Council stifles democratic process while passing unnecessary tax hike; P&Z OKs rental duplexes/warehouse project

The Kyle City Council, a body not willing to even hear a dissenting voice, made sure the democratic process was denied last night and then went on to pass a 20 percent unnecessary tax hike.

Let me give you a glimpse of how petty and how corrupt this council has become. A week ago, a pair of council members, Diane Hervol and Daphne Tenorio, attempted to reduce the tax burden on Kyle homeowners by eliminating from the budget a $1.5 million fund the city manager wanted to use as seed money for unnamed future purchases. The effect of this action would have been a 7½ cent reduction in the proposed tax rate. But Hervol and Tenorio are not members of the corrupt council cartel comprised of Mayor Todd Webster and his puppet cronies, David Wilson, Shane Arabie, Becky Selbera and Damon Fogley. So the five of them voted against the motion. Then the mayor proposed to do exactly the same thing—strips this $1.5 million item from the budget—and this time the Corrupt Cowardly Five (I explain the "Cowardly" tag below) voted lock-step in favor of exactly the same thing that only seconds before they voted against.

Now, if they had left it at that, the tax rate would have remained just about where it is now, at .$538 cents per $100 valuation. But, of course, Da Mayor, with his cronies nodding their acceptance every step of the way, tacked on a million or more in additional expenditures to the budget to bring the tax rate back up to the $.5848 rate the council approved last night 5-1 with Tenorio casting the one nay vote.

Now the Corrupt Cowardly Five will still try to blame the increase on the road bonds. Don’t believe it. If Da Mayor had not tacked on his million or so more in additional expenditures the tax rate would have remained where it is today and it would have covered those loan payments.

I’m not going to argue that everything Da Mayor asked for isn’t needed. I will argue, however, that it isn’t needed now. All of those expenditures could have been delayed for another year when they could have been paid for with increased property valuations and additional sale tax revenues without raising the tax rate then either. If they were so important that they should be have been included in this year’s budget, I am confident that City Manager Scott Sellers, whose job it is to monitor these things, would have proposed them and pushed for their passage. But he did neither and that should tell you something. Running this city is not a part-time job for Sellers as it for the Corrupt Cowardly Five.

Then in an absolutely embarrassing and shameful manner, the Corrupt Cowardly Five completely squashed the democratic process. Council member Tenorio made a motion for a budget amendment and the rest of the council (an emergency prevented Hervol from attending last night) earned its "Cowardly" label when not one single member of the Corrupt Cowardly Five seconded the motion. What are these people afraid of? I’ll answer that for you. They are afraid someone will offer a dissenting opinion that actually makes sense and may resonate among the populace. They are afraid of new ideas. They are afraid of opening their minds. They are afraid of ah honest, open debate on any subject Da Mayor doesn’t want them to hear. Out of common courtesy, a motion should be seconded. Seconding a motion doesn’t imply agreement. It implies only that you are willing to open the subject for public discussion and debate. But the Corrupt Cowardly Five are deathly afraid of public discussion and debate on any topic they are already instructed to oppose, so democracy is left outside the front door at Kyle City Hall.

Prior to this shameful display, the Planning & Zoning Commission (minus commissioners Timothy Kay and Lori Huey) occupied the council chambers for about an hour during which commissioners:

• Approved unanimously a request ro rezone an area recently annexed by the city located where Center Street branches off to North Old Stagecoach and Cypress roads to single family residential. Scott Felder homes plans to build on the property. Scott Felder homes generally range anywhere between the mid-$300,000 to the mid-$600,000 range, although I did run across this five-bedroom, four-bath home the developer built in Lakeway that is listed for $786,990. I doubt, however, if anything that grandiose is planned for our neck of the woods;
• Approved a pair of requests by Charles D. Nash Sr. to rezone property located behind Garcia’s Mexican Restaurant and a pawn shop at the corner of Lehman Road and RR 150 to allow for a pair of warehouses and 41 rental duplexes to be constructed there. The warehouses would front Lehman and the duplexes would be located between the warehouses and the Four Seasons subdivision to the southeast. Robert W. McDonald, the actual developer of the project, said the warehouses, one about 10,000 square feet and the other around 9,000, would be subdivided inside to allow spaces for small manufacturing-type businesses to locate and incubate. In a packet of materials provided prior to the meeting, the city staff wrote ""it would be a significant act of faith on the part of the planning commission to expect that the project would be developed into a neighborhood amenity that increases the region’s quality of life and benefits the city as a whole." However, by the time the hearing was held last night, the city staff had done a complete 180 on the idea. "We’ve had conversations with Mr. McDonald," city Planning Director Howard J. Koontz told the commissioners. "He brought the project to us and told us what he wanted to do. It is a great opportunity, actually, for the city of Kyle. This is why staff is considering this seriously in the first place. This area of the city is in its infancy for high-intensity commercial type development. Honestly, it could go either way. The closer you get to the Interstate I expect you’ll get more and more commercial retail — less service, more retail uses to capture the motoring public and the folks who come through Kyle. Warehouse will benefit from the proximity of the labor pool. I’m sure a number of people in Kyle will be very happy to have jobs here and not have to get on 35 and fight their way to more populous areas. They’d love to work here." Then, after a pause, he added "The inverse is not necessarily true, though. The residential may or may not benefit from the institution of a warehouse use here. My expectation is it will be beneficial. It will be a good use and that’s why I’m cautiously optimistic that I actually recommended approval for this." McDonald told the commissioners the original plan was to build 232 apartment units on the site "and just decided because of the lake that is on the property that it was better suited for a lower density," hence the decision to build "some higher-end paired homes" (the new politically correct term for rental duplexes). He also said the term "warehouse" does "not represent what we’re trying to build. What we’re looking to build there is two buildings — one of them is 10,200 (square) feet and one of them is 9,600 (square) feet. We’re actually getting ready to build the same buildings just south of Chuck Nash Chevrolet in San Marcos. It’s a small-business incubator-type project for electricians, cabinet makers, air conditioning people, plumbers. They are not big spaces so they are not going to be high volume or high traffic businesses." McDonald said the average size of the individual spaces within the warehouses will be 1,200 to 1,400 square feet. "They are not like big industrial or production type operations," he promised. Both requests were approved with commissioner Michelle Christie casting the lone vote against the warehouse request.