The final word-smithing of the contract is now in the hands of the city’s attorneys and Webster said the contract would be posted on the city’s website for public consumption once that language was finalized. He said he wanted it on the website before the agenda for the Council’s Jan. 17 meeting is posted. The Council is scheduled to vote on, and most likely approve, the contract at its next meeting.
"It’s plain vanilla," Webster said of the contract. "It’s what you see in everybody else’s contract. It’s very traditional. We looked at what other cities are doing. We looked at averages and what other cities were doing in terms of benefits and pulled all that together and came up with a proposal. It’s not creative in any way, or innovative or anything else. It’s what a standard, three-year agreement would be. We took a shot at creative and innovative and decided to go with keeping up with the Joneses."
Prior to meeting in executive session to discuss the city manager’s contract extension, the most extensive council discussion was reserved for several amendments to the city’s code, including one to create a zoning district and one to modify an existing zoning district, the latter of which needed to be passed before three other items on the agenda (requests to be rezoned to that newly modified zoning) could be considered. Those items were postponed until Jan. 17 as well because the Planning & Zoning Commission was unable to make a recommendation on them until the amendments were passed because one of the amendments would make detached single family residences in R-1-A zoning a conditional use and applicants were seeking that conditional use. Interestingly, however, there was no discussion about those changes.
The amendments that drew all the attention were ones involving the types of new single family residential construction that will be permitted in the city, amendments that most on the council believe will add much-needed diversity to the city’s housing inventory but was opposed by council member Travis Mitchell who believed it promoted the construction of too many homes with front-loading garages.
The council approved, in a 5-2 roll-call vote (Mitchell and council member Daphne Tenorio voting against), the item containing all the proposed amendments.
Planning Director Howard Koontz told the council last night what he told the Planning & Zoning Commission on Dec. 13: these amendments are likely to be only temporary and that he would like to replace them with a "style guide," a book composed predominantly of illustrations depicting the different types of homes allowable in the city.
Koontz told the council last night he could have the style guide ready for review "conservatively in 120 days, maybe aggressively we could have it in 90 days. I think sometime in the month of April it could be in front of you for review."
Webster said the new amendments grew out of the fact that homebuilders in the more upscale Cypress Forest subdivision had about five home plans that met the letter of the current ordinances and about two dozen more "that met the spirit of what we are trying to achieve in Kyle," but were prohibited by the actual wording of the ordinances.
"It certainly was not our intent with the original language to prevent the very thing we were trying to achieve and that’s a diversity of well-made homes," Webster said.
"The idea of legislating an intangible, like beauty, is difficult," Koontz said. "We’ve been able to prohibit a specific characteristic that we sought to discourage and we did so very effectively. But we also stifled some architectural creativity on other projects that might not be objectionable depending upon your opinion. Residential architecture is only limited by imagination. There are other things that limit it as well, such as time and how much it costs to design homes. Most of our builders already have a set of plans in the can that they want to bring forward and place on lots."
Koontz said Cypress Forest was not the first to encounter problems with Kyle’s ordinances. He said last summer a builder came to Kyle with 21 different housing plans, only two of which fit Kyle’s code "per the letter of our two-line ordinance."
"I would rather work with the folks that want to work with Kyle and try to make something that’s going to be something that Kyle can appreciate long after the builders are gone," Koontz said. "To that end I would like to create a theater of what types of homes we would like to see."
Koontz acknowledged the problems encountered are only with homes that include front-loading garages and the ordinance being amended (Ordinance 824) specifically concerns front-loading garages, currently requiring that they be set back at least five feet from the front wall of a home. "However, the only thing that seems to be getting built in Kyle are narrow-lot, front-garage, front-loading homes. There’s as much a problem with the homogeny of that type as there is with the design of that type. Too much of anything can become a problem for us."
Koontz said he is looking for subdivisions that are designed for the people who want to live there, not for the people who want to drive through them or in/out of them. "Making homes today that are completely automobile dominated, automobile-oriented and essentially useful only for the auto to get in and get out lowers their property value, especially in the long term. Places like that don’t necessarily have long-term, high-value survivability as are places that are geared to the people who live there."
Mitchell, however, said he did not like what appeared to him to be the intent of the revisions.
"It seems to me the original intent was to discourage front-facing garages because that is the predominant architectural style," Mitchell said. ""This ordinance is creating a lot of paths for developers to do what they already wanted to do which was to put front-facing garages in the community. So I’m struggling to understand why we’re moving forward with an ordinance revision that is going to make it a lot easier for front-facing garages."
Koontz told Mitchell if the intent of the original ordinance was to discourage front-facing garages, "It failed. It didn’t do so. It did not discourage the development community from building homes with front-facing garages. And I don’t believe this expansion will do anything to discourage them either."
"If it were up to me," Mitchell said, "I would come very close to limiting the number of front-facing garages in any one subdivision to a certain percent. So I’m starting out ideologically very far apart from where a majority of the council is. But I don’t think front-facing garages are particularly appropriate."
And that’s primarily the reason Mitchell voted against the changes. Tenorio did not voice ideological opposition to the proposed changes. She voted against it because the packet provided the council outlining the proposed changes was missing two pages that were only given to council members right before discussion began on the item and Tenorio says he will always vote against items when she is provided background material on it immediately before voting on it.
It’s important to note here that Kyle, in reality, has absolutely no interest in neighborhood housing diversity because Kyle has no interest in creating neighborhoods, only subdivisions. When Koontz and the City Council talk about diversity in housing, all they are talking about is style, not actual housing diversity, a concept which, if Kyle actually embraced, would create far healthier social environments than what we have here today.
And as to Mitchell’s point, which I think has a great deal of validity, I would like to see him introduce another amendment to these ordinances that mandate alleyways providing access to rear entry garages be required for every single home in Kyle constructed on a lot less than 70 feet wide. That’s my two cents.
POLICE CHIEF TALKS ABOUT NEW YEAR’S EVE FIREWORKS COMPLAINTS
Police Chief Jeff Barnett used the citizen comments section of last night’s meeting to discuss the reaction on social media, that he called "misinformed," about the number of incidents of illegal fireworks in Kyle on New Year’s Eve and the police department’s response (or lack of same) to those illegal activities.
"From 6 p.m. on New Year’s Eve until 6 a.m., we responded to 129 calls for service, 66 of those which were called in as fireworks related and two which were reported as gunshots fired," Barnett told the council. "That’s about twice the normal load for a weekend night for our shift to handle. For the entire weekend, from 6 a.m. Friday until 6 a.m. Monday, we responded to 360 calls for service, 88 of those for the entire weekend being fireworks related.
Barnett said his review of social media seemed to indicate a large number of ciritical comments that police did not respond to fireworks complaints.
"I just want to put on record that is not the case," he said. ."Our police do not have the luxury not to respond to calls for service. If somebody calls us, our dispatch staff logs that into the computer system. It’s assigned a priority level based on the information we’re given and officers are dispatched based on that priority level."
However, he said, in many of the instances callers chose to remain anonymous. "When that happens and you choose not to give your name or your telephone number or if you specifically tell us you don’t want contact from the responding officer that means we’re not going to contact you and let you know the results of our efforts." When he sourced the criticism from citizens, he said it turned out every single one came from someone who chose to remain anonymous when they phoned in their complaint.
Barnett said, however, even when the caller chose to remain anonymous, "our officers did respond and take police action."
"Our officers did respond to every call that we received and we did so in a timely fashion," the chief maintained. "When I looked at the response times I expected something for what I consider to be a low-priority call to be much greater than they were. Actually our officers were able to get to those usually within 30 minutes and that’s pretty good for a low-priority call considering we still had our normal police work to do."
Barnett said typically citations are not handed out for fireworks violations because when officers arrive at the scene they are able to get the offenders "to pack their stuff up and go back inside their house."
In other action last night, the council:
- Postponed, at staff’s request, a vote to purchase four in-car video systems for the police department because it is believed a better deal can be found from a different vendor.
- Postponed a vote on revisions to the animal control ordinance until council members are educated about what animals are classified as rodents. For the record, a squirrel is a rodent, but a skunk is not. In fact, skunks eat rodents. Skunks are classified as carnivores and belong in the weasel family along with otters, mink, badgers, martens, stoats, polecats, wolverines and, of course, weasels. In addition to squirrels, rodents include mice, rats, beavers, guinea pigs, chinchillas, gerbils, and hamsters. So that’s that.
- Passed on second reading the expenditure of $270,000 for a preliminary engineering study that should determine the exact cost of moving the railroad siding that causes trains to stop and block Center Street.
- Approved 5-1 the first reading of an ordinance that will give Kyle the distinction of having the third most expensive water and wastewater impact fee of any city in Central Texas.
- Unanimously approved amending the definition of hike and bike trails constructed by developers to offset parkland dedication fees.
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