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Mateo Barnstone

6/5/2020

 
Son of the late Robert Barnstone, City Council 1988 to 1991
​~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

​​“Speaker after speaker for more than 15 hours has come here and said to us that this is where we draw the line. That we’ll go to the wall or we’ll go to hill and if we were to deny this motion and this PUD, we could go to the hill and we would go to the devil himself to protect Barton Springs.”
- Robert Barnstone, Austin City Hall, June 8 th , 1990
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My father, Robert Barnstone, though socially a liberal, was elected to Council as a fiscal conservative on a platform of affordability. “Ya Basta!” (enough!) was his campaign slogan, a reference, to the thicket of regulatory burdens, taxes, and other fees straining tax payers and small businesses.

While he was a businessman and a developer, he was definitely a cat of a different color. The Austin my parents discovered in 1968 was not like other places in Texas. It was a place where cosmic cowboys, hippies, ‘bubbas’ and entrepreneurs, academics and hippies, musicians and creatives, writers, and bureaucrats mixed with more ease than in most places. My parents had found in Austin an oasis, culturally and physically, complete with its own shimmering pool – the life giving waters of Barton Springs.

It is not an exaggeration to state we spent most of our summer weekends at Barton Springs. My father had a favorite spot, underneath a Live Oak on a little flat about midway on the pool, just across from the dive board. Getting to the pool early was the key. There, he would set up with a book, hold court with friends and colleagues, and keep half an eye on us kids by the dive board and cliffs. Rituals for getting in (diving in - none of this messing around with walking-in-to-get- used-to-the cold nonsense) were rigidly enforced by my father.

I recount this because he knew Barton Springs’ value to the community. He understood that the soul of this city was wedded to it and that if the city cherished and protected it – we would be rewarded in countless ways for as long as we did. He referred to Barton Springs as the crown jewel of Austin. While he was no enemy of business interests or real estate development the exploitation of the creek and the springs, and the failure to recognize it as a treasured resource of the city to be jealously guarded offended his sensibilities. As a council member, he deplored the forces that would trade what made Austin special for an easy buck by turning cheap dirt on the edges of town into cheap housing.

It was his substitute motion to deny the PUD and the variances that prevailed that morning. I’m proud of many of the things my parents did for this city – leading the fight to prevent a cross town freeway on town lake, preventing a disastrous plan to move the Airport to Manor, and the legacy left in downtown - but nothing makes me more proud than my father’s standing up to the babbitry that would have traded our legacy for a conventional suburb named for the resource it destroyed.

​I don’t think my father was ever more proud of this city and the community than on that night. Witnessing speaker after speaker give personal, sometimes moving, sometimes funny, sometimes expert, and always heartfelt testimony about the value of the creek and the springs to Austin was one of the most powerful things he had ever witnessed in politics. He spoke about it often and he believed that testimony, those 15 hours of speakers lasting all night who poured their hearts out moved the votes - votes that would otherwise have sold Austin’s crown jewel - and saved the day.

Max Nofziger

6/4/2020

 
City Council 1987--1996 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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​
I knew going in that it would be a long, exciting city council meeting.  I had no idea it would go on all night.

​Jim Bob lead off for the developers, talking about his ties to Austin, and his years playing football at UT.  This brought groans, hoots, and hisses from the packed house of hippies and environmentalists, who were not impressed by former football players.  This crowd was more interested in Freeport-McMoran's dismal record of pollution and mistreatment of the natives of Irian-Jaya, site of Freeport's huge goldmine.
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Speaker after speaker spoke against the project.  All of my environmental friends were there, and I recall Susan Walker ( Jerry Jeff's wife ) and Ben Crenshaw making impassioned pleas to stop the project.

After 5PM, a new round of folks came in to sign up after they got off work.  The testimony continued for hours.  Every hour or so, Mayor Lee Cook would poll the Council as to whether we should shut off the sign-ups.  I had always considered listening to the public to be an important part of my job, so I always voted for letting the people speak.

When 2 AM came, the council chambers were full and the folks were still signing up to speak.  It was pretty clear by then that this was going to be a pretty special council meeting!

When the bars closed, many of the folks stopped by the council meeting to join the party.  This added a whole new level of emotion to the speeches, although they may have been slightly less coherent.

At 4 AM, I noticed that my colleagues' faces seemed to look very strange, kind of rubbery and elongated, like they were melting.  When they spoke, their voices seemed to be in slow motion.

By 6 AM,  I began to realize that this could not go on forever, but it had gone on all night.

We realized that people would be up and going to work, and that some would stop in and make a speech on their way to work...so we finally decided to end the sign-up.

Then council members spoke, argued, and took the vote:  it was, surprisingly, 7-0 against the project!

Going into the meeting, I thought it would be 4-3 in favor of the project.

The all-night meeting and hundreds of impassioned speeches turned the council around!

It was a real testimony to the Power of the People!!

Of course, that was the only all-nighter in the history of Austin city council meetings.

Developers and Mayors figured out never to let that happen again!

But it happened once, and I was happy to be on the dais for it!  It was great to be a part of Austin History, along with several hundred of my closest friends.

It was especially sweet because we won that battle, and with that momentum, went on to win several more in the years to come!

Mary Arnold

6/1/2020

 
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Environmental Agitator ​~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

​Where to start? 
I have several rather “vivid” memories of that day — and a meeting a few days beforehand, that was
related to the meeting….

First of all, my daughter Ellen was going to be married in August 1990 — and on that June 7th, we
had an appointment with Laguna Gloria about having her wedding reception there. I think it must
have been a late afternoon appointment, as Bill was still working then. Bill and I and Ellen met with
the folks there, and they were showing us around the grounds. We were all familiar with it, as we had
attended Fiesta there for years… Happy memories!

But Bill was having trouble imaging that it would be a good place for a Wedding Reception on a Hot,
Austin, August night. He expressed concern about his mother having to walk a great distance to get
to a restroom. He also mentioned all the wild creatures there were around there that could harm our
guests!!! But Ellen and I were able to out vote him on the matter. AND I was most anxious to have it
all decided so that I could get down to the Council meeting!!!

I don’t remember if I drove my car downtown, or if I got Bill to drop me off… I don’t remember getting
there and getting back home….

I do remember those standing outside with signs, and urging folks to Honk their Horns for Barton
Springs!

The Council Chambers were packed — as the pictures show…. I think I probably had to wait to even
get into the chambers, and then wait in line to speak…. I enjoyed hearing what the speakers had to
say — young and older! Bill Oliver sang, of course!!! Shannon Sedwick (spelling?), and so many,
many others! I think Jim Bob Moffat had gone home by the time I spoke…. I thought Frank Cooksey
made a very good speech… And there were the young kids who spoke — WOW….
I saw a couple in the audience that I knew — and both were in the Austin Symphony Orchestra - and
I had been an art docent at UT with the wife… Good Austin folks who appreciated Austin and Barton
Springs — and wanted to be there to show their support!

The date for the hearing came at a really crucial time…. as related to whether the project would be
approved or not… The City Council May election for several of the Council members had resulted in
two Council members being defeated — Louise Epstein unseated Sally Shipman, and Bob Larson
defeated George Humphrey… We were counting on both Humphrey and Shipman to vote AGAINST
the PUD… and luckily, the new council members had not yet taken their seats on Council.
However, we were a little worried about Sally Shipman, because she had agreed to the Circle C
MUD, and to the extension of MoPac south to that Circle C development — NOT the best
environmental outcome… re the Barton Springs portion of the Edwards Aquifer. Sally had her degree
from UT in Community and Regional Planning, and thought that if people were going to live in Circle
C, they ought to have a way to get in and out — i.e. with MoPac extended…

Barton Creek PUD was different though, and Michael Curry and I made an appointment to see Sally a
day or so before the June 7 hearing. We pleaded with her, and begged her NOT to vote for the PUD.
We hoped that we had swayed her, but were not sure until she voted the next morning, as the hearing
finally ended.

My main message to the Council that night was that they should NOT approve the PUD document -
because the document kept being changed — and new language was presented to the Council in the
form of huge bundles of papers, and certainly noone in the audience (other than perhaps Richard
Suttle and David Armbrust) knew exactly what those documents contained. I had spent a number of
years fighting the creation of MUDs, and the PUD proposal was just as complicated.

My memory is that Max Nofziger’s question to Austan Librach about whether the city’s current
environmental regulations were adequate to protect Barton Springs from damage due to development
of the Barton Creek PUD - and Librach’s answer — really proved to be the turning point in defeating
the PUD that night. When Librach, the head of the city’s Environmental Department, told the Council
that current regulations were NOT sufficient to assure protection of the springs, the “wind was
knocked out of the sails” of the PUD…. at least for that night….

I came home — probably not too long after speaking — and of course I turned on the TV/radio ??
Was it on both TV and radio??? And am sure I went to sleep — but woke up early and it was still
on… So I think I got to hear the Council vote NOT to approve the PUD……
​

June 7, 1990 was a very important day for Austin and its environment… The energy that was
generated made possible the formation of SOS and passage of the SOS ordinance….
But what are we facing now……

Mary Arnold
Save Our Springs Alliance
4701 Westgate Blvd, D-401
Austin, Texas 78745
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www.sosalliance.org
p: 512-477-2320 f: 512-477-6410
​​sosinfo@sosalliance.org

  • About Us
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