Cox Enterprises announced earlier this month it was selling the Austin American-Statesman to New York publishing company GateHouse Media. A story about the sale that appeared in the Statesman included a paragraph that read: "GateHouse has been criticized for cutting staff at the papers it acquires, often to a point that media analysts have said it can be a detriment to the communities served by its newspapers." Given that assertion, should the employees at the Statesman have veto power over that sale? Should the newspapers’ subscribers have the ability to stop it seems it since it would be in their best interests to do so?
The current plight of Toys ‘R’ Us is fairly well known, but for those who haven’t heard the company announced last week it was closing all 800 of its U.S. stores, throwing 30,000 individuals out of work. Do those 30,000 have the right to keep their jobs even if it means local taxpayers will have to foot the bill to keep these stores open? After all, it wasn’t their fault the company was run into the ground. Why should they be the ones to suffer?
I think most of us can empathize with those newspaper employees and even sympathize with those losing their jobs at the toy store. But, at some point, I think most will agree with the notion that while we don’t like these kind of changes, that we wish they didn’t happen, they often do happen. There are those who refute the theory of evolution, but the world is evolving all around us. You might not like Facebook — you may have even solemnly pledged to yourself that you will never allow Facebook to appear on your computer — but that doesn’t alter the fact that it is out there and that it has changed the way we communicate in revolutionary ways. Time will tell if it might have even altered the outcome of a presidential election.
That’s why, I must admit, I was taken quite by surprise Tuesday evening when Mayor Pro Tem Shane Arabie cited chatter he has witnessed on Facebook as an argument for essentially stopping development in downtown Kyle — for essentially giving the employees veto power over major corporate decisions. Arabie said those who live in downtown Kyle don’t want to see their environment change, that they want to keep it single family residential on big lots, and by God, the city and the rest of the world should bow to their wishes.
I hear what he’s saying. The fact that people don’t want things to change in their lives was extremely profitable for me when I had my own communications consulting company. If you’re an avid sports fan, I could probably shock you with first-hand accounts of well known professional athletes who became freaked out when their teams brought in new coaches or new managers. Change — a divorce, a new job (or the other side of that coin: being laid off), a transfer to a new community in a different state, a new child in the family — any change at all can be frightening, it can be nerve-rattling, it can be unsettling. You not only wish it wouldn’t happen, you may even go to some lengths to try and prevent it. I’m a huge music fan — been so all my life — and to this very day I sorely miss the old mom-and-pop record stores where I could to into a booth to listen to a record before deciding whether I wanted to purchase it. I began life in the era of the 78 rpm record and ultimately found myself lost in a world of digital streaming and had there been a social media platform available for me to yell, scream, stomp my feet and make a huge public outcry about it, I undoubtedly would have. And I bet I could have had a number of others on my side. And if I had been successful in stopping this trend, I would have prevented the majority of today’s so-call millennial population from enjoying something they find special. Is that fair? Is it right for us old fogeys to deny our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren a future they very well might find enjoyable, beneficial, probably even preferable — just because we don’t want things to change?
Frankly, I was shocked that Arabie thought so.
"I think we need to take a second look at what the downtown needs to be," he said during Tuesday evening’s city council meeting. "If the whole downtown doesn’t want to be something different than single family homes then it’s our duty to make sure the citizens that live in that area are at least somewhat cohesive with their surroundings."
Arabie said he has gathered from the comments he has seen on Facebook that residents don’t want density in the downtown area "so maybe we need to re-evaluate our processes on downtown."
Here’s the problem with that argument. Let’s say I own a nice sized chunk of property in downtown Kyle (I don’t, but let’s play a game of pretend here). I’m getting along in years (that part is true), my heirs have no desire for the property and I realize I can sell it for far more than I ever imagined. The person who wants to buy my property wants to build two homes on the lot where I just had one. Or let’s say, the property is even more sizeable – it’s, let’s say for the sake of argument, around 17 acres and the buyer who wants to offer me what feels like the keys to Fort Knox for this land wants to put a subdivision in there. Arabie’s "second look" could prevent that — could prevent me from selling an asset I desperately want to liquidate and also prohibit the new owner for doing with his own property what he desires. Sorry, but I can’t go down that path and I don’t think Kyle should want to either. I also think it could be impossible legally.
And the reason I was so shocked to hear otherwise from Arabie is because he has a history as being the council member who has always been about infrastructure and how development provides for and pays for the infrastructure upgrades the city needs and its citizens want.
This was more of a shock for me than hearing other council members who know absolutely nothing about Smart Growth as a planning tool talk about "the tenets of Smart Growth." Of course, they were speaking to others who, just like them, have never seen the writings or attended the seminars of Charles Marohn or Andres Duany or former Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening (I’ll bet most of the council have no clue who these people are) so they figured they could get away with mouthing untruths about what Smart Growth is all about. But I expect it from them. Their past history has built a solid foundation of ignorance on this subject.
But Arabie is smart, Hell, he is one of the best minds on the entire council, if not the very best. I’ll just leave it at this: In this day and age, how can Arabie be absolutely sure those were real Facebook posts and not something concocted by (speaking of how times change) Cambridge Analytica?
Tuesday evening’s council meeting was relatively brief. To put it all in a convenient nutshell for you: here is the agenda and everything on it was approved.
It is worthy, however, to mention something City Manager Scott Sellers said during his report (Item 10) and that is the volunteers who participated in the "Great River Clean-Up" earlier this month removed a whopping eight tons of trash from the banks and its immediate environs. Eight freaking tons — that’s a lot of junk.
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