The Kyle Report

The Kyle Report

Saturday, June 2, 2018

All bark, no bite

Ginger and I attended this morning’s dedication of the city’s much-ballyhooed new dog park at Steeplechase Park. It was a nice, well-attended affair hosted by Parks Director Kerry Urbanowicz, representing the city staff, and Mayor Pro Tem Shane Arabie, representing the city’s elected officials. Other city staff members I spotted included City Manager Scott Sellers, Chief of Staff Jerry Hendrix and, of course, Communications Specialist Kim Hilensenbeck. Other elected officials included council members Daphne Tenorio and Tracy Scheel, both of whom, like me, brought their beloved pets with them. (Tenorio, it should be noted, only brought her one non-rescue four-legged roommate along, leaving at least three other doggies back at the Tenorio homestead). In the official opening remarks, Arabie talked about how the dog park is another move by the city to improve the quality of life for its residents and provide the opportunity for neighbors to interact with each other.

The first official dogfight in the park began at 10:34 a.m.

The two dogs in question were separated almost immediately with seemingly no harm done. A lot of growling and barking, but no real attacking or biting. Kind of a microcosm of a typical Kyle City Council meeting, another one of which is scheduled for this Tuesday following a two-week break. That last council meeting on May 15 was incredibly brief, actually lasting less than an hour. We should be so lucky this time around. This week’s executive session looks like it could last longer than the entire last City Council meeting.

The agenda includes four items — count ‘em, four — involving the erection of no-parking signs along streets where students at the city’s two high schools park on residential streets. An overly long presentation on the Emerald Crown Trail Folly is also on the agenda. (I still escapes me why the city is so accommodating about a proposed path between Buda and San Marcos that will largely bypass Kyle while completely ignoring the concept of its own municipal trail network, but there you have it.) There’s also a suggestion to have the city’s code of ordinances include rules about exactly where in their backyards residents can place accessory structures and if the council wastes as much time haggling over this as the Planning & Zoning Commission did, discussion on this one item could also last longer than the entire May 15 meeting.

But the items that really piqued my interest ahead of Tuesday’s confab were two of the four being advanced by Mayor Travis Mitchell: one to bring back yet one more time the well-worn idea that Kyle should be a member of the Central Texas Clean Air Coalition and the second one being a change to the council rules to avoid the mess like the one the council created for itself a couple of months ago involving a controversial zoning decision.

In the almost four years now that this journal has been in existence the council has twice rejected the notion that the city should join the Clean Air Coalition. I am not firmly entrenched on either side of this issue but I lean toward not joining for a few reasons. The first, of course, is Groucho Marx’s philosophy of life as outlined in his resignation letter to the Friar’s Club (and repeated by Woody Allen in the great Annie Hall) that "I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member." The second is that the organization does not emphasize the one goal that will achieve its clean air objectives and that, of course, is reducing the number of fossil-fuel burning vehicles on the roads of Central Texas. The third is that there’s money involved in joining the coalition, that money comes from taxes we pay and I’ve never been convinced Kyle would receive an ample return on that investment. And since the last time a Kyle council rejected this idea, another reason has been added: the Trump administration, under the leadership of EPA Director Scott Pruitt, is doing everything it can to disembowel organizations like the Texas Clean Air Coalition in its unrelenting efforts to eliminate all regulations designed to keep our air and water hazard free.

However, according to Mitchell, that third reason I had — the one about a return on the taxpayers’ investment — may have a hole in it.

"The Clean Air Coalition is being brought back for two reasons," the mayor told me. "First, we have two new members on the council and those members have not weighed in on the matter. (They both replaced council members who cast dissenting votes.) Second, CAPCOG (Capital Area Council of Governments, of which the coalition is a part) recently demonstrated how participating in the Clean Air Coalition could be valuable to our residents by drafting a technical memo to help us better understand how near-road air pollution might affect a particular residence in Kyle. It was a concrete example of how participating in the group can be of service to our community, and as such I have decided to vote in support of joining."

So what exactly did this "technical memo" say that was so valuable?

"We had a resident express concern that road improvements near his business would create enough road-based air pollution to negatively affect his business," Mitchell said. "Rather than speculate, we asked for CAPCOG to analyze the air-quality impact of the proposed project. Utilizing science and manpower in part made available through the Clean Air Coalition, CAPCOG provided us this technical memo at no charge. The data was extremely helpful in our communication with the resident, and it also provided a clear understanding of how our projects may or may not impact the air quality of the community."

So did that mean CAPCOG’s study show the road improvements under consideration would not "create enough road-based air pollution to negatively affect his business"?

"Correct," the mayor replied.

The other item involving changing the rules of council includes one having to do with the deadline for submitting proposed agenda items and the second, and more interesting one, dealing with the procedure for bringing a defeated item back for reconsideration. If the rule changes are approved, the new deadline for council members to submit agenda items would be 3 p.m. on the Thursday immediately preceding the could meeting in question. (The previous deadline was 5 p.m. five business days before the meeting.) The second change provides an exception to what I call "the Diane Hervol rule" that stated if an item placed on the agenda by a council member failed to pass "that same item or one of substantially similar subject matter may not be placed back on the agenda for at least six months from the day of the vote." (I call it "the Diane Hervol rule" because the former council member whose name I invoked would routinely bring back meeting after meeting an item the council had already rejected until she wore enough of her colleagues down that they would decide to vote for it just to keep from having to deal with it at every meeting.) The interesting addition to this rule is one that concerns "matters that have not received four votes … either for or against…"

If you’ll recall the council back in February tried to vote on a zoning request for a proposed residential subdivision on Sledge Street that was opposed by those living in an already established subdivision on the other side of the street. Arabie was not present at this meeting and votes on two different zoning proposals ended in 3-3 deadlocks, thus effectively killing the subdivision. However, the item mysteriously re-appeared two weeks later and on March 5 one of those zoning requests ultimately passed by a 4-2 vote (on this occasion, council member Damon Fogley was absent). There was some question, especially from Tenorio, whether it was even permissible, according to the council’s established rules at that time, for such a reconsideration.

If the council approves the rule changes Tuesday, it will state that in those situations in which a proposal fails to receive four votes either way "Any member of council can request that the matter be placed on the agenda for reconsideration. The request may be made at the meeting at which the motion failed to pass, or the request may be made in writing and submitted to the city manager and the city secretary by 3 p.m. on the Thursday before the next regular City Council meeting following the meeting at which the matter failed to receive four votes."

Mitchell is insisting that the Sledge Street reconsideration kerfuffle has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with this proposed rule change (Sure, Fine. Whatever.), but I’ll leave that debate to others.

"The proposed changes to the Rules of Council are to clarify a policy that we loosely followed but was never spelled out by ordinance." according to Mitchell. "The ‘motion to renew,’ … exercised in the zoning matter you referenced, was allowed under our current policy. The proposal before council on Tuesday will actually create a new rule slightly different than Roberts Rules. It allows for any member of the council to bring back an item at the following meeting if the item failed on less than four votes. To me, this is a more democratic approach.

"I can give you an example," the mayor continued. "The way our rules currently read, let's say council has a meeting in which for whatever reason only four council members can attend. In that scenario, a single dissenting vote would effectively kill the item unless the person who dissented agreed to bring it back. I don't think that is the best approach. If an item fails but on a vote like 3-1 or 3-3, any member of council should have the right to reconsider the vote at the following meeting."

There might be some interesting debate on these issues but, like that incident at 10:34 this morning at the just-opened dog park, I’m betting the barking will be there but the biting won’t.

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