fair in their appraisals and estimates of what things are going to cost down the road. Bond packages are nice, and we want all these good things, we’d like to have all these improvements. But ultimately, we pay for those. And it has a direct impact on affordability.

And there’s a lot of things that have a direct impact on affordability, that the City has absolutely no control over. But as a City Council member, you do what you can to control those costs that the City incurs.

A prominent affordability goal of the CodeNext zoning rewrite is to expand middle-density zoning categories, like duplexes, four-plexes, eight-plexes. It has also been proposed to simplify building accessory housing on SF properties, like granny flats. Opponents argue that such housing tends to suffer maintenance problems, brings in short-duration residents uninvested in their communities, strains infrastructure, and adds more traffic to residential streets. Do you support or oppose such housing, and why?

I think the concerns are largely justified. But I think the concerns come, and rightly so, from established neighborhoods that see new types of housing as taking something away from their neighborhood. They don’t see them as add-ons, as much as they see them as replacements.

I do believe there’s a place for that missing middle. The objective is where do we put that, so that it has minimal impact on adjacent established neighborhoods. Because I do believe there has to be some kind of line in the sand. At some point, a neighborhood deserves a level of protection that will stand – that doesn’t change from year to year with the next corridor project, with the next rezoning idea. I know it’s difficult with a rapidly growing city to put something in place that’s not subject to change in five years. You have to adapt.

I would prefer to see areas that are in need of replacement housing, that are in need of additional housing stock. We have areas in the city where the housing stock is very old, it’s poorly maintained. There’s a lot of code enforcement problems. We also have certain areas that are just vacant. If you live in certain parts of this city, that might seem like a statement coming from Mars, because you don’t see any vacant space. But in the north end of the district, particularly the northeast corner of it, I can see a real opportunity out there, and I’ve talked to a lot of people about this, taking some of that underutilized space and turning it into residential centers, just like we do business hubs.

The key to getting people to live there, and to maintain the property, and to be good tenants, good owners, is to put them in a place where they would find it beneficial to stay for a while. How do you do that? You put the resources that they need, that are convenient, that are part of their daily life – close to them. You put places to eat, you put retail establishments, and first and foremost – where am I working? That’s a huge factor for most people in where they decide to live. They might have some nice amenities nearby, but if where they work is on the opposite end of town, that trumps an awful lot of things.

But we have an opportunity in the northeast corner of the district – Parmer between 35 and Dessau, to do some fantastic things out there, build out that area, and bring in employment, good living wage jobs. The types of folks who would want a starter home. Now there are apartments going up rapidly out there, some existing single family homes, neighborhoods out there – Harris Ridge, Copperfield – but there’s still a lot of space out there. At least within our district, that’s an area we could look to as a resident/employment hub, where fourplexes would be welcome. There’s some areas along the border we share with District 4, where we really could replace some of the existing housing stock, where it’s deteriorated and old. Maintenance and upgrades in some cases are cost prohibitive. It might be better in some of those neighborhoods to just start over and put some newer stock in there.

To get back to your central point, I do see the concerns of neighborhoods that see duplexes, fourplexes as a problem, where they’re not wanted and they’re not appropriate. Where they’re seen as an encroachment on the neighborhood. I think we can avoid that by putting missing middle housing in different places, next to employment centers.

Austin is losing families. We have a feedback loop where childless households with more money and desire shape market demand, the market builds mostly 1-BR units that exclude families, the retail and services become less family-friendly, school quality suffers, and so fewer families try to enter that market.

Should we be zoning in a way that adds more family-friendly housing in areas that want to remain family-friendly, or should we zone for housing that best meets market demand?

At the core of it is what do you place a value on as far as the character of the city as a whole. If you put a high level of value on having a good mix of single individuals, double-income-no-kid (DINKs), and families, if you see that as part of what makes a city balanced, what adds a good robust diversity to it, then I think you do what you need to do, within reasonable guidelines, to use zoning to encourage new single family or small multi-family housing. Or at least do what you can to protect those neighborhoods that already have that character, they’re already mostly single family.

Again, speaking in generalities here, I’m going to side with the neighborhoods. I would hate to see the city over the next 20 or 30 years become largely devoid of single family neighborhoods. At the rate that we’re growing, that’s not out of the question – that 20-30 years down the road, that single family homes be a rarity, unless you’re out on the extreme periphery. I know that a lot of people would view that differently, but I really think it does a disservice to the long-term prospects of the city to have the demographics become too narrowly focused. It’s a risk that we don’t need to run.

I think that the character of the city, any city, not just this one, should include a flavor, a structure, a code that protects existing family homes, and where at all possible, encourages additional neighborhoods that are family-oriented and single-family oriented.

See also:

District 7 Candidate Positions Relevant to the Burnet Rd Corridor Plan

The City recently began work on a land use plan for Burnet Rd and Anderson Ln. Growth is already happening – over 250 acres along the corridors were previously zoned for new housing, representing long-term capacity for 15,000- 20,000 future residents. The planning process may lead to changes in this capacity, in the type of housing allowed, and in the infrastructure planned to support it. The results will greatly influence the physical and cultural character of the Burnet Rd area in the coming decades.

Most candidates support some variation of “responsible growth,” meaning that some growth along corridors is to be expected but it should be done in a way to protect quality of life. All candidates say they support local businesses on the corridor. What these positions mean in practice varies, as does a candidate’s preference for investing in transit-oriented and walkable infrastructure that lowers risk of a long-term congestion melt-down, versus tightening the City’s belt to improve cost of living for today’s residents.

Boyt, who identifies housing affordability as the city’s biggest crisis, is most open to introducing new housing of all types – apartments, condos, four-plexes, duplexes, townhomes, granny flats. “Affordability is all about supply.” He acknowledges there could be short-term options like tax or rate relief, but notes that Council reviews the budget every year for such cuts. Only increased housing, coupled with less car dependency, can improve long-term affordability in the urban core.

The key for Boyt is getting a range of housing types in each neighborhood, at different price points for different needs. Boyt agrees housing density should taper off as one moves away from transit. But he’d accept more housing at locations farther from transit than most other candidates – say 4-story apartments a full five minute walk from a bus stop. Boyt, along with Zone, Pool and Salazar, would prioritize a finely-meshed network of pedestrian features for transit-oriented places – sidewalks, creek paths, bike lanes, parks and gathering spaces, all drawing people on foot or bike to transit. That said, Boyt while on the 2012 bond advisory task force voted to cut PARD’s modest bond request for new urban parks, while increasing funds for new water quality conservation land on the edge of town. Boyt said the committee had to make tough choices, and directed most urban bond funding towards improvements of existing parks.

The other candidates are more cautious about new housing.

English says he supports protecting family-friendly neighborhoods. “I think that the character of the city should include a flavor that protects existing family homes,” English says, “and encourages additional neighborhoods that are family-oriented and single-family oriented.” He proposes to add most new family-friendly housing in new transit-oriented centers in northeast Austin. Along Burnet, English favors protecting existing single family housing, while adding more capacity for VMU-style apartments at certain locations, for instance at the Ross Dress for Less.

English is sanguine about the relationship of dense housing to transit. “Bus stops can be moved. A bus stop’s five blocks down the street – we’ll move the bus stop.” This approach may preclude deep investment in pedestrian infrastructure. Cost of open space in expensive places like along a commercial street is also a concern. “There’s a fairly widespread movement to make Austin more affordable, and that goes back to what is the city spending.” English says North Central Austin does need more pocket parks, but cost should influence their location – the City should look for abandoned or condemned properties throughout the wider area. English says he would spend more on other types of transportation options, including rail and roads. He says he is open to reconsidering his approach if a strong case can be made for congestion reduction.

Ingalls, who says his family was priced out of an apartment on the rapidly redeveloping E Riverside corridor, is particularly critical of VMU-style luxury apartments, which are overwhelmingly 1-BR rentals that exclude families while concentrating high-end residents who skew upward the price of services. Ingalls too would protect single family cores, but also look for ways to ensure that a minimum number of units in larger residential projects are sized to support families. He would resist spending more on rail or pedestrian infrastructure until the City pays down more of its bond debt.

Paver’s land use strategy might best be described as protecting single family cores from rapid change. One or two duplexes is probably ok, whereas “bulldozing four houses and putting up six duplexes? Probably not.” Paver says he personally would prefer not to have such housing, but “I don’t see it as an all-or-nothing thing. We need places for people to live.” For Paver, the type of housing has an impact on affordability and on the ability of families to remain in the urban core. “If [a family] can’t live in a dense one-bedroom community that is going up in a lot of places, then they’re pushed out of the school district.”

Paver is ok with zoning more VMU at certain places, like the Ross Dress for Less property, even if they’re not as close to a transit station. But he seems to be looking for a longer-term strategy. “Until we have an idea about how we want to control these types of developments in certain areas, so that they don’t create congestion, I don’t think you can be against everything.” On open space, Paver says the City should look for creative funding solutions that don’t put added tax pressure on existing residents. “We obviously don’t have a lot of money for parks. We obviously need parks. But finding other ways to finance them is probably the best route.” In weighing car- versus non-car transportation options, Paver leans towards car solutions that benefit existing residents. For instance, he would consider widening Burnet south of 2222 to add a turn lane, if that were feasible.

Neighborhood plans are Pool’s point of departure for corridor planning. “Commercial expansion must follow plans painstakingly written with neighborhoods, often over the course of years.” Pool herself sees a need for more diverse housing near corridors like duplexes or fourplexes, especially if code enforcement can be tightened. But such decisions need community support, and communities don’t trust the City. Pool said she doesn’t have a quick answer to the trust deficit, but following neighborhood plans would be a good start. Regarding the appropriateness of VMU-style development, Pool said planners often use 5-minute walking distance as a rule of thumb for transit support, but that in practice other things like pedestrian amenities and transit frequency affect whether nearby residents will forego driving. “This is an area where I’m interested about the collaboration between the City and CapMetro,” as far as station alignment, bus frequency, and pedestrian amenities like plazas, she said. To keep a lid on congestion, Pool said the City has to invest in sidewalks, bike lanes and public space near transit. But there should be cost-sharing, for instance with CapMetro.

Salazar specifically used the term ‘responsible growth’ and supports new housing along corridors, but not too far into single family areas. Protecting existing residents is his top priority. He is looking in particular for ways to improve cost of living for Austin’s most vulnerable residents. As such, he would defer expensive rail investments and greatly expand bus service. He would seek more ways to incentivize affordable housing.

Zone also cites quality of life for existing residents as a top priority. She says Austin needs more kinds of housing, “but that doesn’t mean we have to demolish the single family housing. We don’t need to – we can incorporate both.” Some duplexes and even the odd four-plex is ok in single-family areas. Eight- to sixteen-plexes would go on a corridor like Burnet in accordance with the site’s ability to support utilities like storm water and waste water, and nearer to rapid transit so as to reduce congestion risk. Zone said infrastructure capacity is a key planning consideration. “Burnet doesn’t have the infrastructure to support many four and five story apartments.”

At a location like the Burnet Dress for Less property, which is a quarter mile from the nearest rapid bus stop, Zone might support two or three stories – about half the density requested by a recent developer. Conversely, she would use density bonuses at better-supported locations to get more affordable housing. Zone also champions open space in transit areas to boost community and reduce car trips. “The lack of gathering spaces concerns me,” said Zone. “Austin shouldn’t be building golf courses – Austin should be using the money where there’s families, integrating parks where they’re going to be used,” near denser development.

This is the first of four interviews with City Council District 7 candidate Leslie Pool on her candidacy and the issues identified in the AustinDistrict7.org candidate scorecard. The interviews are organized as follows:

*     Top Priorities, Experience, Community Involvement
*     Livability, Affordability and Housing
*     Transportation, Open Space and Infrastructure
*     Public Safety, Small Business, and City Budget

Leslie Pool has lived in Austin since 1980. Since the 1990s she has served on city boards or commissions on the arts, downtown, telecommunications, and water/ wastewater. She chaired the Seaholm Power Plant Reuse Citizens Committee and served on the Downtown Development Advisory Group, a late-90s effort convened by then-Mayor Kirk Watson to kick-start economic and social activity downtown. She served on Travis County bond advisory committees in 1998 and 2004, and on the City of Austin Bond Advisory Task Force in 2012. Also in 2012, she played a role in launching the Bull Creek Road Coalition, which helped redirect the state’s proposal to redevelop its property on Shoal Creek near Bull Creek Rd and 45th. She was a member of Leadership Austin’s class of 1999-2000. She serves as treasurer of LiveableCity, a local sustainability non-profit. She works as executive assistant for Travis County Constable Carlos B. Lopez.

Why are you running for City Council?

I know how the City works, from involvement over many years on several city boards and commissions. I’m an effective collaborator and coalition builder. I know how to go about solving the big problems our district and city are facing:

Rapid growth is one. How do we keep our neighborhoods intact and welcoming to long-time residents and new families? Commercial expansion must follow compatibility standards along corridors like Burnet Road, and follow plans painstakingly written by neighborhoods – often over the course of years! – not have them tossed out at the last minute.

Getting congestion under control is obviously huge. We can’t build enough roads to solve our traffic problems – and wouldn’t want to if we could. We’ve got to take an integrated approach using all tools – transit, rail, bikes, sidewalks and roads. We can redesign intersections to ease traffic flow, and improve signal synchronization.

I want to stop corporate subsidies and giveaways. This Council has been far too eager to cut deals for high rises and racetracks. Austin’s economy is doing fine – developers don’t need subsidies.

We must reform property taxes. Corporations have a moral imperative to pay their fair share of taxes on accurate property appraisals.

What are your top 3 issues?

This is a quality of life campaign. We need to keep the best of Austin while finding solutions for the tough issues: transit, affordability, tax reform, and environmental sustainability.

What these all have in common is how we live in Austin, and whether we can continue living here. It means not being priced out of our homes. It means our parks, libraries and pools are in good condition, well maintained, and properly staffed. It means carefully guarding our natural resources to sustain them through hard and prolonged droughts. It means forming effective coalitions to fight for property tax reform at the State Capitol.

What experience do you bring?   Can you think of a specific example of an initiative that you were influential on, to demonstrate how you would approach work on Council?

About two years ago, I got a call that the Texas Facilities Commission was going to sell 80 acres of TxDOT land in my quiet residential neighborhood along Shoal Creek near Bull Creek Road and 45^th, for redevelopment as a big box shopping center, drive-thru gas station, they were just going to plop it down – too bad, so sad.

I don’t know how we all found each other, but Allandale, and Ridgelea, Oakmont Heights, and Rosedale and Bryker Woods, and West Balcones – we all got together to try to figure out what was going on. That piece of land has never been zoned. It’s right along the creek – it’s just a run-off channel now. It could be brought back to being something really beautiful. There’s old growth oak down there. You can’t see them from any road – you have to walk onto the property.

So we organized the Bull Creek Road Coalition. It’s a complex story that took us from forming in July 2012 to opposing an inter-local agreement between the City of Austin and the Texas Facilities Commission during long nights at Council meetings, innumerable meeting with City staff and council members, to the State Legislature and more meetings with staff and senators and representatives, sitting in Sunset Advisory Commission meetings and monitoring and influencing the progress of three separate bills – ultimately ending with success on the biggest piece literally minutes before midnight on Sine Die. Through effective coalition building, collaborations with elected officials, careful focus and non-confrontational advocacy, our Coalition had unprecedented success during the 83^rd Legislative Session in blocking the proposed public-private partnership and ensuring that when the land is to be developed, the neighborhoods affected by development will have a voice in the process.

We established a good reputation as a stakeholder group. All of the developers want to meet with us. They’re actively seeking our support for their proposals. We don’t have illusions about our influence – it could be gone in an instant. We established ourselves not as a force to be reckoned with, but as a group to consult with and to provide useful feedback, so people are looking for our input.

Being non-confrontational was key. The minute you get confrontational and horsey they just won’t meet with you. That doesn’t help. That’s the same thing with the City. You have to learn to work with people in order to have that collaboration. It doesn’t mean you agree, but you’re still listening to what each other said.

Tell me about your involvement in the North Austin community, what you’ve accomplished on the ground

My work on the Bull Creek Road Coalition. That was a huge amount of work on behalf of my community.

We had to fight City Council to stop an interlocal agreement that Sheryl Cole was promoting with TFC to give them $400,000 for a seat at the table, so the City could be part of the development discussions. Which the City would be anyway, because it was going to revert to City infrastructure. So we thought that was an unnecessary expenditure. So we fought it. We were down at Council at midnight. They put us on last, to see if they could decimate our ranks. But we stayed. [laughs]. I’m not a big fan of those kinds of meetings. But you have to do it sometimes.

As a candidate who lives in the south part of the district, what do you bring to voters who live in other parts of the district?

Using the model we used with the Bull Creek Road Coalition. You can take that model and apply it to solve issues that are apparently unsolvable.

You’re powerless – how are you ever going to go up against TxDOT and this P3 [public-private partnership]? But you break the problems down into the small workable – and we did that – everyone took on a little something, everybody pulled their weight. And we just kept at it.

You identify what the issue is, you seek out the people who have things to say about it, and who want to constructively assist. And you’re open to problem-solving. Making sure everyone is in agreement – it’s consensus. Doesn’t mean that everybody always votes the same way, but they’re willing to support whatever the decision is, so that you have a good way of moving forward.

See also:
District 7 Candidates page
Pool Announces Candidacy, Laura Morrison Endorsement

Second quarter campaign financing results confirm huge spending advantages for District 7 council candidates Jeb Boyt ($20,339) and Jimmy Paver ($18,582), followed by Melissa Zone ($6,634) and other candidates. Details of the funding results, including contributions by geography, were covered last week:

https://austindistrict7.org/boyt-paver-claim-fund-raising-lead-in-d7-race/

In this article we look in more detail at the contributors.

Jeb Boyt claimed $8,525 (42%) from Downtown and west Austin (78701-78705, 78726, 78730-36, 78746, 78750 and 78759). Some of Boyt’s funding came from attorneys and real estate people, plus people associated with Downtown – Charlie Betts of the Downtown Austin Alliance, Cid Gallindo of the Austin Congress of the New Urbanism chapter, Austin Contrarian’s Chris Bradford, and local real estate leaders like Frank Harren and Perry Lorenz. Boyt’s base also includes parks, trails and bicycle advocates, for example Bicycle Sports Shop’s Bill Abell, or former Planning Commission chair Dave Sullivan.

Boyt’s contributor base is easy to label and hardly unexpected – they are urbanists. They reflect Boyt’s many years at the center of Austin’s government circles, urbanist and conservation advocacy groups, and people he encountered in his work for several state land agencies.

Hope Doty from Milwood is one contributor who fits this profile. Doty grew up with Boyt’s wife and met Boyt 15 years ago. Doty and her husband both follow Austin’s transportation and open space issues. “Jeb is my go-to guy,” Doty said. “He’s so connected to all the issues that I care about in town.” Doty said Boyt’s many years in City of Austin political circles means he knows the system and can effectively take care of District 7.

Andrew Donoho and Jackie O’Keefe live six houses down from Boyt. “We have sympatico values,” Donoho said, noting that growth is already happening and that Boyt is a “prudent, level-headed guy” who can make sure it’s implemented in a way that benefits neighborhoods. VMU-style development along commercial streets in itself doesn’t phase them, but to be successful, Donoho says such development needs someone like Boyt to advocate for good transit, parks and bikes. “He’s a long-term thinker,” adds O’Keefe, with “a sharp and diagnostic mind.”

Jimmy Paver looked to Downtown and West Austin for a good chunk of his funding – $8,010 (43%) – a similar amount to Boyt. People with ties to the real estate industry are represented. So are a few political consultants. But Paver’s funding is far more diverse. More of Paver’s money, 32%, came from outside Austin, apparently from family or political networks. Within Austin, the extended Paver family (it seems like Pavers make up about half of Austin’s population) contributed heavily. One Paver contributor – Leslie Pool – has since entered the election herself.

Said Paver, “it is a very mixed crowd that can’t be easily categorized as representative of a collective interest group. Some are from Lloyd Doggett days, some from the Capitol, some from campaigns.” Many contributors were people that Paver grew up with. In this vein, Paver’s hefty self-loan of $40,000 can be seen in a positive light, further insulating him from outside interests.

In the earlier article on campaign contributions, candidates were compared based on the number of non-family contributors within the district. This indicated an on-the-ground advantage to candidate Melissa Zone. Paver said the metric may mask support from voters who support him but who he did not approach for donations. “I’m fortunate to have solid funding – so I didn’t seek a lot of donations from people in the neighborhood,” Paver said. He said a lot of people have Paver yard signs – a different indicator of early support. One such supporter is Hannah Peters, an Allandale resident who didn’t donate but has a yard sign out. She says she has known Paver for ten years and trusts him.

Melissa Zone, a resident of Austin for just four years, entered the race with no citywide networks, but still came in third for fund-raising. Several contributors are Austin Neighborhoods Council and neighborhood association activists. Within the district, Zone takes a lead in number of contributors, from both ends of the district. Presumably, these are mostly people who met her recently.

Donna Beth McCormick, a local Democratic and neighborhood activist, met Zone after her campaign announcement. McCormick said she sees in Zone a strong leader who will stand up for neighborhoods and quality of life. “She is the most knowledgeable about how to get this done. She is a planner by profession, and will know when city staff is trying to put something over on us,” McCormick said.

Ed English, whose main citywide network is through the 10-1 group Austinites for Geographic Representation, raised $3,245, including $825 within District 7 and $1,610 from other areas of Austin. English’s supporters include neighbors like Marty Schoen (Milwood), who is not political but enjoys talking to English about issues. “He’s just a really good man,” Shoen said. She said all the nearby streets are full of English yard signs. “This is just a close-knit community.” At the other end of the district, Dave Orshalick expressed admiration for English’s commitment to 10-1 political reform. Orshalick said he was won over by English’s detailed knowledge of North Austin issues. But more importantly, “he feels our pain.”

One source seemingly absent on English’s finance report – conservative money. English, who has voted on occasion in Republican primaries and who prioritizes modest tax and rate cuts to bring down the cost of living, has forcefully described himself as a non-aligned pragmatist. Apparently, Republican donors believe him.

Leslie Pool only entered the campaign in July, and so was not fund-raising in the second quarter. However, with backing from political heavyweights like Laura Morrison and Brigid Shea, Pool should be considered a fiscally viable candidate. Chad Williams, Pool’s treasurer, said contributions are indeed pouring in. With Pool and Zone both competing for liberal neighborhood people, it will be interesting to see how Pool’s entry affects Zone’s momentum, and vice versa.

Pete Salazar raised $2,405 in the second quarter, mostly from friends and family in East Austin. One noteable contributor – The Texas Democratic Party. Salazar also took out loans worth $4,805.

Lourdes Jones has been friends with Salazar since he was four years old. “Personally, I’ve lived in Austin for 40 years, I’m feeling squeezed out and Pete is the only candidate who can empathize.”

Josiah Ingalls listed a large number of pledges, but had little hard cash from contributors in the second quarter. Ingalls did pony up $8,000 in loans. He said the self-financing should signal to people his serious intentions for the race.

Austin and the 7-10 Split
Candidates in west and west-central districts find common cause
By Richard Whittaker
9:30AM, Tue. Jul. 22

When people first started talking about shifting Austin to single-member City Council districts, the logic was simple. You add more geographic representation, more diversity of opinion, and a more accurate reflection of the city’s needs. Well, the neighboring districts of 7 and 10 have a nice bucket list lined up.

It’s tough to describe what’s happening in District 10 as resentment, but then then it’s not hard to see it either. It’s regularly written off as “suburban sprawl” (with a subtext of being “not really Austin”). Candidate Matt Lamon said, “The number one issue that I hear when I’m knocking on doors is that they feel they don’t have a representative at City Hall.” But in conversations with candidates in both areas, the term “sister districts” came up about 10 and its neighbor to the east, District 7.

In both, public safety (i.e., policing) is going to be a key issue, with a steady demand across candidates in both districts for, at minimum, a redrawing of patrol zones, and preferably a new station house further along to the west. At the moment, the whole area is in Austin PD’s massive and sprawling Baker District. Over in 10, candidate Jason Meeker said that, while the residents don’t feel underpoliced when it comes to emergencies, “There is a very strong feeling among residents that they would like to see more police in the area, not just responding to a crime.”

That’s the complexity facing neighboring 7. It has some of Austin’s most well-established middle class neighborhoods – Crestview, Allandale – but it also has some of the highest need areas of town as well. As candidate Jimmy Paver called it, “a semiaffluent district with some high needs issues.” Ultimately, District 7 comprises two very different areas of town, as highlighted when a recent Allandale neighborhood meeting referred to “Lower District 7.”

Continue reading at:

http://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2014-07-22/austin-and-the-7-10-split/

 See also:

Chronicle:  Deliver Us From Traffic
https://austindistrict7.org/chronicle-deliver-us-from-traffic/

Statesman:  Growth, Traffic Encroaching on Neighborhoods in District 7
https://austindistrict7.org/statesman-growth-traffic-encroaching-on-neighborhoods-in-district-7/

Zandan Poll Finds Young Austinites Happy, Older Austinites Less So
https://austindistrict7.org/zandan-poll-finds-young-austinites-happy-older-austinites-less-so/

Yes, I Am a Nimby
https://austindistrict7.org/yes-i-am-a-nimby/

Help Make People Aware of District 7 and AustinDistrict7.org – buy a $3 yard sign. Email editor@austindistrict7.org to help. Thank you!

From Leslie Pool, candidate for City Council, District 7

Dear Friends,

I am pleased to announce that I am running for Council District 7 on the Austin City Council.

We need a strong voice to protect our neighborhoods, our environment and our quality of life. Key elements of the kind of city where we want to live – affordability and sustainability – seem to be slipping away. I have lived and worked in Austin for 34 years. During that time, I raised a family, and served our community as a volunteer, a member of city commissions and citizen bond task forces, and volunteered at my daughter’s school and for many local organizations.

My firm grasp on the issues affecting us and my history of advocacy for a livable city will be instrumental in moving Austin forward under the new single-member districts system.

The outpouring of encouragement I’ve received to enter this race from so many neighbors, friends, and colleagues is very humbling and energizing. It will be a tough race, but I’m ready and I know we will succeed with the help and support of the residents in Council District 7.

I am proud to have the support of many neighborhood, community, and city leaders, including Council Member Laura Morrison and Democratic nominee for County Commissioner Precinct 2 and former City Council Member Brigid Shea.Their willingness to support me publicly is wonderful, and they have chosen to go one step further to share some thoughts about my candidacy:

Hon. Laura Morrison: “Leslie Pool has been serving the residents of Austin for decades as a community volunteer, as a member of city boards and commissions, and as a champion for neighborhoods. On the City Council, Leslie will be a strong voice for all residents of District 7.”

Hon. Brigid Shea: “I have known Leslie Pool for over 20 years. She works tirelessly, listens thoughtfully, and shares my passion for protecting our environment and making corporations pay their fair share of property taxes to lessen the burden on Austin homeowners.”

Stay tuned for more exciting news coming soon about my campaign kick-off event. In the meantime, please feel free to contact me at Leslie@LesliePoolforAustin.com.

I look forward to visiting with you soon along the campaign trail.

And now – onward to November!

Warm regards,

Leslie Pool

Candidate, Council District 7

See also:

District 7 Candidates page