This is the last 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

Residents in far north and northeast Austin have complained repeatedly about insufficient police resources. Crime in northeast Austin is like whack-a-mole, shifting from area to area in response to where police resources are currently focused. Yet police/fire/EMS is expensive, taking up 62% of the City’s operational budget. Any answers on these challenges?

It’s tough in those areas. We need better coordination, because sometimes our city services are put into the ETJ [areas just outside the city limits]. Are we being reimbursed for those? Do our interlocal agreements need to be stronger and do they need to be enhanced to make sure that we’re being reimbursed, so that the money goes back to provide services on the ground?

Those are areas where we have to start looking to do community policing. Rundberg area, Braker, that Lamar corridor, we could start working with crime watch programs. In Cleveland when I was doing my non-profit community planning work, we would do what they called ‘Dear John’ letters. They’re postcards. The community would see someone coming in who was picking up a prostitute. You’d take down their driver’s license. You’d give it to the police. The police would look up their driver’s license and then they send a postcard to the registered person that says, “Dear John. Your vehicle was seen at this time at such and such, engaging in unlawful activity with a prostitute.” Please be aware this is not a safe area and that there are diseases, and you might want to check…” It was like providing this person a community service by saying, you might want to get a check. You know what it was doing was tipping off the person’s partner, telling someone in the household. Deterring the activity.

We were really concerned because at the time, now maybe it’s not as prominent, but the Crips and the Bloods had come into Cleveland. They picked this area to sell crack. So this was one of our ways to … and there’s safer ways. We had to be out there at night with flashlights. We were called bumblebees, because we would wear yellow baseball hats, jackets, yellow flashlights. We would work three in a group, and when we would see the activity, we’d write it down.

Those are things you can do. We have a muncipal court here start pushing these absentee landlords where there’s crime activity, and start looking at ways to beef it up, and hold it to it. Don’t give them so many waivers. There’s that three strikes you’re out kind of deal. Let’s start doing that. Those are things that, without spending … you aren’t going to use as many resources as if you added more cops.

Would you propose adding more cops?

We have a really expensive budget right now. 62% [the amount spent on police/fire/EMS in the city’s operational budget] makes sense because we’re putting a lot of it towards computers, this new software. I’d like to see the software working. But if it is, then do we need more cops. We have to see what those tradeoffs are. We’re not really privy to that data as much.

There’s a woman, Linda, in Gracywoods, who has been working with some cops on doing a performance measure of where activity is. It’s a great program, because you can determine where the concentration of crime is.

I know that where we lived in Cleveland, there were certain areas like Monday nights – don’t bother coming around. Because it’s not as bad. Starting Wednesday to Sunday, and Sunday it was heavier. So beef it up more in those areas. Engage more community outreach to tell people how to protect their homes. You can have somebody who is not a police officer provide that.

There are federal programs with community policing where we could get funds to put a lay person in the police department, where we can have that person be crime watch program. And they do them. We even had it in Florida in our little community, we used that money for that. They’ll work with code enforcement. They act as a liaison, informing the public and are there all the time, you can call them. Every public meeting that is their job. Those little things cost less, but are effective. I’d like to explore more of that.

A lot of land in District 7 subject to development or redevelopment is on flood plains subject to flash floods, or in areas subject to wildfires. Some suburban communities have only one or two evacuation routes in the event of a disaster. Climate trends could make these risks worse.   But taking away property owner entitlements is always tricky. What tools, including land use requirements, should be considered?

If we don’t take these measures, we’re in jeopardy of losing our FEMA insurance. We use that to get FEMA money if we do have a disaster.

There are going to be properties that we will have to grandfather in. The new development should think about Steiner Ranch with those fires.

I was at the County when that happened. We didn’t want them to have just one access road. You need more. At work, now we say “This could be a Steiner Ranch.” We’re constantly telling the commissioners, “You don’t want another Steiner Ranch on your hands.”

The other things – certain plant material around your house. You need trees. But you don’t need to have the bushes right on top of your house. You can have cute plant life that’s not going to burn like Mexican juniper. Those are things you can have in CodeNext that guide your landscape plan, in those areas.

Another matter is routes for evacuation and for flooding, make sure the roads are graded properly. Every jurisdiction has its own grade to build roads. County has one standard to build road. City has their standard. If it’s a private development, they build it however they want, which means the roads aren’t graded properly. When there’s run-off, is the run-off just laying there? Or are we making sure it goes into a drain-storm system to protect for flooding. A lot of times they’re not. Where we share development review with the city and county, enforce that in our ETJ and say, if you’re going to do this, this is the type of development we’re going to require. If they don’t do it, then don’t annex it.   Require a sale disclosure, so when somebody goes to buy, they see that the roads were not built for this safety reason, and there could be a flood hazard. That could deter people from buying, if it’s in a disclosure.

I have a letter from the owner of Dan’s Hamburgers, a local small business, describing the pain and expense of doing a simple remodeling.   Other small business people have complained about sky-rocketing utility rates or other forms of red tape. What are the top 3 things City Council can do to help small business?

You know, we have an economic development department that is a chunk of money in our budget. They don’t bring in any money. They just spend. But it’s not on small businesses, although small business is a big chunk of what the Austin economy is. It’s the mindset. You need to change that, and say, from this point on, sure you need some incentives for big businesses, but really let’s look at the numbers and what’s driving this economy. It’s small businesses? Ok, so now we need to furnish them and take care of them.

The permitting process down there is a disaster. I know some candidates went and took tours of the permitting department. I’ve seen it. I didn’t go on the tour, because I see it all the time. I know what a permitting department is.

You could do things like – expedited reviews, where staff is strictly there to do certain things. You help the small businessman. You get them through the processing. You return a call in 24 hours. You set up a small business office with current staff. We’re not making it a bigger department. We’re just taking one person who’s maybe been there a long time, who’s smart and knows the review processes. Their sole job is to make sure the plan review process gets through. You go to those people, and the plan reviewers know – you have 10 days. That person stays on top of view. That’s common in some places. Florida has them. Cleveland has them.

You do it for different things. I’d like to see it done for affordable housing, as an incentive. We don’t have to give them land or money to build affordable housing. But if you’re going to put affordable housing on site, we’ll put you through the expedited review. This is what we want, and you make it real clear – you need this, this and this.

Small businesses getting priced out, affordable housing. Those are not perceived problems. Those are real problems. Other places are writing about Austin and the problems we have with those issues. It’s well documented. It is defendable in law. These are the types of incentives you do.

Local economist Brian Kelsey recently described Austin’s business incentives policies as wildly successful, contributing to a soft landing after the 2008 recession and robust growth since. Other commentators claim the policies favor big business and fuel gentrification. According to the City Budget, Austin has allocated about $43 million for FY 2014 in business development and incentives. Some of this goes to support local music and cultural assets, and to create blue collar jobs. Most of the $13.2 million in economic development funding targets a few strategic sectors: clean energy, biotech, digital media and wireless.   Does Austin have the right economic development strategy?

Economic development today is not what economic development was in the eighties. Today, you provide services that these big companies want – music, a university town, the culture, climate. That stuff is already in place. If we’re going to take that eighties model where we have to give incentives to bring you here. That works in Detroit. Cleveland does it, but they don’t even do it that much. They have big companies there that have their own synergy. Those incentives could be divvied up and given to small businesses. That’s a great way to do it.

I would rather use our economic incentives to create a technology hub, and concentrate development there, get those people off of our roads, coming into the city center.

You would make conditions for the incentives more granular?

I don’t even want to say which ones I would use. But if this is Austin, we’re supposed to be so great, the businesses coming in should be capturing their rainwater, maybe having solar. Was it Apple in Washington that was zero-net? They capture their rain water, use solar and wind, to keep the computers cool. It’s a lot of money upfront. But they’re giving back to the community – not using up all our resources.

You’re having a business here – you’re going to put in this sea of buildings. Why don’t you have a rooftop that’s green? Insulate – it’s cheaper for you to keep it cooler, help stay warmer. Incentivize by using clean energy or environmentally friendly types of work. That’s conservation development, where you incorporate those things.

Assuming you were able to implement your policy goals, what structural changes could one expect in the City budget? Where would spending increase or decrease?

I’d look at the economic development budget, which is about 1% of the combined City budget. I’d look at Austin Energy. They contribute a lot into the general fund. But is that for city employees, and is it going to benefits? Personnel costs – fortunately Marc Ott agreed to do it, and maybe it was pushed by Council – no more full-time employees in City budgets. A lot of times directors will pad their budget for more employees. It’s not just pay – it’s benefits and everything tied to it. They do that because they want to have a bigger budget. And then they play with it. I would want to make sure – I know they did it this year – no more full time employees.

Muni court. Why aren’t we taking in more revenue? Planning department. I bet our fees are pretty low for our plan review. So we pay more. I bet if our fees went up in planning, it would offset that one percent. Those are little increments, I know. But it would work. Look at our property taxes. Just with our property taxes, with commercial going up we could get more revenue.

A big drain on us at Austin Energy is antiquated meters. Same with water utility. We probably waste a lot of water with these old meters. If we spend money to upgrade them, the cost ends up being displaced on the homeowner.

I like that they have the home energy audit. I think those are wonderful programs.

Police and fire – it’s tough. They’re 62% of our operating budget. I don’t think it’s a big chunk, but I’m curious what our legal fees are. Why are we not doing a combining fire and EMS. There’s a big loss in retention. We lose a lot of money. If we combined EMS with fire, then maybe the fireman who’s a little older now, he might want to go into EMS. We don’t have to retrain him – he’s already in the system.

They don’t already do that?

No, they’re totally separate. But if we could combine it – EMS and fire would like to do it. Because there are overlapping services that they both provide. That would cut down costs. Even the equipment, the structures. They could be housed in the same area.

Parks. I don’t think their current expense is much. I think libraries, and I mentioned it before, but combining parks and recs and libraries together. Schools – developers when they come in sometimes they give free land to the school. Let’s get a park and a library and put it all together. Senior centers. We could start getting some federal funding for a senior center there. Let’s utilize what we have. We’d get more space, and we’re serving more population.

Transportation – I think our fees, impact fees would help offset this cost. We’d be taking in more than we’d be spending.

Austin Energy – they’re about to go to a new building because it’s going to be LEED [an environmental building standard]. But sometimes if you’re making people travel farther, you’re putting more carbon emissions on the road. You’re building a new building when you could have possibly retrofitted what you’re in. How green were you?

You sound a little skeptical about it.

Because I don’t know how “clean” it is. I’m not sure where it’s going to go. I’m not privy to all the information yet, but I’d be asking tough questions about it.

See also:

District 7 Candidates Page

This is the last 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

Residents in far north and northeast Austin have complained repeatedly about insufficient police resources. Crime in northeast Austin is like whack-a-mole, shifting from area to area in response to where police resources are currently focused. Yet police/fire/EMS is expensive, taking up 62% of the City’s operational budget. Any answers on these challenges?

I can remember in Austin when the whack-a-mole started, and it was on the East side. And that was where the drug markets were, and that was where the prostitutes were.

There was outcry on the East side. The leadership on the East side said, you’re not paying attention to our neighborhoods – you need to clean this up. This is wrong, and we pay for City services too. So there was a big deployment of police. There was community policing back then. That was an initiative that Spelman had pushed for. We’re not doing community policing anymore. But it made areas, except for maybe Dove Springs, safer.

So now folks like us – we drive over onto the East side, Rosewood, E 11th and 12th, and there’s a lot of new development there, it’s more lively, it’s safer, and it’s a benefit to both people who live there and businesses, a lot of them are small businesses.

But where did it go? Some of it went to South Austin, and some of it went to North Austin near Rutland. I used to live off of Rutherford, in a little neighborhood over there off of what was Loralinda Drive, and Heritage Oaks was kind of the older neighborhood, and then this newer neighborhood near the new elementary school. A very compact little neighborhood – Little Walnut Creek at the north, Rundberg, the I35 access here. Just on the other side of Little Walnut Creek was a real high crime area. And then St John on the other side of 183 was also high crime. I don’t know, I wasn’t tuned in to how they were being deployed at the time, but I read a lot of stories about what was going on, and I haven’t heard as many lately. Something happened that they were able to tame that, or they just aren’t reporting it.

But now it’s shifting further north to Rundberg. You have a lot of transient people, people coming and going in apartments. It’s a very car-centric part of town. There’s a lot of opportunity for petty theft, for burglary, for smash-and-grab. And how do you find the people. We even have that in Rosedale, car brake-ins and stuff. Police are like – “What can we do?” We had a guy going around puncturing the tires. We had the Sharpie bandit, going around defacing cars with a Sharpie. Nobody could ever find who it was. And then these things just sort of stop. That’s random and opportunistic. But up in the north east part of town, it’s endemic.

You have competing interests there. [Police Chief] Acevedo wants to bulk up and have more and more police. [Council Member] Spelman wants to keep it at 2 police per 1,000 residents. They fight over that every year.

I work in law enforcement. I understand their challenges and constraints. On the other hand, it seems like with 62% of the operational budget going to law enforcement, that doesn’t leave room for all the other things we need.

Where are they deployed? Are they there, and nobody knows it? We have commanders’ forums regularly in our neighborhood. I don’t know what they’re doing up near Gracywoods.

They’ve put a fair amount of police in the Rundberg area specifically. But now, the concern from people up in Harris Ridge on the other side of I35 is that now they’re starting to see drug dealers…

It is whack-a-mole. I guess police tends to be reactive. You’re not going to go police an area where nobody’s filing complaints.

So why did we stop doing community policing?

I don’t know.

Was it effective?

I thought it was. I think it was a budget thing. But it disappeared. I didn’t realize it was gone until I was on the 2012 bond committee. We were looking at Dove Springs. They were very concerned about the lack of policing down there. I was talking to a community leader – she wanted community policing, a little station in the strip center, have them regularly. It’s really good for young kids to see people in uniform. They look up to them. It’s really interesting. You forge those relationships so they’re not afraid of authority. You have to respect why they’re there and understand. That starts when you’re little.

I pushed to have a meeting with the people who were concerned about it in Dove Springs. We were assured that it would happen. We did everything as we could with the authority we had on the bond committee to try to get something to happen.

What was going on in Dove Springs could happen in the north part of the city. There’s no reason why it couldn’t.

I would be interested in raising community policing again. And there would be fewer miles for them to drive. At shift change, they all have to come together at headquarters, to swap information. You also have to have more parking. There’s this scrum of police. They’re also not out policing, because they’re all on shift change. But it’s necessary, really necessary, for them to have conversations. In a community model, you’d have those hubs out in the communities. Your patrols would be in that area. Yeah, you would have shift change, but you wouldn’t be going all the way out to 8th Street.

I think just the visual presence of a uniform – not just police but constables out in the county, there can be agreements. Right now the City does the city, and the constables do outside, except when they’re serving process. We have offices everywhere – Downtown, Rollingwood, down at the lake. We have Austin-County EMS. It seems like there could be more collaboration between the police agencies.

A lot of land in District 7 subject to development or redevelopment is on flood plains subject to flash floods, or in areas subject to wildfires. Some suburban communities have only one or two evacuation routes in the event of a disaster. Climate trends could make these risks worse. But taking away property owner entitlements is always tricky. What tools, including land use requirements, should be considered?

Yes, it needs to be done. I understand it because I live near Shoal Creek where flooding is a risk. And then fire is always a concern.

We’ve got impervious cover – that’s key. How many rooftops, how big is the asphalt for the parking. What kind of landscaping do you have. Do you have swales and berms, French drains. What are you doing with your guttering and sewer systems, waste water systems that carry the water away.

San Antonio doesn’t have that kind of infrastructure, so the water just runs on the streets until it finds an outlet. There aren’t run off systems in the older parts of San Antonio.

Knowing how the water flows, where the floodplains are, engineers and landscape architects as well are good at knowing how to redirect the water, not lose it or wash away, but put it to good use.

As far as the fire, you just have to be really aware of where the canopies are, how close it comes to the rooftops. You have shrubbery around the foundation of your house – I thought this was more of an issue on the west side of town. But it sounds like there are some wooded areas in the north area that I just haven’t been to see.

The City should do some planning, including in CodeNext. What is the lay of the land up there, what are the hazards, where is the water coming from and where is it trying to go. Are you able to mitigate it on the way.

I have a letter from the owner of Dan’s Hamburgers, a local small business, describing the pain and expense of doing a simple remodeling. Other small business people have complained about sky-rocketing utility rates or other forms of red tape. What are the top 3 things City Council can do to help small business?

Permitting should be streamlined and inspections timely, for sure, but perhaps the most helpful thing would be predictability in and ease of understanding the City’s processes.

The City is eager to subsidize corporations when they come to town. If we end that, then we could use the revenue saved to create a program that benefits small local businesses to drive customers to them, keep them competitive.

Something innovative would be cool – the Go Local cards were a good idea, although not widely adopted here. From what I can see, IBIZ is doing well. I’d tap into the energy at the Austin Independent Business Alliance for their expertise in helping all the fine local independent businesses specific to our area.

Local economist Brian Kelsey recently described Austin’s business incentives policies as wildly successful, contributing to a soft landing after the 2008 recession and robust growth since. Other commentators claim the policies favor big business and fuel gentrification. According to the City Budget, Austin has allocated about $43 million for FY 2014 in business development and incentives. Some of this goes to support local music and cultural assets, and to create blue collar jobs. Most of the $13.2 million in economic development funding targets a few strategic sectors: clean energy, biotech, digital media and wireless. Does Austin have the right economic development strategy?

It’s long been said that Austin has a built-in buffer to recession due to its diversified economy. Government and education being fairly recession-proof. Political stalemates – the inability of Congress to work together, the refusal at the State Capitol to fund public education adequately – have put real pressure on these traditional mainstays.

I’ve lived through many boom-bust cycles in Austin – two in just the last 10 years – and there’s no doubt it’s really hard on people to stay afloat when their jobs disappear.

You ask if Austin has the right economic development strategy: From a high level perspective, our town is ticking right along, and it would indeed appear we’ve got it right. What isn’t apparent at that high level though are the cracks that exist in the lives of low wage earners, and how the rapid pace of growth is pricing people out of their homes.

That’s why it’s important to tackle the tough issues: transit, affordability, tax reform, and environmental sustainability – quality of life issues – to preserve and protect our neighborhoods, our schools, our Austin lifestyle: all the things we most prize about our town.

Assuming you were able to implement your policy goals, what structural changes could one expect in the City budget? Where would spending increase or decrease?

There are a lot of unmet needs. I know that from being on the bond committee. Our parks and our pools and our libraries aren’t sufficiently staffed. The libraries are hurting for the new stock. We needed to put renovation and repair on the bond, because they weren’t doing the cyclical repairs. That’s just wrong. I told them as much on the bond committee – this is just terrible. I advocated and got full funding for every one of those library repairs. Pools and the parks – the same thing. We’ve got existing civic amenities, we’re not spending enough money and paying enough attention to them.

We have a delicate balance between buying the watershed protection water quality conservation lands, putting that in the same bond money [competing with urban parks], that was tough. My heart was with SOS, and BCP, and watershed protection stuff. But I see around me parks that aren’t mowed, pools don’t have chemicals. They’re not even open late enough – they close before Labor Day.

I want to go back to where the libraries are 7 days a week, and they’re open the hours that they used to be before they paired them, maybe five or six years ago. People forgot about that. New people coming to town don’t even know that there was a time when Yarborough was open Sunday through Saturday. I want to go back to that. For me it’s the things that affect the neighborhoods most closely would be one of my top priorities.

Are there things you would scale back on?

I don’t understand why the water utility can’t meld the conservation with the profit side of their enterprise, when Austin Energy has been able to do that. I asked that question when I sat on water-waste water [a City commission]. Two things I advocated for there was to provide progressive tiering. At that time it was just below 2,000, above 2,000 [gallons]. I think they have four tiers now. People who use a lot should pay a premium for it.

I’m concerned about all the straws in Lake Travis, and LCRA I understand is finally going to go down and hunt down the people who put illegal straws in the lake, because they’re not treating that water. They’re just putting it on their property. We’re at 38% capacity. It’s never been that low. Not since the 1950s.

I don’t know what else you do about that. They’re going to build a reservoir, but that’s for the lower Colorado. That’ll help downstream folks so we don’t have to shove it down there. But it’s got to rain – honestly. We’ve got to be really strategic in how we educate the community, where we allow the excess water to be used. We’ve seen a huge change in how people do the landscaping, just in the last 2-3 years.

Hasn’t it been remarkable?

It has been remarkable, and it’s beautiful landscape. It’s low maintenance too, so you’re not even having to mow.

You just have to weed Bermuda.
Well if you get up early in the spring…

See also:

District 7 Candidates Page

This is the last of four interviews with City Council District 7 candidate Jeb Boyt 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

Residents in far north and northeast Austin have complained repeatedly about insufficient police resources. Crime in northeast Austin is like whack-a-mole, shifting from area to area in response to where police resources are currently focused. Yet police/fire/EMS is expensive, taking up 62% of the City’s operational budget. Any answers on these challenges?

Community policing is very effective. It can be expensive, because it requires bodies.

One of the big challenges is looking at the location of the ratio between police officers to residents. In looking at the appropriate ratios, that’s one of the questions every year in the budget. Police department’s always looking for more manpower, more folks.

One of the questions is what is the actual time in the street. You can look at alternatives like the sobriety center. Rather than taking someone and booking them for public intoxication, and having an officer be off the street for an hour or more while they fill out paperwork and drive someone around, with the sobriety center they drop someone off, and they’re back on the streets in minutes. That’s one example of ways to get more out of our existing resources.

Another question is looking at the jobs that are done by uniformed police officers that could be done by someone else. One of the big questions is all the special events – people are rightly concerned about officers being pulled from neighborhoods to cover some of these public events. There’s a big review of that going on. One of the things they’re trying to do is agreements so we can get officers from nearby communities so we don’t have to pay so much overtime, or that we don’t have to pull officers out of the neighborhoods to the extent that has been occurring.

All of those are worth a look. I particularly like the idea of trying to work more regionally – regional government has lots of opportunities. It’s a challenge in Texas because our governments are so balkanized.

But sharing resources across communities…

An example is the APD – AISD interface. AISD has to pay to have a police officer in a stadium. But APD has officers across the street. Someone leaves the stadium – AISD can’t do anything. Are there ways to negotiate where those jurisdictional lines are between AISD and APD. Mostly that’s a question of shifting the cost from AISD to APD.

But the core opportunity is using resources more efficiently because you’ve already got a policeman there covering the event – why use two?

Exactly.

A lot of land in District 7 subject to development or redevelopment is on flood plains subject to flash floods, or in areas subject to wildfires. Some suburban communities have only one or two evacuation routes in the event of a disaster. Climate trends could make these risks worse.   But taking away property owner entitlements is always tricky. What tools, including land use requirements, should be considered?

We need to do a much better job of improving new development, to make sure that there are evacuation routes. One of the primary goals of Imagine Austin is compact and connected. The connected aspect doesn’t just mean having multiple routes to walk to school, or that the traffic doesn’t get dumped out and funneled onto arteries. It also means having routes to get out.

There are some new subdivisions going in to District 7. There is the larger question of the coordination between Austin Fire Department and the emergency service districts. Should we go to a county-wide fire department? All those are worth looking at. One of the things I hope that we will be able to do with the new Council is, having more Council members so we can actually work more cooperatively with the county – just have the bandwidth to jointly assess some of these options.

The wild fire concerns are a bigger issue west of Mopac. The real danger – the fuel loads and the difficult terrain – are west of Mopac. We’ve got a real balkanized situation out there with West Lake, and ESDs and the city – income from different areas. Progress has been made at least as far as trying to establish emergency access roads, if not trying to improve connections overall. But we’ve still got problems. Like Steiner Ranch still has the one road in, which is a problem – something they never should have allowed to happen, but now we’re having to deal with in retrospect.

We’ve been lucky. But we could easily have a fire that would be worse than Bastrop in the West Hills. We need to be cognizant about that. Homeowners need to be able to easily cut the trees around their houses to reduce the fuel load as appropriate.

I have a letter from the owner of Dan’s Hamburgers, a local small business, describing the pain and expense of doing a simple remodeling.   Other small business people have complained about sky-rocketing utility rates or other forms of red tape. What are the top 3 things City Council can do to help small business?

The CodeNext – improving the building area is first and foremost.

Other aspects – tax rates, utility rates – keep an eye on those. One of the things we’ve heard in the past that’s been a concern are subsidies that go to big business, that small business can’t take advantage. They’re unable to function at a competitive advantage. We definitely need to make sure that we’re ensuring a level playing field between parties.

Local economist Brian Kelsey recently described Austin’s business incentives policies as wildly successful, contributing to a soft landing after the 2008 recession and robust growth since. Other commentators claim the policies favor big business and fuel gentrification. According to the City Budget, Austin has allocated about $43 million for FY 2014 in business development and incentives. Some of this goes to support local music and cultural assets, and to create blue collar jobs. Most of the $13.2 million in economic development funding targets a few strategic sectors: clean energy, biotech, digital media and wireless.   Does Austin have the right economic development strategy?

Well it’s been working pretty well. But again – the question of the cost. The big change that we’re going to see in economic development, is that Austin has been very successful at capturing state money. Many of these deals, who is the medical technology company that went into Seaholm recently? Looking at the city’s portion, it looks like, “Is this really worthy investment.”

But the state was bringing so much money to the table, it was like the city would be crazy to turn the deal down. That has been the economic reality under Perry. We’re going to have a new governor. There’s been a lot of questions about the way that money’s been spent at the state level. The funding for the Chevron headquarters, the recent acquisition of the Toyota headquarters up in Plano.

I suspect the legislature might be really – assuming there’s a functioning legislature – they may take a more critical view of how those monies are spent.

So changes at the state level…

I would only anticipate that we’re going to see a real reduction in the amount of state funds available. So there may not be the same opportunities for matching on the local level. It may be harder, more closely examined what we’re doing with these funds.

There may be cases where you need to look to make sure – in an interview in the Chronicle this week, Mike Martinez had a really good examination of the incentives provided for JW Marriott that we’re now in litigation over. Marriott’s gone forward without our incentives, they’re going to be opening ahead of schedule. That deal was messed up for a variety of reasons. From the design to the execution. But it raises a good question – why are we so eager to provide incentives for that project?

There’s also an argument that having that large convention center hotel, we can have much bigger conventions. A hotel that is already booked up for most of its first year – that that hotel will actually trigger development of other hotels that we’re seeing. We’ve got six downtown hotel projects on the board. It’s kind of amazing. We’ll see how many of them actually build out. It’s more money into city coffers, more people coming, bigger conventions. Increased real estate values. Lots of opportunities.

And the question of sometimes granting incentives for a project. When you’re granting upfront costs – waiving fees, foregoing revenues that the city would never have gotten if the project didn’t go forward. We’ve got to make sure that it actually does happen – the larger economy. There’s concerns about whether these projects are creating new jobs or just creating jobs for people who live elsewhere and are moving to town. That was a criticism of Perry’s Toyota proposal. Doesn’t create new jobs, just shuffles jobs around between the states.

Here in Austin, the question is whether we really need to be encouraging people to move here. That gets into the issues of the importance of encouraging people in incentive packages to make local hires. And we’ve got to work with AISD and ACC to make sure the job training programs are in place – that we’re fulfilling the technical skills.

Are there examples of encouraging business to make local hires, in a way that’s effective – does that work?

The Apple deal includes a good portion of that.

And how would you even monitor that?

The company has to submit an annual report that’s reviewed by city staff. There’s a process.

The other big one was – Visa? A call center or something like that. They were looking to do call center jobs. Those are nice entry level jobs, but they aren’t high value jobs.

I think we need for multiple reasons to look at our incentives program – we need to do a better job of understanding it. I don’t think the public review, and the public understanding of it is where it needs to be.

One of your most important leadership roles in the City of Austin was serving on the Downtown Commission. I believe you were chair of that commission at a time when the Downtown Plan was being put together. How does Downtown play into the City’s budget strategy, and what are the lessons for North Austin?

One of the key things about Downtown is that Downtown exports revenue. It generates far more revenues than we spend in the city budget.

I was in the early phases of the Downtown plan. It was definitely during the time when Mayor Wynn had issued his call for 25,000 housing units in downtown, a goal which we are not even close to hitting even with all the construction that we’ve seen.

How this is relevant for North Austin – the great thing about the Downtown Commission is how it was a really diverse range of folks – we had folks from the Arts Commission sitting with developers – parks – I was there from the Parks Commission. Saying, how can we make Downtown work better. And we looked at all those issues – sound from Stubbs, for instance. That experience of having to really work with broad coalitions, to look at the impacts, because one of things you get Downtown, is lots of great projects that people want to do Downtown that have big impacts on other people, whether it’s traffic impacts around SXSW, sound impacts, cost of living impacts, hosts of other issues. How the park revenues are spent downtown. How are we going to use Waterloo Park, now that it has this large flood control structure in the middle of it. AND the experience I got from dealing with specific issues like the traffic issues downtown.

Those are experiences I absorbed, that extend to issues in North Austin. And one of the aspects we have – this whole Arboretum-Domain-Metric area – various people have said it has the potential to be another Downtown. I would look forward to the opportunity to make that area work better as a cohesive whole, as opposed to a very disparate set of entities that operate on a suburban model. Really make it into more of an urban region.

Assuming you were able to implement your policy goals, what structural changes could one expect in the City budget? Where would spending increase or decrease?

Funding parks would be my focus. Keeping a cap on increases to public safety spending. Making sure that we are effectively using all of our funding opportunities.

There’s been discussion of TIFs – tax-increment finance. We have a number of TIFs already in place – one for Waller Creek, one for Seaholm. I think there’s one around Mueller. You set a baseline, and then bond off the increase – use the increase in revenue to support and pay off bonds. Some people have said we’re not doing enough with TIFs. I’m concerned that we don’t know what we’re doing with TIFs. I’d like to see a global picture – all of these TIFs – there’s an annual report on each TIF. I’d like to see a comprehensive report on all these projects. Because all these have payoff periods. There’s a point where the TIF is going to stop paying the bonds, and then all that money’s going to go back into the general fund. I want to make sure we have a clearer picture of how much money is not going into the general fund. I think we have too often a perception that TIFs are free. The cost though, is that those funds are not going into the general fund anymore.

Several candidates have talked about TIFs. People are always looking for creative ways to fund stuff. One of the concerns I’ve heard about TIFs is you have to have a certain scale to make it effective. You can’t just put a TIF on a random piece of property – it becomes inefficient. So when you talk about TIFs in North Austin, what would be an example of a district that would be large enough to support a TIF? And who would be paying?

You migh establish a TIF district around a Lone Star rail station to pay off bonds on the transportation infrastructure. So say the area around, say the Domain, you have a baseline tax year, I think 2014 is the baseline. Basically any new appreciation in value on those properties, the incremental revenue would pay down that bond fund.

The property owners are paying the taxes, and then as those funds come in, they are allocated between the base value – what was paid up till now, that still goes in the general fund. The increase goes into the fund to pay for the transportation bonds for that area.

So would the entire North Burnet Gateway be in the TIF district?

I think it’s about a quarter mile around the transportation station, and I think we’ve talked about that for Kramer as well. Those are two of the big opportunities in North Austin. Robinson Ranch is potentially another one, which is sort of in District 7. More in District 6. What exactly happens to build out on that – big question.

So a big risk of ‘urbanizing’ suburban areas is you’ve got to add all this expensive infrastructure. But people think taxes are already too high…

Partly that recognizes there’s limitations on how much we can increase taxes. There’s always way more ways to spend money than the money comes in. We have to look at our existing revenues and see what is in our means, and what is an appropriate schedule for building this stuff out?

And also important to have a council member who can build coalitions with other council members, which is going to involve some horsetrading, so that we can get these projects funded.

It’s going to be very interesting to see the dynamics of how this shapes up. There are few races right now where anyone has a strong commitment, maybe only two, where you have a good idea that that person is going to be on the Council. One of the interesting things about campaigns is that you start building the relationships and the understanding of issues that you will take onto the Council. So as we move through this campaign, and as the races start to focus down more on the likely candidates, it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

It’s funny I looked up the other day, I was talking to one of the District 6 candidates, I said, “You know, if we win, I think I’m going to be sitting next to you for the next two years.” [Laughter] Six, seven eight, I think that’s how it’s going to work up on the dais.

 See also:

District 7 Candidates Page

This is the last of four interviews with City Council District 7 candidate Jimmy Paver 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

Residents in far north and northeast Austin have complained repeatedly about insufficient police resources. Crime in northeast Austin is like whack-a-mole, shifting from area to area in response to where police resources are currently focused. Yet police/fire/EMS is expensive, taking up 62% of the City’s operational budget. Any answers on these challenges?

I know that this is a problem, where police officers on patrol are pulled out of their particular area to service a more severe crime area. The cost of public safety is a necessary one. Without saying we’re going to add more police officers, or we’re going to cut – let’s have an auxillary force that services the more severe crimes and leaves these people on the beat.   I think there is probably a better way internally to provide services that are consistent to particular neighborhoods’ high crime. Working on policy ways that the Austin Police Department can provide that may be a solution. Throwing money at a problem is not always.

Do we have enough police now?

Where crime is rampant, we obviously don’t have enough police.   That’s the bottom line. Crime is a function of a lot of things, but police officers are the best deterrent we have. Organized neighborhoods as well. I hazard to say with the number of people that we have coming here, granted a lot of them aren’t going to live in the eastern part of District 7, that we would probably need more police officers. But, we have a spending problem on that front.   We’re looking for the best solution for the community to reduce crime, either with the police department, or through budgetary measures.

A lot of land in District 7 subject to development or redevelopment is on flood plains subject to flash floods, or in areas subject to wildfires. Some suburban communities have only one or two evacuation routes in the event of a disaster. Climate trends could make these risks worse.   But taking away property owner entitlements is always tricky. What tools, including land use requirements, should be considered?

I think it’s a justifiable concern, considering there’s been more extreme weather patterns and more development, with corresponding environmental impact. I think based on the threat – let’s take historical data, let’s look at how often in a given period this has flooded, and then look at the impact of a given development pattern on flood or fire. Then decide how to use that should a development want to go there. If there’s any threat, ways of exit…

I’d be willing to look at [restricting development in some places] if it will reduce the risk. I say that not in an absolutist way – I can’t lock myself into saying, “We just won’t develop.”

You would take it on a case-by-case and consider context.

I would be willing to change the zoning to reduce the risk if I thought it justified.

I have a letter from the owner of Dan’s Hamburgers, a local small business, describing the pain and expense of doing a simple remodeling.   Other small business people have complained about sky-rocketing utility rates or other forms of red tape. What are the top 3 things City Council can do to help small business?

I think that we need to streamline the permitting process and the efficiency by which the planning departments talk to one another. All of these permits languish too long in planning. I have personal experience in dealing with this, just in getting site development permits, even replacing windows in my home. So I understand the frustrations that small businesses face.

I think that is not a question of just throwing more money into permitting, but just making it more efficient. Let’s set some deadlines for review, for getting things back to people. The cost of energy for these mid-level utility users and businesses is far too high, and I think that we need to find a way to basically not screw the middle businessman.

You take a small category of people and businesses that you think can take the hit, and you move their kilowatt hour charge. Usually the first notice they get is when they get their bill. I think that’s something people have to pay attention to closely. Small businesses operate with small margins. We need to ensure that we’re not hitting them with costs that push them out, resulting in a non-diversity of services and local business. That’s another thing that I would say.

The other thing is let’s look at the ways in which we have local businesses and in particular places and try to protect some of that. I’ve seen a lot of local business leave from Burnet Rd as of late. Mi Victoria, some other places. Let’s think about where those businesses are, and promoting their longevity. Frisco’s, Omelettry. I’d like to protect the places where local business exists, and not have Chili’s, Starbucks.

Are you thinking of a tool that supports specifically local businesses, or site-specific businesses?

Small businesses themselves, one of the things I’ve been thinking about internally, for this district, let’s build a small business coalition, of people who can at least coalesce around protecting themselves. Part of the problem is that they’re all out on their own. If they had an organized force like …

That’s not a City Council structure…

No it’s not. It’s a suggestion for them to protect themselves – something just as useful or more useful.

Local economist Brian Kelsey recently described Austin’s business incentives policies as wildly successful, contributing to a soft landing after the 2008 recession and robust growth since. Other commentators claim the policies favor big business and fuel gentrification. According to the City Budget, Austin has allocated about $43 million for FY 2014 in business development and incentives. Some of this goes to support local music and cultural assets, and to create blue collar jobs. Most of the $13.2 million in economic development funding targets a few strategic sectors: clean energy, biotech, digital media and wireless.   Does Austin have the right economic development strategy?

$43 million targeting those industries, when they’re coming probably with or without that, I think seems excessive. We’ve done incentives and attracted quite a few employers here. But I also think that Austin is a self-perpetuating machine at this point. Moving money over to that, I would have to get into the specifics on how that money would be spent. Abatements is also a big part of this. That wouldn’t be included there, but as far as incentives are concerned, I’m not for none of them, but it seems to me at this point we’ve incentivized enough growth to really jumpstart what we’re doing.

Assuming you were able to implement your policy goals, what structural changes could one expect in the City budget? Where would spending increase or decrease?

Our debt levels are fine, but we continue to incur debt and pay it down at a rate, we could pay it at a higher rate. That would be a place in which I would see us spending a little bit more. I think the economic development department is a big one, it doesn’t need to be as big as it is. But again, I would have to look at that carefully, see how many employees are there, how much we’re doing.

You don’t want to be backed into a corner

No. I’m not going to be backed into a corner.   There’s lots of tools down at the detail policy, there’s places to save money. I’m for providing some relief, and that means some cuts on the expenditure side. From a public safety standpoint, there is ongoing negotiation for some of what they’re doing, whether it be police pension, some of the things going on with firefighters. City employee jobs are good jobs. They’re solid, they have good retirement programs. I think that should all be respected. But I also think to the extent that they are far over and above what a city of comparable means and methods would be, that that’s something worth looking at.

I’m not saying that we don’t need more of each in public safety, but I think there are things previously negotiated many years ago that could be looked at in terms of saving the City some more money. I’d be willing to look into that.

I’m actually surprised that you’ve pointed out two possible areas to control costs. You haven’t really named an area to spend more or cut taxes

You’re getting to the underlying philosophy on some of what this is. We’re spending a lot of money. That’s not debatable. In terms of what we need to spend more money on, I think those are harder questions that we’ve talked about. A little bit more on transportation. A little bit more making things more affordable for people. But getting into where all of these sacred cows are and which ones you’d add or cut is a hard thing to do.

It’s the sausage-making.

Exactly. The only thing I can ensure you of – the best possible decision given the benefit as I see it to a community of people, whether they be public safety employees, or people who need to get around in their community. Whereever I see the best use of those resources to affect the most people as the case is made, will be where I come down on it.

See also:

District 7 Candidates Page

This is the third of four interviews with City Council District 7 candidate Jimmy Paver 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

The interview took place on May 17. Since then, Mr. Paver has met with numerous stakeholders and refined his positions. He asked to provide updates to his original responses where appropriate. These are in italics below.

What are the top 3 steps needed to improve North Austin’s mobility?

I do think that we need to make the area more walkable. There are places where people feel under threat to cross on their bikes or on foot. Especially down here in the southern part of the district. Getting across Burnet Rd, or Anderson Ln, or Parmer. They don’t do it because they can’t do it. In terms of policy solutions to doing something like that, other cities have done a walkable underpass, or walkable overpass, whatever it might be – people need a way, and this goes back to quality of life in each neighborhood, and thinking you can’t get over to the next neighborhood to reach a park. So we need ways to make things more walkable in each neighborhood.

From a transportation standpoint, we need to look at getting all the rapid transit that we need. We’re going to have to look at rail, even though it underserves this community. It is still part of a larger plan to connect the entire city. We also need to look at improving our existing infrastructure. We need to widen roads. I really do like the idea of having bus turnout lanes, because I do think that’s a huge issue to the flow of traffic. And so, we also need to work with regional partners to see where those projects are, and how we can assist in our small way, getting those plans – the flyover on 183 that connects with I35 – in the next few years – things like that.

What would be an example of widening a road?

To the extent that it’s possible, you’d have to do a right of way where you add a lane.

Where would you add lanes?

In this district? If it was doable you’d add a turn lane south of 2222 on Burnet Rd. But to the extent that you could do that, it would make it more drivable.

You can talk about rail, you can talk about bikes, you can talk about walkability. You can talk about all that stuff. But when it comes down to it, from the standpoint of what do we need to do about transportation, we need to make sure that people can get around in a way that doesn’t totally reduce their quality of life, for whichever mode that they choose. That’s a broad answer, but this is …

You have competing needs, though. You have people who live in this part of the neighborhood – you’re going to have to drive wherever you need to go. For them, widening roads makes sense. But if you live near Burnet Rd, widening Burnet makes it harder for them to walk across the street.

Yeah. Absolutely. In deference to what is the biggest short-term problem right now, we’re talking more about traffic. Driveable traffic – making that an easier daily activity, that I also think that goes to personal choice about how to do it. Whether that means riding the bus, or time-shifting, when people go to work, this is basically a 4-hour a day problem. This isn’t something that never ends. It’s something that’s created by the system that we’ve implemented, and the fact that we’ve fallen behind on our transportation infrastructure. The priority has to be moving people in vehicles right now. Secondary to that, the other things we need to look at for this neighborhood [Allandale] specifically is the ability to walk around.

In 2010, staff recommended to open the N Lamar-Morrow Street intersection north of Crestview Station to west-bound traffic.   This proposal pitted residents in Highland neighborhood who wanted better east-west connectivity against residents in Crestview who feared a torrent of traffic down their residential street. The Council subcommittee reviewing the proposal voted 3-0 to open Morrow. Did they get it right? 

Morrow has been a point of contention for a long time. When Wal-Mart was coming, and now with this turn lane stuff. It’s obvious why each neighborhood would or wouldn’t want it. I don’t think it’s a very effective policy change – it’s dangerous to turn left there. And there’s a reason that you don’t. You can go up to Lamar, turn left onto Anderson, and go that way. Or loop back and turn right onto Morrow. I don’t think that they got it right per se. With the Midtown Commons and how many units are going to go in there, that’s just not from a safety standpoint a great idea. From a neighborhood standpoint I can see why they would be concerned about that.

So you’re saying the onus should have been to protect the residents in Crestview?

Yeah, I think they’ll move a lot of traffic through there, and it’s dangerous vehicle traffic when you can just go up and turn around.

What about coming straight across from Highland?

There’s a light signal there, I don’t see that as dangerous. I see the left turn from the middle lane on Lamar as dangerous.

More broadly – east-west traffic. It’s not going to be a road, whatever it is. The east-west connectivity will be solved somewhat by what’s going to happen with 183 and TxDOT. To the extent that people are moving way out. A better way to get east and west — it’s not a road infrastructure improvement question, it’s a question of finding more effective ways to move people. I really don’t have a good answer to this question. There isn’t one.

It sounds like what you’re kind of on the verge of saying is what I’ve heard transportation planners say, is it’s not a matter of how many cars you can move, but of how many people you can move – it becomes a transit solution.

Yes – I agree with that. It’s about the number of people you can move. Once you have a more comprehensive transit system in place, then you’ll have a better solution to that. God willing, in 10-15 years you’ll have the connectivity on rail that you need to move people across the city. As far as a road is concerned, you just can’t do it.

Drilling them through neighborhoods…

You can’t do that. It’s not a solvable problem with an old idea.

Last year, a ProjectConnect advisory board voted 14-1 to approve a first rail line up San Jacinto and Red River to Highland Mall. Many rail advocates and several neighborhoods in North Austin argue that Guadalupe/N Lamar is a more logical choice based on current ridership.   Others worry a rail line will accelerate development in suburban areas not yet supported by good pedestrian infrastructure, exacerbating mid-term congestion. There is also the wider debate about whether rail is a $1.4 billion gamble that trends like robot-cars will render obsolete, or a long overdue first step towards a more sustainable urban transportation system. Where do you come down on urban rail, and on the best route for an initial rail line? 

9/14 – While I stand by this initial statement [below], I am not supporting the rail proposal. At $110 million a mile, it still isn’t the route most consistent with existing demand. It will also add yet another pass-through on people’s property taxes that is substantial and lasting. 

I come down on the side of we have to something – is it the best plan we have, no.   Will it cost more if we wait five years and restructure it, yes. Should we have done it 10 years ago, probably. Is it going to make everybody happy, or service them for their tax dollars immediately? No.

But people have to remember that rail is part of a wider plan to provide transit options all over Austin. Within six years, hopefully, after the commencement of the first line, we’ll be building other lines. If we take the short view, which is – this is going to cost a lot of money, and this is not going to serve my area, while that’s valid, at the same time, I think you have to do what’s right for the entire city. And this is the best first step in that direction.

What do you think of the proposals on I35 to bury it or improve…

I think if you can get TxDOT to fund it all, go ahead. This is based on a concept in Dallas, the Woodall-Rogers freeway. That’s been successful, and drawn commerce there. But it’s hugely expensive, would be hugely disruptive during a time when we have this many more people. So, it’s an expensive but long-term fix. I think the proposal is to bury it from 1^st to 15^th Street. I have doubts about the costs of doing so. I think it might draw in some new business and new things to downtown, if it was modeled as Dallas modeled theirs, it could be a good thing. But it would be expensive, and I don’t know what role the city would be expected to play.

Two years ago, a developer sought a variance to build a 4-story apartment block at the Ross property at 8100 Burnet. The developer argued that the project puts mixed use housing on a transit corridor, contributing to the Imagine Austin goal of compact and connected. Opponents argued that the project would put too much density at a location a quarter mile from the nearest rapid transit station, and the project’s “easy in-and-out” design that wraps apartments around a parking garage core would just encourage more driving. Council supported the upzoning on first reading. How would you have voted?

I’m not opposed to it. I understand the problems that are going to be created in terms of transit, by having congestion, not being near the station. But until we have an idea about how we really want to comprehensively control these types of developments in certain areas, so that they don’t create congestion, I don’t think you can be against everything. Its non-proximity to a busing location, while inconvenient, is not something that should have to be a requirement to do a project like that.

What are your priorities for the environment and open space?

In this district itself, we should look at having more parkland available for people who feel like they can’t get around to another neighborhood and utilize it. We should, when you’re talking about environment in general, everything that we are currently doing and more should be done to protect the environment as we know it.

These projects, these larger development projects have environmental consequences that are avoidable. I think that we have to be consistent in ensuring that the environment is protected from Shoal Creek, back to the question of the flood plain areas. We certainly need more space and parks and community areas for people to gather.

One of the things that Council doesn’t like is a revenue-neutral open space anymore. It’s tough to sell them on that. We’ve had this big discussion about Crestview park. And while I understand that they were promised something that they didn’t get, the idea for Austin Energy to sell that tract of land and to just have it be a park, it didn’t excite [Council] members. So they went off and bought a golf course that’s going to generate revenue. I think there’s been some things that have been more deferential to the Barton Creek watershed area. I think we should look at ways, develop ideas, and parks and community areas that have some potential for revenue-earning for the city.

So taking the Crestview park as an example…

There’s a number of ways you could generate some revenue when you’re attracting families to the area. Council Member Tovo has an idea of putting a carousel inside the park. You could put a community garden there, grow vegetables and sell them at a farmer’s market. There’s ways you can think about it. We still charge to go to the pool at Northwest Park. There’s some ways that we can do this, that make it attractive enough. There’s also things that development can be a part of, whether that’s a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district. And not make Crestview happy in any way, but these are compromised options for getting more open space when you’re competing for dollars.

People have talked about TIFs as a possible mechanism. I’ve heard that efficiency of a TIF depends on the scale. How serious a mechanism would that be for say Crestview Station as an example?

I don’t know. You’re looking at a 3-acre tract, of which you might use an acre for development, which isn’t very much.

I wouldn’t think you would apply it to that one tract, but to that entire district.

I think it can be effective if it’s scaled correctly, but I’d have to look at the details and the structure of the payback. They’ve been disastrous failures in some places, and successful in others. It’s another compromise option. One that I would not say no to if it gets people some of what they want.

Parks Department describes much of North Austin as an ‘open space desert’. The average open space in Austin’s urban core is 5% – in some North Austin neighborhoods it’s under 1%. With existing mechanisms, North Burnet Gateway will end up with about a third to a half the open space of Downtown Austin. The City of Austin allocated a paltry $4 million for urban land acquisition in the 2012 bond package. Yet getting new open space, and getting it where it’s most useful near transit, is expensive and getting more so with each passing day. Should Austin be spending a lot on open space in really expensive places?

It is worthwhile to have a place where you can do community gatherings, like a park, in a densified area. I think people who want to densify should share the cost of doing so. So if you want to build new housing and you want to go up, you should provide a space for people to go for the community. But in terms of what we have to spend, and what we’re spending it on, I think we need to look more towards partnerships than just throwing a lot of money at a little list.

Do you have an example of a partnership-type concept that would work?

The Triangle’s got some nice open space.

The Triangle’s park is city-funded land. Tom Terkel, the developer, was on the verge of ending the project, and the City stepped in and paid for a pocket park. 

We obviously don’t have a lot of money for parks. We obviously need parks. But finding other ways to finance them, it’s probably the best route to go, other than just taking from the Parks Department.

In a 10-1 universe, west Austin’s council members can be expected to resist spending, and urban council members will use Imagine Austin to justify funding that supports the city’s compact-and-connected goals.   There’s a risk that infrastructure projects for suburban north Austin will continue to languish. What arguments will be effective in winning capital investment for suburban improvements?

I think under the new system, there will be an understanding between members all the way around on infrastructure projects that are the most needed. I think it’s going to give neighborhoods in places that really need improvements a voice to which if other members are respectful of those things can defer to.

We’re not talking about enormous infrastructure costs, we’re talking about things we need to provide in neighborhoods so people can continue to be there. Basic needs stuff. I think in terms of getting these things funded, it’ll be a question of how affordable they are, and how effective you can be in convincing other members that this need supercedes another. Which has always been difficult for this district. But just like any legislature, your ability to be effective in leadership and in place, will help you get some of those dollars for your area. Everybody’s competing for funds, but I think that’s the best approach.

What’s the approach you would use to convince other members that, say, a project that staff is looking at in Harris Ridge, is worth putting in the capital budget or in a bond package?

One, that it can be affordable, not an enormous one-time expense. And then, I think that everybody will get some deference about their district. I think that’s just going to happen.

If you want to talk about an overall strategy for getting money, the point may be moot in what we’re talking about. If we’re talking about a big bond package or something, or we going to be able to slide in a $3 million improvement for Harris Ridge? Probably not. Are there other ways to accomplish the same thing, where money becomes available in smaller pools of money? That’s more realistic.

That’s a mechanism the new Council will have to work out – some slack to allow representatives to address needs in their district?

Yes, there’s some of that in every legislature.

See also:

District 7 Candidate Page

District 7 City Council candidates at back to back forums last week fine-tuned their messages, influenced both by voters and by each other. The result is an emerging consensus on several issues: a homestead exemption, more affordable and family-friendly housing, and diversity in transportation solutions.

Conversely, most candidates are lukewarm on this November’s urban rail bond. Candidates remain divided about the appropriate extent of new housing, especially along corridors.

All eight District 7 candidates attended Tuesday’s Upper District 7 Forum held in the Gracywoods neighborhood off Metric. Seven of the candidates also participated in the League of Women Voters – City of Austin Ethics Commission forum on Wednesday, available on the City’s Channel 6 web page. [link] Each forum drew over 100 people.

Affordability: Homeowner Exemptions, New Housing, Marching on the Lege

Fiscal hawks Ed English and Jimmy Paver both proposed homestead exemptions early in the campaign, and at this point all the candidates support some kind of exemption. English has proposed an exemption that reduces each homeowner’s appraisal by a fixed amount.

Urbanist Jeb Boyt at the Gracywoods forum suggested $5,000 off a home’s appraised value. Newcomer Zack Ingraham suggested a percentage rate between 5 and 20%.

Flat rates are seen as “progressive” because owners of less expensive homes save relatively more tax. But state rules may complicate implementing a flat rate exemption.

English also proposed an outside audit of the City budget. “The City of Austin has more employees earning over $100,000 than any other city in Texas – including San Antonio, Houston and Dallas,” he said.

Ingraham raised Austin Energy as low hanging fruit for cost savings and transparency, a position seconded by working class activist Pete Salazar. “We need to stop using the public utility as a tax grabber, Salazar said. “All these fees that have nothing to do with services.”

Travis County planner Melissa Zone said affordability matters to small businesses too. “We should invest [our incentives] in small locally owned businesses. Great example – Whole Foods started out as a small, locally owned business. Now they’re an international corporation. Their headquarters is here in Austin. We should be investing in our people.” Salazar seconded this approach, urging the City to shape local business incubator corridors along streets like Lamar.

Leslie Pool, an aide to Travis County Constable Carlos Lopez, made reform of the state’s commercial property appraisal rules her top affordability measure. “I would be part of an army of people, and probably a lot of people in this room,” Pool said, “to work with other elected officials and our delegation to make the changes at the state level that are going to be required.”

Newcomer and restauranteer Darryl Wittle countered that Council has limited control over the legislature. “That’s a strategy of hope – not a great strategy.” Wittle joined other candidates in calling for more scrutiny of the City budget.

Boyt throughout the campaign has differentiated himself by focusing on housing affordability. “A key driver is housing market pressure,” Boyt said at the League of Women Voters forum. “We’re 47,000 units behind – we’re at 97% apartment occupancy. Until we can begin to provide the housing that folks need, we’re not going to get the prices down.”

At the Gracywoods forum, Boyt pivoted to tax relief, endorsing the homestead exemption.

That left an opening for others to frame the housing issue. Unlike Boyt, English said new housing in the south of District 7 should be limited, and that the City should build affordable housing on its vacant land, incentivize developers to build starter homes, and use cheaper land in the north of the district. “Our district does include the northeast corner, east of I35 along Parmer Ln. There is land where we can add additional housing, and the City can promote that.”

Zone too has supported building urban centers on Parmer near I35, and at Howard Lane. At the forum, she proposed tying density bonuses to affordable housing. In addition, “there’s transportation impact fees that we could adopt,” whereby developers would pay for more of the cost of new infrastructure to support suburban growth.

Wittle and Ingraham both expressed support for simpler development rules to bring more housing onto the market. Wittle gave a thumbs up to the Imagine Austin plan, which proposes putting housing along commercial streets like Lamar or Burnet. “We’re growing so rapidly as a city,” Wittle said.

“There are services that people want. There are developments that people want to take advantage of. We’re just going to have to accept some of these changes for what they are.”

Pool countered: “We need to comprehensively address the concerns of the traffic along [the corridor], with the development compatible with the surrounding neighborhoods. We need strict attention to what the neighborhood associations, the residents, and the small business owners along both of those corridors [Lamar, Burnet] need.” Like Salazar, she said the City needs to follow neighborhood plans.

Boyt also proposed requiring buyers of commercial property to disclose the sale price, so that commercial taxes are appraised fairly. Paver seconded this. Zone claimed credit for proposing commercial sale disclosure months earlier.

Transportation: Rail Bond Derailment

The rage in traffic congestion discussions is “Transportation Demand Management,” representing a number of relatively inexpensive solutions (car-pooling, telecommuting, distributed work hours) that attempt to get people off the roads during rush hour. Zone, the urban planner, has popularized the term.  English and Paver have especially embraced the concepts.

“Everybody likes to poo-poo the idea of time demand management, but I think it’s a great idea,” Paver said. “There’s ways we need to look at this that don’t just go to providing more transportation options for more dollars.”

Paver, English and Pool at the forums spoke to another traffic reduction strategy – clustering of housing on corridors into hubs well-supported by transit and pedestrian amenities. Paver coined a term, ‘Scattershot VMU.’ “We have scattershot development – need to think about a way to direct development to particular areas, then build transit into those areas.” New park space, added English, “can be arranged along public transit routes so that they support walking from public transportation.”

Almost all the candidates spoke to the urgent need for sidewalks, especially near transit. Pool said her 2012 bond committee directed money to begin planning such changes and to add sidewalks on Burnet and Lamar.

English, Paver and most recently Ingraham have been the most pro-road. English was careful to list roads first in a list of options – “road improvements, additional bus service, cost-effective rail, Uber-Lyft and ride sharing.” Paver supported adding a flyover at 183, upgrading I35, fixing failed intersections and synchronizing traffic lights. Ingraham said he would support the transportation bond money designated for roads, and would add more lanes. Boyt observed that money for Parmer and I35 improvements had been pulled from the November bond package.

Zone said the City doesn’t have to invest in building entire new roads if it looks at intersections as the key choke points. “You can widen the intersection to let buses get through. Work with CapMetro to make sure there’s connectivity from one bus station to the next.” English made this point as well. “I’ve seen some studies for some very interesting intersection designs that would improve traffic flow through those intersections.”

Many candidates have expressed reservations about the November rail bond for fear that the Highland Mall route won’t get enough ridership. “We need to look at where ridership actually is,” Paver said. It was left to Boyt, when challenged on the high cost of the rail package, to defend it: “it nicely combines affordability and transportation.” He said the project’s tax burden would be end-loaded so that taxpayers pay more as the service starts to reduce congestion.

Salazar in particular has panned the urban rail package, arguing that the money would be better served expanding bus service throughout the city.

Family-friendly Housing, Schools, Amenities

All candidates acknowledge the need for more housing, but a sub-text is the need to retain housing and services that keep families in the urban core.

Paver in particular pushed this issue. “It’s more complicated than just bringing the [housing] stock up. We continue to suburbanize poverty in a way that’s unhealthy for children.”  Most “affordable” housing in the core, he said, is single occupancy units that families can’t use. The City’s affordability programs need to account for this.

Zone agreed. A lot of single occupancy housing, she said, puts pressure on a community’s demographics and can undermine urban schools. City Council “can work to make sure there’s enough family-friendly housing in our core.”

The City has done a good job of supplementing AISD with after school programs, Zone said. She warned that the state was preparing to cut such funding further, which will raise the burden on muncipalities. Boyt agreed, and likewise advocated for diverse housing that accommodates families. “Families have to move around, during the school year, in search of cheaper rents,” he said. That’s a major cause of instability in the schools, added English, whose wife is a counselor at Cook Elementary.

English said city-funded after-school programs help AISD avoid the Robin Hood ordinance’s recapture rule. According to Paver, “this year we’re going to give $130 million back to the state” in recapture money. He said that amount will escalate dramatically over the next five years. With AISD’s severe funding shortage, cuts in federal funding, and a rapidly growing population of children under six, the district can expect a crisis in the coming years. It’s on the City, he said, to help get children ready for kindergarten.

Pool, a former PTA and girl scout leader, said civic engagement starts young and proposed that the City sponsor a “civic academy” program that goes into schools to encourage student involvement in municipal matters.

Paver commended City Council members Mike Martinez and Sheryl Cole for restoring some funding to community amenities in the upcoming budget – libraries, parks and community centers. He said more is needed to revitalize traditional services, and the City will need to be open to charging for such services. Wittle took this argument further, arguing that the City should rethink its approach to corporate sponsorship and public private ventures in order to get more park funding. Boyt too has previously endorsed this approach. At Crestview Station, Zone noted, neighbors fighting for a park have offered several options to raise outside money, and are ready to step in with grants or hands-on maintenance.

North Austin – Your Time Has Come!

All the candidates have enthused on the opportunities for fairer representation that come with 10-1. Clearly this is a popular message with North Austin voters.

Zone, who as a planner has run several corridor plans, said 10-1 will offer a chance to fix City planning processes that lack credibility. “The way the City’s taking it now is they’re pushing it down our throat.” The City needs to abandon its “this is how you do it” approach, she said, and adopt true participatory planning where stakeholder feedback actually influences the result.

“Driving up here, coming up Burnet and Metric,” Pool told the audience at the Gracywoods forum, “I could see that there are clear gaps in services up here. Your sidewalks – there are no sidewalks. The creeks are neglected and there are concerns about pollution. The parks have been neglected – the Walnut Creek pool house needs to be painted.”

North Austin above 183 “lacks libraries, a community center, and parks,” Paver added. The libraries we do have run on curtailed hours.

Some neighborhoods, like Oak Ridge, were annexed from the county and have no infrastructure, English said. “There’s a lack of storm drains, there’s a lack of sidewalks. We need additional police staff, which can be largely paid for by reducing overtime.”

Even Boyt, who generally avoids divisive rhetoric and like Pool has invested years on Downtown issues, couldn’t resist dipping into the populist waters. “I’m particularly excited… at not having to go down to south Austin, and ask permission and ask for favors from people who think Austin ends at Anderson Ln. I’m interested in representing and serving North Austin.”

See also:

District 7 Candidate Page

This is the third of four interviews with City Council District 7 candidate Jeb Boyt 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

What are the top 3 steps needed to improve North Austin’s mobility?

Getting urban rail operating. Getting Lone Star rail operating would be a huge benefit to North Austin to get people down Mopac. And then I think generally – it’s hard to narrow it down to three. Improving bicycle and pedestrian access – we’ve got a lot of disconnected sidewalks, especially along sections of N Lamar and areas where people needing to use this to get to bus stops, to get to stores. Folks use that everyday. And that relates not to just on N Lamar, but adjacent to it.

We need to work to try to create a better transportation flow in the larger Arboretum-Domain-Metric area. At the Kramer Ln station we’ve got ACC Metric campus, we’ve got the Domain, we’ve got the Arboretum. Years ago there was talk about trying to create some circulators. That’ll help, better bicycle connections will help. We’ve got some more improvements on the book. But it’s still ridiculously difficult trying to ride your bike from here to The Domain, taking your life into your hands. It shouldn’t be that hard.

I heard a story about a guy who came out for SXSW, got dropped off at Kramer Ln station and he missed his shuttle bus. He had to walk back to his hotel on 183 at 1 AM, in areas where there were no sidewalks. We can do better. We can do a lot better.

Are you talking about improvements just in the ROW, in places where the City has control over?

And creating some new ones. Certainly we’ve got UT owns a lot of land, We have a lot of control over the ROW along the railroad line north of 183. We’ve got the Rail-Trail proposals that will provide some connectivity. Along the Capitol Metro ROW we need to look at those to see how to make it happen. But there’s some difficulties. Like in Wooten, there is like no space. Very little space. There’s like schools, school kids who would benefit from getting across 183 safely on foot or bike. Let alone connectivity into the whole Crestview Station area.

In 2010, staff recommended to open the N Lamar-Morrow Street intersection north of Crestview Station to west-bound traffic. This proposal pitted residents in Highland neighborhood who wanted better east-west connectivity against residents in Crestview who feared a torrent of traffic down their residential street. The Council subcommittee reviewing the proposal voted 3-0 to open Morrow. Did they get it right?

I actually remember when they closed Morrow – that was closed back in 95 maybe. I’m not sure closing it in the first place was the right decision. But there was a real problem, there were real risks with cut-through traffic.

That was about the time 183 was being put in? N Lamar and Anderson became a cluster, as they say.

Right. As it is, to get from Highland you go up Morrow and take a right into this freeway interchange. So there’s problems there.

It’s a challenging area. I don’t know if allowing west-bound traffic through is the right decision.

So you would not have allowed it?

I’d have to look at the specifics a lot more. I’d be more inclined to allow traffic from Crestview Station to exit on Morrow and go westbound, than allow people who are not in the neighborhood to cross Lamar or turn left onto Morrow to go through the neighborhood.

This particular case was intended to illustrate the challenge of east-west traffic in general. Do you see any wider approaches to North Austin’s east-west traffic problem? Is there a strategy?

Well there’s a proposal to include a new rapid bus line on Parmer. Wasn’t clear exactly on the parameters of where it would run. But it would run roughly on the Parmer corridor. That would help. Parmer itself can be a challenge.

How about Anderson?

Anderson is again is a challenge – there are also again large blocks where there’s no connectivity through to the neighborhoods.

What about Rapid Transit?

Even bus transit would help along Anderson. Part of the problem with a rapid bus line on Anderson is that it’s fairly short.

We were proposing that you extend it to Mopac and dog-leg over to Jollyville, and east down Airport.

That could work.

We need to look at the alternatives. I don’t have a lot of easy – they’re not easy solutions. I think looking at the corridor between ACC Metric, Kramer Station.

Last year, a ProjectConnect advisory board voted 14-1 to approve a first rail line up San Jacinto and Red River to Highland Mall. Many rail advocates and several neighborhoods in North Austin argue that Guadalupe/N Lamar is a more logical choice based on current ridership. Others worry a rail line will accelerate development in suburban areas not yet supported by good pedestrian infrastructure, exacerbating mid-term congestion. There is also the wider debate about whether rail is a $1.4 billion gamble that trends like robot-cars will render obsolete, or a long overdue first step towards a more sustainable urban transportation system. Where do you come down on urban rail, and on the best route for an initial rail line?

The best route is Hancock to Grove.

To Grove?

Grove is where ACC – Grove – it’s the Riverside Golf Course. All the plans go from the intersection of Grove and Riverside. But from Hancock – connections to the red line, bring folks down to UT to the Capitol, to Downtown. Avoid the costs of the underpass at Hancock. I think that would be far and away the best.

There’s more ridership on Lamar, yes. There’s REAL challenges. In order to do construction from 24th to 29th, to 35th Street, you’d have to close two car lanes of traffic. Or, a subway tunnel would be a possibility from 35th street would be about a billion dollars. Not likely you’d get federal money to do it. And there’s the question of if you run a train up Guadalupe/Lamar, where should it go? Do you connect to the Red Line at Crestview Station? That’s a long way to ask people to do a transfer if they’re going to UT or the Capitol. Some people advocate pushing through to the transit center [north of 183]. Well you could look at that, but you’d spend probably more than we are proposing to spend at Hancock to get to that intersection – Airport and Lamar. Then again, there’s the question of how you get through the freeway interchange that they built at 183 and Lamar. Very expensive alternatives, if that’s even the way to go. It may be better, if we come back to this in a few years, it may make a lot more sense to go to the Lone Star rail station at 35th Street, which is a possibility for a future expansion.

On Mopac?

Come north of campus. You’d run it down 35th Street probably, to Central Market, Guadalupe, Seton. You’d then connect it over to the existing proposed station at San Jacinto and Dean Keaton.

Oh, robot cars. They’re not going to replace transit. There are two robot car scenarios. There is the nightmare robot car scenario where everybody has their own robot car. And we go ride downtown, in traffic, that’s as bad or worse than what we see today, and then our robot cars circle the block waiting to pick us up, or look for parking. That’s not going to get us any improvement.

There’s the idea that if you have a robot car that is an improved version of Car-2-Go, or an improved version of a shuttle, so it picks up several people from a neighborhood and take them downtown, or whatever the destination might be. There’s opportunity for some real improvement, that would be supplemental to the high capacity transit carrying lots of people on a route. Best way to do that is rail, rapid bus is second best, and then our regular bus system. Robot cars aren’t going to help that much.

The other challenge of the Lamar route is the disruption of the rapid bus system, especially since we’re talking now of expanding the rapid bus all the way north from the Tech Ridge campus in Pflugerville.

There’s been a lot of back and forth on those routes about how much you would really lose of federal funding if you swapped out rapid bus for rail. Do you have a sense of how valid that argument is?

It is fairly valid. Well it’s a question that we would not get the additional money for rail, because of the duplicative service from the rapid bus. It’s also a question of when – at some point the rapid bus will be retired. But the bigger issue is the duplication of service – you still have to run the rapid bus, if you go up Lamar to the Crestview transit center, what do you do then with all the people north of there up to Tech Ridge? Are you going to ask them to get off and transfer? That would be a lowering of service which I don’t think you want to do.

Two years ago, a developer sought a variance to build a 4-story apartment block at the Ross property at 8100 Burnet. The developer argued that the project puts mixed use housing on a transit corridor, contributing to the Imagine Austin goal of compact and connected. Opponents argued that the project would put too much density at a location a quarter mile from the nearest rapid transit station, and the project’s “easy in-and-out” design that wraps apartments around a parking garage core would just encourage more driving. Council supported the upzoning on first reading. How would you have voted?

Probably in favor of that, although I think the larger challenge there is the disconnect – no connectivity between that site and Anderson. It’s difficult to redesign that area to have a separate street that would connect through to Anderson, or Steck. It’s a site that we probably should have higher – 4 stories seem appropriate. There’s the rapid bus stop there – south of Anderson?

There’s one at the entrance to Northcross, and one north of Ohlen, about a quarter mile away.

Quarter mile is a reasonable distance – that’s the usual planning distance for people to walk to transit. If I lived in those apartments, would I walk down, cross Anderson, and go to the bus stop? Probably.

What are your priorities for the environment and open space?

Mostly it’s Parks priorities. Long-term things I have done is worked for access to public lands that we already own. BCP [Balcones Canyonlands] land, water quality protection lands. Certainly building the Violet Crown trail is one of those. Right now efforts are underway to get it built to the Wildflower center. The next challenge will be to get it extended south into the water quality protection lands. I think that’s going to happen.

The Parks Department – we’ve got major needs. In terms of taking care of our existing parks. We need to improve and expand our parks; we’re having trouble maintaining what we’ve already got. Nick Barbaro had a really great response in the Statesman editorial on special event fees. He lined out all of the waivers. A large number – maybe half, were Parks Department waivers. The problem is that waivers directly affect the parks budget, whereas the additional revenues the city’s receiving from these events goes into the general fund. We probably need to look to see if we’re waiving parks fees, if there’s an offsetting transfer coming back to the Parks Department to cover any losses.

I think one of the things that we’ve not done is public-private partnerships for parks, sponsorships for parks. You go to other cities and see nice facilities they have that are corporate sponsored. We don’t have that much in Austin. I think that’s one of the problems we have with the lack of facilities. I’d like to put back on the table the idea of the swim center that the YMCA had proposed as a partnership, to see if that might work.

We need to do a master plan, we’re in the early stages of working on a master plan for that whole area north of Cesar Chavez. We can look at that. For North Austin, we need to look at opportunities for funding parks, and some of this is going to be building local support for parks. A lot of the neighborhood association meetings I’ve been going to, I frequently hear people talk about working on park projects, partnering with the Parks Foundations on the grants for parks. Continuing that, continuining supporting local folks in doing that, expanding that out to other neighborhoods that aren’t involved in that now, is part of it.

We have two big park opportunities – one is the redevelopment of the property at 45th and Bull Creek, which is, while not technically in District 7, you can throw a rock and hit it. One of the things I think we have a strong chance to happen in any version of the redevelopment plan, is we get parkland along the flood plain – really gorgeous area down there. Hopefully connect that to the Shoal Creek trail system.

The other one we’ve heard a lot of talk about is Austin Energy’s Ryan Property there in Crestview Station. That one’s going to be more challenging. Austin Energy says they want to be paid. It has to be a transfer of funds. That can be worked out. I’ve heard that the City may be trying to acquire other parcels adjacent to that to create a larger area. Of course you’ve got a real conflict between the neighborhood’s desire for a park, and or a community garden, and the desire to have housing that can be affordable housing, right there adjacent to the rail station. And there’s the issue that, if you look at the City’s plan, some of the best areas for a park are where you would want to put through a new road or connection into the station from Justin. The best areas for the park are areas that have the least compatibility restrictions on them. So we might need to work out a deal with the neighborhood, in agreeing that overall, in terms of how that site gets worked. As the Council Member for District 7, certainly I would be very interested and very committed to working with all the parties, trying to come up with the best solution or best balance that we can.

Parks Department describes much of North Austin as an ‘open space desert’. The average open space in Austin’s urban core is 5% – in some North Austin neighborhoods it’s under 1%. With existing mechanisms, North Burnet Gateway will end up with about a third to a half the open space of Downtown Austin. The City of Austin allocated a paltry $4 million for urban land acquisition in the 2012 bond package. Yet getting new open space, and getting it where it’s most useful near transit, is expensive and getting more so with each passing day. Should Austin be spending a lot on open space in really expensive places?

That’s a tough one. Generally, it works better if we can encourage development patterns that support good open space. There’s actually some pretty large open spaces at the Domain that are starting to come online. I don’t think these are part of PARD’s inventory – these are private spaces.

They count it towards the North Burnet Gateway open space – you mean like the 9-acre dog park that’s just opened. That was actually subsidized.

The bigger question is – The Pickle Campus would be a huge opportunity, but I doubt UT’s going to let us have much access to that at all. UT’s doing the redevelopment of their property on the west side of Mopac, south between Braker and 360. So, I don’t know what the plan there is, but I do think it would be great if it had some park opportunities there. Our relationship with UT is complex, and challenging. Because we have few levers and opportunities to use with UT. The Council has been, when they’ve had rare opportunities to have levers with UT, Council has been really reluctant to use that. And we’ve really got to. We’ve got some big challenges. Redevelopment of that property is a great example, but the biggest challenge is what happens with the Brackenridge tract, the Lion’s Golf Course. I wish I had an easy answer about how we could keep Lions. Certainly we’ve seen UT – part of the challenge of dealing with UT is, the first time we start to push back, or even if they think you’re going to push back, they’ll run off and get a law passed in the legislature.

UT also wants a lot of cooperation, from the city, on building a medical school. I think we need to make them realize that while UT is a huge asset for Austin, Austin is also a big asset for UT.

You served on the 2012 bond task force committee that recommended bond funding for various open space projects. You voted to increase funding for land conservation and trails mostly outside the city limits, from the staff recommended $50m to $57m, and to cut staff’s recommendation for urban park acquisition from $7m to $4m. Tell me about your thinking on those votes? Is 57 to 4 the right ratio for water quality vs urban open space?

Water quality lands – I think we’re moving to the end of that process. Very limited opportunities left for acquisition of land over the Barton Springs aquifer. So that was kind of a grab it now or never situation. One of the things we’ve heard from the Parks Department is that “you can give us money to buy and create more urban parks, but we don’t have the money to maintain it.” It’s the challenge between the capital budget and the annual operating budget.

And here again, is the Parks Department appropriately funded? Parks unfortunately has been in the situation that they’re the first department cut when things get tight, and the last department funded when the good times start coming back again. This back and forth has hurt them. Parks Department got screwed on the Auditorium Shores plan when the Convention Visitors Bureau has held all the funds that was supposed to fund the projects on Auditorium Shores.

That’s the standard argument – we don’t have enough money to maintain what we have, why should we be buying more land. And yet, as you said about the conservation lands, we’re running out of opportunity there, doesn’t that same argument apply to urban areas that are redeveloping? Grab it now or never? And why can’t you land bank the land? That’s what they’re doing with affordability. There’s no maintenance if you’re just sitting on the land leasing it out.

No, there’s still maintenance costs associated with keeping the property clean, keeping people off…

But if you are leasing it out, you’re bringing in revenue to offset the maintenance. That’s what lots of businessmen do along Burnet Rd – use the revenues to land bank the property.

The open space was a separate line relative to the overall parks budget. One of the things that we focused on in the parks budget was getting the right balance in the overall parks budget, and the funding between building out for the rec centers, and building and projects in the various levels of parks, metro parks, neighborhood parks. There are various categories of parks. That was the primary balance that we struck, was balancing open space acquisition with the support for the build out and development of parks. For instance, the park on Onion Creek where we saw a lot of the flooding, that property was acquired in 1998. We’re just now starting to see facilities built out there.

In a 10-1 universe, west Austin’s council members can be expected to resist spending, and urban council members will use Imagine Austin to justify funding that supports the city’s compact-and-connected goals. There’s a risk that infrastructure projects for suburban north Austin will continue to languish. What arguments will be effective in winning capital investment for suburban improvements?

The main capital projects are likely to get pushed off until a possible 2018 bond election. So we have a chance to develop some practices and habits within the Council before we actually get there. Most of the first round of 10-1 Council members will still be there for that bond package. But even in the annual budget there are capital projects. Sidewalk improvement projects, other miscellaneous projects. The water/waste water projects have been pulled out of the bond process and are all funded through the water utility. How those get apportioned is going to be one of the big challenges. The city has developed some pretty good priority scoring lists.

A lot of those priority lists tend to emphasize Imagine Austin goals – something close to a transit station gets a higher score. And that comes back to this question – you’ve got a gap on Parmer, near nothing, how do we even get on this list?

Yeah, that’s a great question. Even with those priority lists, you’ve got a cut-off line. There are projects that make the list, and there are projects that can’t even get on the list. And where that line is is kind of the real question. And I think more so than trying to define the nature of the projects, I think the first challenge is going to be balancing funding between the districts. That’s the big challenge we’re going to face during next summer’s budget conversation.

As Council Member Morrison brought up, during discussion of the dog park on Auditorium Shores, she asked Parks Department, so do you realize you don’t have dog parks in every one of the 10 districts, and maybe that’s going to be an issue going forward? That kind of question is going to come up. That’s always the key challenge. Let’s say you’ve got a proposed project at Dessau and Howard Ln. Very suburban. What are the needs? Where does it fall on the scoring ranking? Why is that ranking too low? Why should it be pushed higher? And that’s where council members are going to have to work with folks in the community, to try to do what we can to get those projects on the lists and get them funded.

See also:

District 7 Candidate Page

This is the third 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

What are the top 3 steps needed to improve North Austin’s mobility?

I would like to see us adopt transportation demand management strategies. Possibly telecommuting is one of them. The northeast area is a great area for this tech community. Why aren’t we making that an activity center hub, and providing the housing and providing the commercial. So now these tech people don’t have to go far if everything’s right there – land’s there.

The area south of Pflugerville, along Parmer Ln?

It’s a great area. There’s enough land there to protect the natural environment. It’s a tech hub. And then they’re not all trying to clamber down here. They have a great area there.

Developers will go there. We incentivize activity centers. CAMPO is pushing because the feds said federal highway and HUD have teamed up together to say “We are going to do walkable cities. We want them as activity centers.” And you should place them where you think there’s enough activity happening. It can be defined based on how you choose it. All industrial, or mixed use. The City has them. I think we should be encouraging the mixed use and the higher density in these activity centers, because that’s where our federal funds are going to be put.

That was one of the original Imagine Austin scenarios. The ‘distributed centers’ approach kind of got ignored, because they were only using certain metrics to explain the pros and cons. A lot of people keep coming back to that approach – more centers, but farther out.

It makes sense. The burden of affordability down here becomes less acute. Shifting the desired place to build. And all of that takes somebody reaching out. I’ve already done it, to some of the tech giants. And the ones I’ve talked to like that approach. And this helps because of my CAMPO experience. Most of our money’s going to that anyway. All the infrastructure’s being built. The county’s concentrating in that area. So why are we not doing that.

You have Tech Ridge, you have Howard Station. We already have train nodes there. The Domain – great activity center, we can start there. We can do our light rail – move it into those areas. And now we can move these people to different areas, and that goes to affordability, to saving land. it’s increasing density without impacting – it’s more holistic. We’ll get federal funding. The way they’re going now, I’ve heard them in meetings – we know we probably won’t get a lot of CAMPO money. Well let’s go for it. Let’s partner with Pflugerville, Manor. Let’s start doing that. They want it. They’ll give up some money – it’s less for us to have to spend.

Also – alternative routes to work. Those are great options. I’m not saying that it’s the be all, end all. But maybe during rush hour, a road is all one direction. Or maybe most of the lanes are, only one or two are going in the opposite – so that more cars are moving in a more efficient way. Bike lanes – put designated bike lanes. Why are we not having bike lanes on roads – you shouldn’t have a bike in the road competing with cars at anything higher than 30 mph. Someone’s going to get hurt.

When you talk about bike lanes, are you talking about striping, or cycle tracks?

You could do both – where things are faster you might have to have barriers. But even striping. We pay attention – we’re more courteous drivers here than people want to believe.

Because on Burnet they striped bike lanes. But I would never take my kid out there. It’s not meant for everybody.

Because we drive too fast on that road. Nationally the consensus is you shouldn’t share roads where it’s more than 30 mph. In Cleveland, they decreased the road speeds there to allow bicycles. If that’s what you want, that’s what you have to do and live with it. It wasn’t easy, it took a lot of years and community meetings. But that’s stuff you should do.

Why aren’t we staggering work hours? We have a young community here. Most of them will come in late anyways if you want them at 7:30 or 8:00. Stagger their work hours to be 10 o’clock, and then they leave at 7. They’re much happier with that anyway because they all go out at night. I would have loved those hours at 25. Then there are other people who get up – Phil’s a great example – he’s up and out of the house at 5:30 am.

Some of these things are policies that companies will do if they can, anyway. Is this really something the City can influence?

We do. They talk about it, but they haven’t really done about it.

For their own personnel. Are you saying the City should be going out to companies?

Well we can’t force companies, but we have tools. There’s a program called Commute Solutions. It’s taking Seton and other private companies with the City and County to come up with ways to reduce congestion. But you have to implement it, and see it.

Hospitals – they have odd work hours. So they don’t really hit that rush hour. But I’m sure we talked to a lot of start-up companies working downtown. Why don’t we offer them reduced bus pass rates. That gets them off the streets and on the buses. Those young kids will use it. We give CapMetro money – we can tell them how we want the money used. We want to extend the hours at night. Those are things we can do. We can see immediate changes.

In 2010, staff recommended to open the N Lamar-Morrow Street intersection north of Crestview Station to west-bound traffic.   This proposal pitted residents in Highland neighborhood who wanted better east-west connectivity against residents in Crestview who feared a torrent of traffic down their residential street. The Council subcommittee reviewing the proposal voted 3-0 to open Morrow. Did they get it right?

No. Morrow is single family. The traffic that’s coming through there isn’t just to serve Highland. It’s a lot of people to throw people into our residential streets. I’m not saying it just because it’s Crestview, and I know people are going to think that. What we should have done is improve that intersection at Anderson, which is dangerous anyway. If we would have provided better access, improvements that could be done.

We actually went to the state to do exactly that. They aren’t interested in spending tens of millions of dollars on more projects

You provide enough data – there are a lot of accidents that happen there.   The state also would partner with – doesn’t that help the City if we have better improvements at an intersection.

Crestview Station was coming in. Why weren’t we working with that developer for some kind of developer agreement to improve that area. The Highland neighborhood. They’re going to be wanting to develop up in that area. That could have been money used to improve that intersection. That’s what needs to be done.

Putting a lot of traffic onto a residential street – can you say with a good conscience that if someone gets hurt, well we didn’t know that… absolutely not. Once you improve Anderson, and by the way – how hard did the City work? I could call up the state myself and talk to the planning department

We did that – we met with the state. They’re the ones coming back saying, We’d love to help – we don’t have the money

They can. There’s federal money. There’s ways to improve that intersection. If it meant a lot for the city, they should have taken that on through one of our bond programs. That’s a safety issue there. Too much traffic. They need to champion it at City Hall. And knowing that you can do it – that’s the part where I get riled up. It’s not like we dropped the ball – you say, fine we’re going over you, we’re going to the feds. That’s how you get improvements. I hate to do it, but another child dies or gets hurt, you see how much money comes in. It’s a horrible thought, but that’s how some places do things.

Last year, a ProjectConnect advisory board voted 14-1 to approve a first rail line up San Jacinto and Red River to Highland Mall. Many rail advocates and several neighborhoods in North Austin argue that Guadalupe/N Lamar is a more logical choice based on current ridership.   Others worry a rail line will accelerate development in suburban areas not yet supported by good pedestrian infrastructure, exacerbating mid-term congestion. There is also the wider debate about whether rail is a $1.4 billion gamble that trends like robot-cars will render obsolete, or a long overdue first step towards a more sustainable urban transportation system. Where do you come down on urban rail, and on the best route for an initial rail line?

Urban rail is needed. I support the idea of having urban rail. I don’t support the current rail line because it’s not serving the current population. Sometimes, to get everyone on board, they need to see it work. You might use that area because land is cheaper, or they think it’d be easier, let’s just get this in and show everyone. But if it’s not serving the people who are currently here, it’s not going to work.

Highland area will get developed eventually, and that’s when another line comes in, because urban rail shouldn’t be one line, it should be multiples. And that’s when we address that. The other thing is, when Guadalupe… and I’ve talked to people at ProjectConnect and the other side. Those who want the Lamar/Guadalupe route, I’ve always said to them, “Sounds like an easy solution.” However, Guadalupe goes through UT. There’s many factors – either UT doesn’t want it, or they might not be able to do it because of the way their land – there’s gas and mineral rights. They’re limited how they can spend money, what can be built. If we’re saying we want rail down Guadalupe, if there’s some underlying factors, we can’t make UT do it.

What do they need to do?

If you’re putting it down Guadalupe, why haven’t we heard from UT? That to me makes me … because the professors would use it. The students could certainly use it.

What I had heard previously was that UT was pushing hard for an alignment along San Jacinto.

See, I didn’t hear that. And why, that’s the thing – we don’t know. As a County employee, I provide data for ProjectConnect. The numbers don’t add up for the proposed line. I don’t have a preferred route, because to me I would want to see all the data there. I would want to talk to all the players. Our businesses and UT need to be in that room. If they were in the room, it was a private room discussion. I would have to know… and then from there I could make a professional judgement.

Two years ago, a developer sought a variance to build a 4-story apartment block at the Ross property at 8100 Burnet. The developer argued that the project puts mixed use housing on a transit corridor, contributing to the Imagine Austin goal of compact and connected. Opponents argued that the project would put too much density at a location a quarter mile from the nearest rapid transit station, and the project’s “easy in-and-out” design that wraps apartments around a parking garage core would just encourage more driving. Council supported the upzoning on first reading. How would you have voted?

That’s a large parcel, and right behind them are apartments. So as a planner it makes sense to have residential there. I didn’t see the site plan, so I couldn’t tell you the whole idea of it, but four stories – I don’t know – I would have probably wanted to keep it at two or three stories like the apartments behind.

They were proposing about an acre of commercial along Burnet, with a four-story apartment complex to the rear, adjacent to a creek.

I would have been worried about the creek too.

On the one hand, Burnet doesn’t have the infrastructure to support many four and five story apartments. When I look at housing, I’m looking at it from a planning perspective – what do we have in terms of waste water, roads, storm water – what can we handle there. The planning process should look at key sites and evaluate infrastructure. If it’s not sufficient, can cost-effective changes be made to upgrade it. Also, what are they [the developers] providing. I always like to think – well what have you contributed.

On the other hand, apartments make sense here because it was already adjacent to apartments and that car dealership. If you’re going to put multi-family somewhere, it’s a good area. I would question why four stories. And were they all like 1-BR, or would they have apartments in there that families could use.

Mostly one bedroom.

Yeah. So it’s going to become quick in and out. So that’s the part I would start questioning them on. But the use – I don’t have an issue with the use. This is one where form-based code would work. It wouldn’t be as large, possibly.

What are your priorities for the environment and open space?

We have to watch our creeks and our tributaries, our aquifers. If we put too much impervious area here, it’s harder for the water to seep through. Even in areas that aren’t recharge zones, the water makes its way down. So for the environment, I would love to see more conservation development. We cluster housing in some areas, capturing rain water.

Conservation development is a term I haven’t heard, but you’re saying you integrate the development with the environment.

Right. And they’ve done it here in Texas.

Central Market

Yeah. It’s a great example. You’ve got a lot of density, but there’s still open space, and you can go shopping. The Riata – it’s expensive to live, but up in the northwest area – they use their storm pond system, and they put a track and a play area. It’s a great option because now you have the open space, areas for families, and then the apartments. Different apartment styles, and families live there, single people. Not the greatest in terms of having transit. They should work on that. But that helps the environment. I like to see that. Removing trees – that just creates the run off, because the roots get uprooted, it takes a long time – that dirt is so impacted, so that runs off into our sewer systems.

That troubles me a lot. This is Texas. It’s a heat island here. We need shaded trees. For new development, we should have more trees in place, and have them appropriate to our climate, so they don’t have to become water dependent once they are two years in. It creates living space for the birds, not just …. trees help when there’s a slight wind – it acts as a kind of fan for you.

Our ETJs [the areas just beyond the city limits] have a lot of land that we need to be watching and protecting. Up near the Balcones Canyon Lands, we have the water quality zones over the aquifer we need to [protect] better. We have Walnut Creek – make sure it’s not only protected, but that when we get more development along Lamar, that the storm water in impervious areas doesn’t just wash into there.

What will we lose with more development in areas that are critical to our ecozones? Those things concern me out east. The Black Prairie lands. We should be protecting some of that critical farm land, where there’s water, so that we can have sustainable farms, young people who want to live there, work there. And then we have less to travel for food. So now the food doesn’t have to go state by state, it’s a shorter access to us. That’s healthier. It’s not sitting in a truck for two weeks. Those things all contribute to a healthy environment.

I like to also increase our watershed. They started out really well, but they’re kind of reducing some of the regs. I think we should encourage stronger regulations. Now that it’s in place, we can. Save Our Springs. They’re gnawing away at that. We’ve got to be careful, doing some water planning at the county. I see that our Highland Lakes aren’t replenishing as quickly as they say. Once we do get that rain, it’s flooding because we have too much impervious area. Will water just stay stagnant, because it can’t get back and percolate into the ground. We’re creating flood-prone or flooded areas, just because of the way things will be developed. We have to be cautious with that.

Parks Department describes much of North Austin as an ‘open space desert’. The average open space in Austin’s urban core is 5% – in some North Austin neighborhoods it’s under 1%. With existing mechanisms, North Burnet Gateway will end up with about a third to a half the open space of Downtown Austin. The City of Austin allocated a paltry $4 million for urban land acquisition in the 2012 bond package. Yet getting new open space, and getting it where it’s most useful near transit, is expensive and getting more so with each passing day. Should Austin be spending a lot on open space in really expensive places?

Austin shouldn’t be buying golf courses. Austin should be using its money where there’s families, and there’s people who would use them. I wanted to get like Yellow Bike or someone partner with us, a public-private partnership with our park at Justin Lane. They could provide the bike racks – “Bike racks provided by Yellow Bike.” There’s commercial development that will be coming in. Why don’t they do something like Little Deli, and use our park space as a place where they can go and eat it. We need to integrate these parks where they’re going to be used. Parks people look at them as a drain [because of maintenance costs]. I look at parks as an asset to the city. This is prime land, it’s valuable, it needs to be there because that changes the people’s moods.

Build the type of park for the type of neighborhood. Downtown they have a big park that, other than serving homeless people in the morning and movies at night during the summer, it’s not used regularly. It’s Downtown. There’s a lot of trees there. Everyone likes to exercise. Why aren’t we putting in exercise components, like kiosks, where you can do handstands, push-ups, pull-ups. It brings people to the park during their lunch hour to work out. Encourage the use. Our [proposed Crestview] park – we’re looking to Sunshine Gardens – they’ll give us some money to defer costs, and we’d give them an acre for a community garden. People there in the morning, some at night. There’s people there. Make the park work for the community it serves. Brentwood park – great example – it’s right next to a school. Perfect for young families. I don’t see it as a drain on resources, but as an asset.

I would like to see the parks integrated with our libraries, senior centers. How wonderful would that be – it’s being used. The senior people come, the library’s there. But we also have a park. It becomes a community. We should look for those opportunities where they’re missing libraries up north. The lack of parks. Why not create an area that is inviting for everyone?

Development that comes up, have them contribute some of the land, and make it contiguous. The park might start as two acres. But as new development comes up, regulations ensure that adjacent sites contribute to the park.

Is that something you’d expect to see coming out of CodeNext?

It’s where you would put it. We’ve done that in Florida, all the time. With conservation land or preserves. We would say, “Your parcel has to have so much preserve land. If you’re building housing, you’re going to be having families…

A lot of the properties in our area are small. You have a lot of 2-acre properties that are marginal for redevelopment. They’re going – “How can I contribute open space when all I’ve got is two acres to work with in the first place.”

Right, but we’re talking – up in the north area, where there are much larger parcels. That’s the kind of thing you would work and partnership with them on. Smaller areas down here – we have to be more savvy and creative. Use our City-owned land for the parks. We have affordable housing gets adopted so it’s on site. Then we don’t have to use City-owned land for affordable housing, because we’d have it already folded into CodeNext.

The Ryan property [proposed as a park for Crestview Station] is an example where you have City-owned land. But say Burnet at Anderson – there’s nothing.

It’s going to be hard to go into an area that’s already developed.

Here’s a good example. The County has been trying to get the City to take over this small little park up in the northwest area. The City has annexed that area. But the City won’t take it. They’ve been trying for years. Since I’ve been here for four years, they were doing it long before I was here, to give them a park. It’s already here. It’s built, it’s developed. All you have to do is take ownership of it.

The City doesn’t want to maintain it.

That’s it. You’re going to lose your quality of life.

In a 10-1 universe, west Austin’s council members can be expected to resist spending, and urban council members will use Imagine Austin to justify funding that supports the city’s compact-and-connected goals.   There’s a risk that infrastructure projects for suburban north Austin will continue to languish. What arguments will be effective in winning capital investment for suburban improvements?

For transportation infrastructure, I will advocate for use of the CAMPO Regional Transportation Plan and associated growth projections as the basis for allocating federal funding. Fifty percent of federal transportation funds in the next CAMPO funding cycle will be allocated to activity centers identified in both the CAMPO Plan and Imagine Austin. The majority of these centers will be in the suburban areas. Four of those activity centers will be located in North Austin.

For locally funded transportation projects, the transportation impact fee ordinance I plan to propose would require funds to be spent on arterial road construction in the same defined geographical areas in which they are collected. I predict that 10-1 will result in infrastructure investment decisions being more localized. Future bond proposals will likely be district specific with voters having a greater say about the major infrastructure investments planned within their City Council districts.

See Also:

District 7 Candidates Page

This is the third 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

The interview took place on July 29. Since then, Ms. Pool has met with numerous stakeholders and refined her positions. She asked to provide an update to her original response on light rail. This is in italics below.

What are the top 3 steps needed to improve North Austin’s mobility?

Improving the bus lines. More stops, so that you’re within the pedsheds, the quarter-mile-ish walkable areas. And that also goes to what you’re walking on, how easy it is to get to a bus stop. You can improve your intersections, and have more of a grid, so that there are other ways to get out of a neighborhood, rather than just one entry and exit. That would also go to the fire question regarding an escape route [for some suburban areas]. We should do more long-term planning to assure that.

The village center [arranging new development as walkable villages with a transit station at the center] would be helpful, mid-term. Redirect where the traffic goes, and have [transit] be closer to where people live, where the schools are and the churches.

I know that the Arboretum area has for a while kind of been the epicenter of all the development in Austin, but the buses don’t serve out there. I did ask about that when I met with CapMetro people today. It’s in their plan to improve it in 78758 and 78759, but it’s not something that they’re doing right now. Frankly the planning for it is kind of long term, so I would advocate for it to be fast-forwarded, and look more carefully, and actually focus on those areas, and talk to those residents there to see what ideas they have. I don’t necessarily know all the answers, but talk to them, they would know what would work, and then support their needs.

In 2010, staff recommended to open the N Lamar-Morrow Street intersection north of Crestview Station to west-bound traffic. This proposal pitted residents in Highland neighborhood who wanted better east-west connectivity against residents in Crestview who feared a torrent of traffic down their residential street. The Council subcommittee reviewing the proposal voted 3-0 to open Morrow. Did they get it right?

That tracks with the street grid and the New Urbanist view, is that you need to have a multitude of entry and exit spots, not necessarily driveways, but actually cross streets so it doesn’t impede and redirect the traffic.

I’d be curious to see if the torrent of traffic into Crestview actually materialized. My guess is that sure, there was an uptick, but I bet those residents are making use of the access too. So maybe in the end, everybody was ok with it. A lot of times, people don’t like change because you’re used to how things are, but then you try it for a little bit, it might make you a little cranky, but eventually you can live with it, and maybe there is some benefit to it in the long-run. Sometimes you just need to pilot something and see if it works.

I would be concerned with people on the east side in Highland if they can’t get out. They’re hemmed in by that weird intersection at Anderson and Lamar. It’s hary, even knowing which lane you should be in if you want to go east vs west, because it’s not intuitive at all. I completely get what they’re saying. That to me, frankly trumps the worry about having more traffic through the neighborhood, especially if in the end there wasn’t a torrent. I would ask them how they feel about it. Did that work for them – people on both sides of Lamar.

Last year, a ProjectConnect advisory board voted 14-1 to approve a first rail line up San Jacinto and Red River to Highland Mall. Many rail advocates and several neighborhoods in North Austin argue that Guadalupe/N Lamar is a more logical choice based on current ridership. Others worry a rail line will accelerate development in suburban areas not yet supported by good pedestrian infrastructure, exacerbating mid-term congestion. There is also the wider debate about whether rail is a $1.4 billion gamble that trends like robot-cars will render obsolete, or a long overdue first step towards a more sustainable urban transportation system. Where do you come down on urban rail, and on the best route for an initial rail line?

9/16 – I had great hopes that the current proposal Cap Metro has worked on for so long would make serious headway in reducing congestion. Unfortunately, that’s not how it has stacked up. Residents all over town say it’s too expensive and doesn’t take them where they want to go. That matters to me. As does the impact of the debt incurred if we approve $1 billion-plus in bonds. In our overarching conversation on affordability, adding $1 billion in bonded debt to our already stressed property tax system is just too much, and leaves no room for all the other needs we have in Austin – like building more affordable housing and maintaining existing parks, pools and libraries. I’d like to go back to the drawing board with new ideas about the route, and do it at a much lower price.

I support rail. I love trains. When I travel, I make a point of taking the subway in New York City, or the train from the airport in Portland to downtown. I think Austin needs trains. But we need the additional multi-modal approaches to traffic. The debate on the location of it – CapMetro has said, the Federal Highway Administration gave us the money for bus rapid transit on Lamar. I know they worked really hard to qualify, and to be seen as having a credible plan in order to win those dollars.

But I found out today because I asked this question of the governmental affairs person at CapMetro – well what about that debate. What she told me is that the bus rapid transit isn’t necessarily what’s going to be there forever. It’s the precursor – there could be rail on that route. But they have to do these other things first. They have to prove up that Austin is a big enough, mature enough town to handle these kinds of super-expensive infrastructure – watershed infrastructure change projects. So their overarching plan, out into the future, and I don’t know how far out, from what I was told from the FHA’s perspective, a BRT does set the line for rail in the future. Knowing that, and I take the 801 downtown…

When you say “Set the Line for”

It establishes an alignment for it. At some point, if they can get the bus line correct, and it becomes part of the fabric of the city – everybody knows where the stops are –

So you’re saying the stop alignment…

That route could become a rail route at some point. That would eventually put it down Lamar, going through Downtown. They do have easement issues, and where would they put it. They’re real sensitive to coming into neighborhoods. I think a rail line down Lamar would be really disruptive for people. I take Lamar when I drive to work. When I take the bus, it goes down Guadalupe through campus. I think right now there’s some road work on N Lamar, and it’s narrowed to just one lane. Everybody’s really polite and we know what to do, nobody cuts in line. It’s a kind of lovely civic engagement there. But I think about the big dig in Boston. It was really disruptive for everybody. They lived through it, and in the end everybody likes the result. So it’s kind of a temporary pain, long-term gain. I’ve lived in the northeast, I saw those things happening. I know in the end everybody’s glad. They hated it at the time. But at the end it was like a sigh of relief. We got what we needed, and yes it helps us. You have to change your patterns. Sometimes it’s hard to change your patterns. But eventually you make new patterns and habits.

So I like to think that at some point there would be rail coming down Guadalupe to N Lamar. That’s hopeful for me. For me the jury’s out on whether there’ll be ridership on the current proposed line.

Why doesn’t it go out to the Airport. Just build it. Add it in. That’s what everybody wants. It’s an issue of trust. Should I vote for something that doesn’t even give me this amenity that I would use. I have to go to Grove, a park and ride, and take a shuttle. Why doesn’t the rail go all the way to the airport?

It turns out, when you take public transportation out to an airport, you’re not just working with FHA, you’re working with FAA. Because of our security concerns, there’s a higher threshold of how this stuff has to be built. It’s a security thing, going out to an airport. Also, the airport itself doesn’t have the infrastructure to handle a rail station. It’s a small town airport with growing pains. They’re talking about building another terminal. Thinking about it in context, if they’re going to build more terminals, you would want it to be in the context with delivering the rail service.

Having said that, it is in the plan. It will happen. It just won’t happen in this first phase if [the rail bond proposal] passes in November.

Two years ago, a developer sought a variance to build a 4-story apartment block at the Ross property at 8100 Burnet. The developer argued that the project puts mixed use housing on a transit corridor, contributing to the Imagine Austin goal of compact and connected. Opponents argued that the project would put too much density at a location a quarter mile from the nearest rapid transit station, and the project’s “easy in-and-out” design that wraps apartments around a parking garage core would just encourage more driving. Council supported the upzoning on first reading. How would you have voted?

That’s got that huge parking lot. I don’t like that sort of suburban style of development anyway, where there’s acres and acres of asphalt, and the building is way at the back of the lot. I like the design where you front on closer to the road, with the building. I generally don’t have a problem with wrapping the parking inside where you can’t see it. I don’t know if they were offering fewer parking spots to what that parking lot offers. It would be an entirely different use.

Just on the first flush, and I honestly don’t know any of the details, it seems like that property could be developed appropriately for all the right New Urbanist ways, without being pushed so far back into the backyards of the people on Ashdale. There would be some trade-offs, maybe some green space in the back, rather than segmenting it off, maybe a playscape. I just don’t know what all was offered in that package. It seems like it would be full of potential for good outcomes for everybody.

It is a concern that the site is a good distance from the bus station. Planners often use five-minute walking distance to define the pedshed around a bus stop. That rule works well if there’s sufficient transit frequency. That’s currently not the case on Burnet Rd. This is an area where I’m curious about the collaboration between the City and CapMetro. I know council members sit on the CapMetro board. I don’t know if they talk about things like the placement of the stops, the frequency of the bus service. If Burnet Rd is going to be home for more people, and densify along these lines, then what plans does CapMetro have to address the need to increase the transit stops and the frequency of the buses going down that corridor, especially if rail is going to the east of us?

What are your priorities for the environment and open space?

I place high priority on the environment and open space. I was part of the Save Our Springs initiative when, 22 years ago, I listened through the night to my friends passionately defending the crown jewel of Austin, Barton Springs. Tensions in Austin have not traditionally pitted political parties; instead the conflicts have arisen between supporters of rapid, expansive growth, and advocates who would manage growth to protect and preserve our irreplaceable natural resources.

There’s another balance we must find: assigning finite financial resources properly among high priority items – how to continue funding the purchase of land in the BCP for watershed protection while keeping existing parks in good repair, and adding pocket parks so everyone can easily reach a city amenity. Former Council Member Beverly Griffith’s idea of a “green necklace” of parks from the early 2000s still resonates, and we need to revisit where our civic assets are to be sure pools, parks and libraries are close by.

Parks Department describes much of North Austin as an ‘open space desert’. The average open space in Austin’s urban core is 5% – in some North Austin neighborhoods it’s under 1%. With existing mechanisms, North Burnet Gateway will end up with about a third to a half the open space of Downtown Austin. The City of Austin allocated a paltry $4 million for urban land acquisition in the 2012 bond package. Yet getting new open space, and getting it where it’s most useful near transit, is expensive and getting more so with each passing day. Should Austin be spending a lot on open space in really expensive places?

Yes. We still should invest in those areas. They’re expensive because people are in those areas. People need parks. This might be another opportunity to partner with CapMetro, in assuring either purchase of the land, or designation of the land for public use. The bond moneys were lower than I would have liked. Pocket parks were really important to me, sitting on that [2012 Bond Advisory Task Force] committee. There continued to be a misunderstanding among the bond task force members as to what pocket parks are.

Beverly Griffith when she was on Council talked about a green necklace of parks, where within a five minute walk of anyone’s neighborhood you could find yourself in a park or two. There was a push to fund parks ten years ago and more. We have a lot of questions on our funding, and so those are difficult decisions to make with finite resources.

Honestly, I don’t know if there’s an easy fix. We keep pushing, and every time there’s a bond package, we buy a little bit more open space for Watershed Protection and for parks. I don’t like pitting the two against each other. I really don’t. That would be something I would advocate for on the Council, is trying to separate them. I know sometimes they can be in the same bond package. But when we were given our instructions from the City Manager’s office – there was a limit on how much we could spend. That chaffed a lot of the bond task force members, who felt that decision should be made by Council, not the City Manager. So we were working under some significant constraints.

I would have liked the $4 million [allocated to acquire new park space in urban areas] to have been higher. I think we need to continue building on it, though. That $4 million isn’t going to be the last money to go for parks. As far as buying it in areas where you’re going to have transit stops, making that a focus for where you focus open space, I don’t have any problem with that. I think that in some instances it doesn’t have to be just parks – some of them are more road-side areas. They’re not all grass. It’s features that make it safe and comfortable to be outdoors, getting to where you want to go without having to drive and add to traffic.

In a 10-1 universe, west Austin’s council members can be expected to resist spending, and urban council members will use Imagine Austin to justify funding that supports the city’s compact-and-connected goals. There’s a risk that infrastructure projects for suburban north Austin will continue to languish. What arguments will be effective in winning capital investment for suburban improvements?

The new council will be most effective if it is able to address specific local district issues in the larger fabric of the City as a whole. The lines that were drawn are arbitrary; they divide neighborhoods – my own neighborhood of Rosedale is split between Districts 7, 9 and 10. District 7 touches five other districts: 1, 4, 6, 9, and 10. Working together for a common purpose will be essential, across all lines, across the entire City.

Strength lies in diversity and collaboration. I trust the new council will be made up of citizens who understand that, while we may represent discrete districts, it’s the entire City of Austin that is our business.

See also:

District 7 Candidates Page

This is the second of four interviews with City Council District 7 candidate Jimmy Paver 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

The interview took place on May 17. Since then, Mr. Paver has met with numerous stakeholders and refined his positions. He asked to provide updates to his original responses where appropriate. These are in italics below.

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

Neighborhoods are walkable, a place that has a park, that’s safe. It’s a place where you have the opportunity to have a community and be around like-minded people. It is an area that is not dangerous to pedestrians. It has sidewalks, it has sewers, it has lawns.

9/2 – A neighborhood has a character that makes it distinguishable from others, something it values and that draws residents based on the identity of those key elements that make it unique.

Is Downtown a neighborhood?

I think a town center concept could be considered neighborhood-oriented. But when I think of the word ‘neighborhood’ – no. I don’t see [downtown] as a neighborhood. I see that as urban living. There’s a difference in that you have community gathering spaces, like rec centers and parks. You’ve got walking in your neighborhood. You know more of your neighbors. Families live in neighborhoods. The elderly live in neighborhoods.

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

I think that they’re special places. Everybody has a preference based on the feel of their neighborhood. I don’t think that one size fits all. Neighborhoods can be different, and people should have choice.

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 can understand not wanting to undercut tourism here. And I can understand wanting to get in on that revenue. But – we have one right next door to us. To the extent that they are empty for 260 days a year, only occupied on weekends – we haven’t had any trouble, but I don’t think that it is something that benefits a neighborhood. It certainly benefits business, but it invites some things that neighborhoods would not want. Possibly vandalism. I don’t like not having anybody who lives next door to me. It’s just a general sense that you get of emptiness when you look out the window.

I don’t know if the cap is sufficient – there is still going to be an underground market. People will take it off the books. That’s a code enforcement question for the city,that the city needs to look at not only to capture revenue, but to make sure people are following the letter of the law. I don’t know how you track all that down.

The owner-occupied question – they live on site and rent out a place – I don’t have a problem with that. But the homes that are empty, [is a problem].

9/2 – Part of living in a neighborhood such as those in District 7, is living in a tight-knit community where you know your neighbors, kids grow up and go to school together, etc. These CSTR’s undermine that concept and need to be regulated.

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 understand the objection from the neighborhood. There were some concessions made. There are bars in proximity – that’s a false flag. Billy’s is nearby, Little Longhorn’s is right across the street. You go farther down and you have bars all along Burnet Rd. And they all have neighborhoods behind them. I understand a big corporate bar like Little Woodrow’s coming in, and the expected fear of total redevelopment of the area. I don’t think it’s time to cry wolf about it.

But I do think things like that need to be controlled, in the sense that you don’t want the area to become defined as a bar area, or a bar investment area. There’s too much around it, and a lot of local business that already exists. To see new corporate business come in – I don’t think we should be alarmist about that, but we need to protect what is there.

Also, south of 2222, we only have four lanes. We don’t have turning lanes north of there. That’s a big consideration. And people leaving drunk at 1 am is something you want to avoid.

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’s a difficult question to answer without the specifics on the type of trees that would be replaced. I do understand from a developer standpoint where they have a heritage tree that sits right in the middle of their site and would cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep. I certainly don’t want 500-year-old oaks being torn down. But if it’s a hackberry…sitting in the middle of something, you see how this could be a case-by-case thing.

You can’t apply uniform rules to this stuff. Once you do something in government, it’s a blunt instrument. You have to figure out a way for government to be flexible, and people need to be flexible, too.

9/2 – I would revise the ordinance but wouldn’t scrap it. If a very high bar were set for the hardship of keeping a heritage tree, I would consider a proposal but other than that, I think it remains an important part of environmental preservation efforts.

You’ve named your brother as campaign treasurer.  Is he a real estate attorney, and if so – how should people view that?

He’s not a real estate attorney. He handles some real estate transactions, mostly for our business. He’s in transactional law, mostly for families. They do probate, estate planning. They’re all over the board. To specifically call him a real estate attorney is not accurate. He has no clients in that realm. He’s my brother and closest friend, who’s an attorney who can ensure compliance with campaign finance rules.

How would you make Austin affordable?

We have to consider how hard we’re hitting people with property taxes, and basically every form of local taxation is escalating. How do you avoid that and protect the people who have been here? I favor providing some relief.

One way to provide people some relief is a municipal homestead exemption at a percentage – three percent – that might save people three or four hundred dollars. Some people propose cutting the city’s proportion of property tax, which is 50 cents per $100 of value. To do that you’d have to have some off-setting expenditure reductions. There are other strategies like land-banking that can help people stay in their homes.

9/2- We need to rein in spending at the city, putting less demand on Austin Energy and Austin Water Utility to turn profits. And we need affordable housing for families within urban areas.

What about renters?

General affordability is driven by a lot of factors, and the city’s ability to temper it [short-term] is somewhat limited. We can try to bring down utility rates. And we need to stand by terms we stated and not change them later in the fine print, whether that be for small business, or another example is people who participated in solar – Austin Energy changed their kilowatt-hour-credit amount back. People who invested in a renewable form of energy aren’t getting what’s promised.

9/2- There are many different reasons Austinites rent. And one of them is a lack of affordability. For those who can’t afford to rent in our city, much less own a home, we need more affordable housing for single and multi-family occupants. I am in favor of incentivizing developers to promote this.

How about long-term affordability?

We need more places for people to live. I’m in favor of a town center concept in a well-developed, planned way. Something that looks a little bit like the Domain, that’s in an area that’s unto itself, that has transportation options, that doesn’t affect neigbhorhoods directly. I’m in favor of providing that kind of place to people who are coming here, who in large part are transient young professionals. But I also think that what we have in the mixed use building, especially along Burnet Rd, is housing that will be gone in 15 years. If we’re serious about and want to invest in people who will come here long-term, you need more solutions to provide housing to people that don’t affect neighborhoods.

They’re commercial spots that for better or worse we haven’t planned for very well. I’m not against mixed use – to have them be scattershot – that’s tough for neighborhoods. It does encroach on their interests. It’s not something that I think is going to kill the neighborhood either – it’s not a wrecking ball. A wrecking ball would be building the Domain at the corner of Lamar and North Loop. Having an apartment there with 200 units just means that you need better transportation options.

I think that long-term affordability means more housing for the people who need it, and finding a way to basically hold down the costs for the average consumer who’s been here. The median income is not rising by the city budget – it’s gone from $1.9 billion to $3.3 billion in ten years. And that’s an alarming amount of taxation levied on the backs of people who live here. I’d like to look at some form of property tax relief. I’d like to look at where all of those dollars are going, as I don’t see a corresponding increase in services. I’m a little baffled by 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?

It depends on the area. Just as you have on your website, you have an argument here between suburbanists and urbanists. The question is whether we should make room for people in the city by making it easier for development to come into neighborhoods. I think it’s a leading question. You have to be able to accommodate people who are coming in. If you take a neighborhood like Allandale or Crestview, would I be in favor of bulldozing four houses and putting up six duplexes? Probably not. But I do think where it’s consistent with the theme of the neighborhood, that some of that stuff is acceptable. Replacing one house with a duplex, like is happening in Crestview non-stop.

I know this will raise objections in Allandale, but what’s the alternative? I would prefer not to have that in Allandale. But I don’t see it as an all-or-nothing thing. I don’t think it’s going to ruin the neighborhood. If entire city blocks were bought up and redeveloped, that’s going to ruin the neighborhood. I’m not going to say, “Don’t bring any of that in here.” We need places for people to live.

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?

Whatever zoning that we choose, we should still be able to accommodate families.

I think families are one of the most important resources we have. I don’t like seeing them pushed out to the periphery. They live one of the toughest existences in this city. I think that finding a place for them here so that they can send their children to the schools that they want is an important part of what we should do.

It’s an affordability issue. An ability for families like that too to co-locate means that we have to allow them other places to live. If they can’t live in a dense one-bedroom community that is going up in a lot of places and that restricts their usage, then they’re pushed out of the school district. I think that should be available to them in some way. I think we should focus on it.