P&Z tries its best to muzzle discussion

If developers have their way, this property will contain apartments next year

A funny thing happened on the road to freedom of speech and open government last night. The Planning and Zoning Commission tried to kill them.

Here’s what happened: The regularly scheduled P&Z meeting was moved from its normal Tuesday time slot to last night, apparently to give the developers of a proposed apartment complex to be located behind the 7-Eleven at I-35 and Ranch Road 150 more time to get their stuff together. The issue before the commission was whether to rezone the property in question, the address of which is listed as 22557 I-35 for reasons which make no sense to any rational human being, from a Retail Service District to a Multi-Family Residential-3 zoning so these gentlemen can erect what, judging from the pretty drawings the developers brought to the commission, appear to be some nice looking apartments on that property.

Now all this is usually pro-forma. P&Z commissioners bend over and grab their knees whenever a developer makes a request. And it appeared they were going to do that again last night until it became evident that one commissioner, Timothy Kay, had actually spent some time at the location like I did this afternoon.

P&Z Commissioner Kay saw potential problems with this
intersection which is the way out of the apartment complex
 to southbound 35
 

Here’s the problem: Unless you’re driving east on Ranch Road 150 it’s going to be a royal pain in the hind section to get in or out of that place. It’s a royal pain now and no one is living there yet. Imagine what it’s going to be like when people start filling up those apartments.

Kay, apparently, did imagine that so he tried to add an amendment or a substitute motion to the item on the agenda to rezone the property Multi-Family Residential-2 (fewer apartments) and to include a traffic study as part of the project.

Now put aside, for the moment, the merits of Kay’s proposal. The other three commissioners on the board tried their best to muzzle Kay so he couldn’t even discuss it. Not only that, if the proper procedures had been followed, they would have silenced him.

Their first tactic, led by Commissioner Michele Christie who made the original motion to approve the agenda item, was to argue that since she made her motion first, arguments and voting on it should proceed first, which is not only blatantly untrue but completely illogical. It’s illogical because if board members vote on the original motion, the substitute one becomes irrelevant (which might have been her intention all along) and it’s untrue because parliamentary procedure requires action on any amendments or substitute motions before the original one is discussed.

The only ones occupying the property now

The commissioners reluctantly allowed Kay to make his motion, but here’s where things got ugly. No one seconded his motion. Kay, obviously seeing that his colleagues wanted to shut him up, forcefully claimed a second isn’t required (he was wrong) and plowed ahead with his points, all of which were valid, like I said, to anyone who had actually walked around the area.

Although, as I mentioned earlier, the address of the property is insanely listed on being on I-35 it’s actually at the intersection of two unnamed (at least for now) roads, one of which goes east off of RR 150 and the other which parallels I-35 and finally dead ends at Goforth. (The picture of the property at the head of this page was taken from the road going east and you can make out the road going north on the left edge of the picture, The second picture depicts the intersection of the two unnamed roads as they "flow" into RR 150). If you’re trying to get to the property from off I-35 you have to go down RR 150 halfway to the

Public Works Complex, before you would need to make a U-turn back to the apartments. Imagine what a mess that might wind up to be. Because there is already a significant amount of vehicular traffic on the unnamed north-south road, it’s going to be equally tricky getting out of the complex, especially if you want to go south on I-35, which was Kay’s major point. The only real alternative is go north on the unnamed road to get to the I-35 frontage road, drive all the way to the already jammed Kyle Parkway intersection and make a U-turn there. It really makes no sense.

But the other three commissioners, acting like the hear, see, speak-no-evil monkeys, didn’t want to hear it and if correct parliamentary procedure had been followed Kay, free expression, and open government would have been muzzled.

Here’s a message to anyone serving on a city council, commission, board, or committee: You don’t have to agree with a motion to second it. All you’re doing by seconding a motion is allowing a different, perhaps dissenting, voice to be heard. And what’s wrong with that? The people have the right to hear those different points of view. What are you afraid of? Are you so close-minded that you don’t want your narrow thinking obfuscated by additional facts? If someone makes a motion, out of common courtesy, out of common decency, out of the notion of governmental transparency, second that motion. You still retain the right to vote against it, but without that second there can be no discussion, no exchange of ideas. And that’s not the way government should work.

Kay also wondered if the developers had thought about making the complex a mixed-used project, with retail on the ground floor of the units and apartments on the next two levels. In an answer that almost made me laugh out load, project manager Tim Marroquin said he already considered the project as it as mixed-use development because it was within walking distance of so many other places. Hate to tell you this, buddy, but close only counts with grenades, horseshoes and Kyle street addresses.

Marroquin also told me he hoped to begin construction on the project – traffic study or no traffic study – by the end of the summer or in the fall and plans for it to be completed in 12 months.