Water, Affordability, or Soccer Giveaways? Which do you choose?

What is truly important to Austin’s Mayor and City Council?  We are likely to find out on Thursday.

We hear a lot about how much our City Council cares about the high cost of living in Austin, about how affordable housing must be our top priority.

Our council and mayor also proclaim their commitment to making Austin a healthy, sustainable city in the face of our global climate crisis.

And then there’s Austin’s soccer emergency.  

Which is more important?

Or, to quote David Byrne, “How did we get here?”

It’s kind of hard to believe, but here’s where we are, today, in Austin, Texas.

Absent a citizen uprising—we have seen those before—this Thursday our Mayor and a majority of our City Councilmembers will give away the Austin Water Utility owned, 24-acre McKalla Place property and hundreds of millions of taxpayer subsidies to a for-profit, professional soccer team corporation.

The soccer team owner, a wealthy, California investor named Anthony Precourt, is demanding (through his developer lobbyist Richard Suttle) that our City Council must act right now to give him hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies and the McKalla land in exchange for moving his Columbus, Ohio professional soccer team to Austin.

There are a few problems with this proposal. Actually, there’s a lot more than a few, but I’ll just hit the highlights. If you care about Austin’s future, please take a few minutes to read this post, and then join us this week in speaking up for Austin’s water, affordability, equity, and voter rights.

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Will we get to vote on CodeNEXT? YES!

	Bill Bunch, SOS  Executive Director, Bobby Levinski, SOS Attorney, Nelson Linder, Austin NAACP President and Fred Lewis, Austin Attorney

Will We Get to Vote on the CodeNEXT Petition?

On June 27th Austin attorney and community leader Fred Lewis and SOS Executive Director Bill Bunch argued before Travis County District Judge Orlinda Naranjo that Austin citizens have a right to vote this November on the petitioned ordinance signed by over 30,000 Austin voters. Lewis and Bunch represented Austin NAACP leader Nelson Linder and other community leaders and petition signers.  City lawyers defended the decision of a split 6-to-4 City Council to keep the petitioned ordinance off of the ballot.  If the court orders the petitioned ordinance placed on the ballot, and voters approve it, then any version of CodeNEXT that the City Council might approve would not go into effect until after a waiting period and subsequent voter approval.  Read an  excellent summary in the Austin Bulldog, or a fun one from today's Statesman. 

Breaking News - Austin Planning Commission in Hot Water

Yesterday, the Texas Attorney General filed a lawsuit seeking to remove Austin Planning Commissioners for violating the Austin City Charter provision that prohibits more than  1/3rd of the Commissioners from being connected directly or indirectly to land development. The  petition is linked here pdf Texas v Austin Planning Commission Petition (990 KB) .  The legal action was filed pursuant to a complaint, also filed by Fred Lewis, Bill Bunch, Nelson Linder and others.

On news of this action being filed, Fred Lewis said, "I want to thank the local authorities, and especially the Office of the Texas Attorney General, for filing this suit to enforce Austin's Charter to prevent development-related domination of the Planning Commission. Austin's charter language and and the facts are clear: there are too many development related engineers, lawyers and architects on the Planning Commission, and this law enforcement action is warranted. Lewis added, "The illegal composition of the Planning Commission undermines the validity of its work over the last 3 years, whether on individual rezoning of specific properties or on CodeNEXT." Council should have fixed the illegal composition 3 years ago, when this was first brought to their attention. But Mayor Adler and the council majority ignored the illegal composition of the Planning Commission even while forging ahead with the first comprehensive rewrite of the City's development regulations in 30 years.

Zilker Parking Lot Nixed for Now

Thank you to everyone who contacted City officials to protest the rush to pave over seven acres of Zilker Park to convert lake front park land into a parking lot for ACL.  Last Wednesday night, Austin's Environmental Commission voted unanimously to recommend against  the project in favor of a park access and master plan for Zilker Park that would lead to less parking in the park.  Thank you Commissioners!! Then, late Friday afternoon Acting Parks Director Kimberly McNeeley sent a memo to City Council stating that staff was "putting the proposal on hold indefinitely." 

Once again, some people claimed it was "a done deal," a waste of time to oppose this sneak attack on Austin's most favorite and irreplaceable park.  But with vigilance from citizens like you, strong volunteers serving on the Environmental Commission, and hard work from SOS and Zilker and Barton Hills Neighborhood Association leaders, we saved this bit of park paradise from another parking lot.   At least for now.