Yes, dear friends, the short answer is that the City Council, by a 4-2 vote, approved last night the most dense single-family detached residential zoning it has on its books for a 17-acre tract of line on Sledge Street, a controversial decision that twice ended in a draw at the last meeting and one that had aroused significant vocal opposition, both on and off the council dais. But the sheer beauty of the decision was, of course, not the decision itself, but the ironic twists that surrounded and practically engulfed it — twists that achieved levels of pure poetry in their irony. It was bone chilling.
First was the fact that, for the second consecutive meeting, only six council members attended. This time Damon Fogley was absent because of conflicting business matters. Of course, I immediately envisioned the possibility of a repeat from two weeks ago — the scenario of another 3-3 vote that would kill any and all motions made on the subject. The same three — Tracy Scheel, Alex Villalabos and Daphne Tenorio — who opposed the denser zoning request were still there and based on the voting history and common sense of Mayor Pro Tem Shane Arabie, it seemed logical that he would join Mayor Travis Mitchell and Dex Ellison on the other side.
That brings me to the second of the three great ironic moments that occurred, but I do want to take them in order because taking them out of order simply renders them ironic. It’s putting them in the right sequence that allows them to achieve a poetic stature.
It’s important to note here that the same folks who came before City Council two weeks ago — most of them residents of a subdivision called Bradford Meadows that’s located right across Sledge Street from the one being considered for the zoning change — to complain about the development showed up again. Except this time they didn’t get to speak as long as they did at the last meeting because a temporary digital clock was mounted on the dais to remind them when their speaking time limit had expired. As a result, the speaker who went three minutes over her allotted time at the last meeting, only went over by a minute this time and Lila Knight, bless her heart, actually stopped in mid-sentence when she saw her three minutes were up. Then there’s poor Tim Miller, the owner of a certified organic farm on Opal Lane who is like the lad on the beach holding his palm out to sea as if that gesture can keep the tidal wave away from the shore. I don’t sympathize with Miller, exactly, but I do empathize. He is about to become another victim of urbanization and he shows up at council every now and then to protest and fight that realization but, the truth is, holding your palm out to sea doesn’t stop the tsunami. When North Dallas High School was built in 1922 its location was undoubtedly considered to be North Dallas. It is exactly 3.1 miles from the center of downtown Dallas. When I first moved to Austin in 1960, all city development to the northwest ended at Balcones Drive and FM2222. Plugerville was considered to be located way out in the country. The fact remains that time and progress do march on and no matter how fervently you pray and no matter how vociferously many citizens and even some council members want to stop it, it is inevitable.
But, regardless, they will keep on trying and they will keep on being disappointed. I’m a big movie fan and am especially a fan of the film-noir genre from the 1940s through the mid-1950s. Black and white films. And the dreamer in me often wishes I could return to that era — to what I considered simpler times, when no one used words like "paradigm" and I won’t bore you with all the ways I hate the word "paradigm." But the realist in me knows that’s impossible. The realist in me knows that the time is rapidly coming when everything between Georgetown and San Antonio will be completely urbanized, much the same way everything has become between Dallas and Fort Worth or, even more ominously, between Boston and Washington, D.C.
But it’s also a truism that the only time people speak up about something is when they feel injured in one way or another. We have no reservations whatsoever about speaking our minds in a restaurant when we don’t like the service or even carving out time to write a nasty complaint letter once we get home. Or, as Mayor Mitchell said last night, "Whenever I look at zoning requests I don’t look at them as how far away they are from a subdivision nearby because if I made my decisions for how to plan a city (based on their desires) I would never be able to pass a zoning request. We get people coming out opposed to almost every single zoning request."
So all these folks from Bradford Meadows who, if you dug deep into their hearts, didn’t want anything built across the street from their subdivision (it’s basic human nature to fight change — it’s ingrained in our DNA), disguised their true intentions by arguing the proposed zoning was just too dang dense — the developer was proposing to put all these teeny tiny lots directly across from their more spacious estates.
Which brings me to the first ironic moment of the meeting, when the city produced and displayed for all to see a pictorial rendering it had either not yet developed or had kept under wraps until this precise moment. It was an aerial view of Bradford Meadows with the proposed layout of the subdivision planned for the other side of Sledge Street overlaid on the property where it is planned. And it was like one was almost the mirror image of the other. I glanced at the folks from Bradford Meadows when this slide flashed on the screens for all to see and I could tell even they were taken aback by what they were seeing. The wind that was propelling their vocalized sailing crafts was gone and those crafts were dead still. No propulsion at all.
But now I can return to that second ironic moment — the moment that wiped out any chance of another 3-3 tie vote. Scheel — the council member who had motioned for a less dense zoning for the planned subdivision at the last meeting and who voted against the motion for the denser zoning later during that session — that very same Tracy Scheel, in a dramatic moment last night, announced she was changing her mind.
"I’ve been personally debating this issue over the last three weeks since it came before Planning and Zoning," she said. "Tonight, listening in more detail to what the infrastructure that we have put in place or are putting in place or planned to be put in place and also listening to the developer and understanding he only plans to build on 15 acres (two acres are in a flood plain and will be reserved for park land and a detention pond) and he is planning on some bigger lots I’m going to go ahead and vote for this motion."
With that, passage was ensured, even before the official vote was taken. But the final ironic twist — the one that elevated the sense of irony to the level of sublime poetic verse, the coup de grace, if you will, or, if you’re more athletically inclined, the overhead smash for match point — was delivered by Mayor Mitchell when he reminded everyone that the current property owner had purchased it from the Ayers Family, which had possessed it for a number of years.
"The people who live in Bradford Meadows are in a community across from the Ayers who weren’t happy about that," Mitchell said. "They weren’t happy that Bradford Meadows was being built."
"And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game"
—Joni Mitchell
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