I sincerely hope that nobody reading this ever finds themself broke and starving on the streets of New Delhi. And if such a situation befalls you, I’m willing to bet that if you run into some old colleague you haven’t seen in weeks and he says "Hey, buddy, have dinner with me tonight — my treat," you’re not going to reply, "I’d love to, but I’m a vegan, so I’ll agree to have dinner with you tonight, but only on the condition we go to a strict vegan restaurant." You’re just not going to say that. At that point you could care less if a waiter brings you filet of rat sauteed in peanut butter truffle sauce. It’s food.
I’m not sure many members of the Kyle City Council get that. The mayor gets it, but I’m not sure anyone else up there on that dais does.
The council spent nearly a quarter of its four-hour meeting last night batting around the idea of whether it should direct the Planning & Zoning Commission "to gather public input and conduct a short term rental study." (If course, this time pales in comparison to the fact that the council spent 40 percent of its total meeting time behind closed doors and out of the public eye in a pair of executive sessions. So there’s that.)
Now it helps to put all this in context. A couple of weeks earlier, back on Jan. 23, to be exact, an event took place that was billed as a "joint meeting of the City Council and the Planning & Zoning Commission," but was actually the opportunity for the council and the city staff to put P&Z in what they felt was its proper place. It was like the parents telling their child "Now go to your room and stay there until you learn how to behave." From this P&Z member’s viewpoint, the meeting was 25 percent condescending and 75 percent patronizing. It got so bad that at one point a member of the city staff was talking down to the commissioners like we were sixth graders getting our very first civics lesson. He was trying to explain the council-manager form of government, under which Kyle’s municipal government operates, and he used the wrong analogy to illustrate it. It was, frankly, embarrassing and somewhat painful to sit through. It brought to mind a lesson I gave to everyone who took my public speaking course which was "Never talk on a subject that your audience knows more about than you do." (Something that wasn’t mentioned as part of that civics lesson, but, being the trivia nut that I am, I find interesting, so I will pass it along: Of the 25 most populous cities in the United States, only eight operate under a council-manager system and of those eight, five are located in Texas — San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, Fort Worth and El Paso. Never know when trivia like that will come in handy some day.)
There were many misguided souls on the city council dais last night that actually thought what was being asked of P&Z concerned short-term rentals. It really didn’t. It was the parent telling the child "OK, I’m going to give you the opportunity to prove to me you can behave so I can let you out of your room." It was the food being offered the starving man. It mattered not whether it was filet of rat sauteed in peanut butter truffle sauce. It was food. Trust me. I know. I’ve been there. You eat. You don’t ask questions about origins. What was in the food was completely irrelevant at that point. It was food.
Basically what the council and the staff told P&Z at that Jan. 23 meeting was "You are not supposed to show any initiative, display any form of creativity, unless we give you permission to do so and you are going to have to prove to us you are worthy of us giving you permission to come up with an original idea." Those were the rules handed down. "And don’t blame us," the council and staff said, "it’s all spelled out in the city ordinances. It’s not our fault." And you know what? They were correct. It was all spelled out in various ordinances. Kyle’s original ordinances were drafted by people who didn’t trust government and believed those who would follow in their wake and actually run the place would be fools and idiots, "so let’s keep all authority in as few hands as possible."
Then along comes Mayor Travis Mitchell who has the novel idea of "Wait a minute! Let’s see what these folks on P&Z can do." It was the mayor saying, in effect, let’s give these people some food. Exactly what the food is doesn’t matter, it’s completely irrelevant. It’s food.
That’s why the study really has nothing to do with short-term rentals. It is all about whether P&Z should have the opportunity to demonstrate it can let out of its room.
By now, most folks have some familiarity with short term rentals. It’s where you rent the spare bedroom in someone’s home for a night or two. In some cases it’s about renting the entire home for a "short-term," usually defined as anywhere from one day to two weeks. Back in the day they were not called "short-term rentals" but you could easily find them in listings of bed-and-breakfasts. Between the mid 1980s and the turn of the century, I used to make regular pilgrimages back to my old hometown of New York City when there were plays on Broadway I especially wanted to see. Hotel rates in Manhattan, at least to me, were outrageous, far removed from my affordability factor. But searching the various bed-and-breakfast listings always directed me to someone who was willing to rent out a spare bedroom in an apartment in Soho or Tribeca or even in my old Stuyvesant Town neighborhood for a price I could easily afford.
Currently, My Hero is on the other side of that equation. She purchased her dream beach house that sits right on the gulf shore in Santa Rosa Beach, Fla., but she’s only there, at most, four to six weeks out of the year. She lets family stay there which is the only reason why my son, granddaughter and I have spent several gloriously divine weeks at that beach house. But the truth is, the only way she can afford this place is because she rents it out several days to a week at a time to people she doesn’t know through an outfit called Vacation Rentals By Owners (VBRO) which bills itself as "the most popular vacation rental site in the United States." The fees she makes through VBRO cover her payments on the property.
All of which brings me back to the bone the council wound up voting 4-2 to toss to P&Z. "I have a lot of confidence they (P&Z) will take this task on and will do the very best that they can and fulfill the task that we have set out for them," Mayor Mitchell said.
And that’s the deal. Fulfilling the task. Regardless of what the specifics of that task are. It’s just about getting the job done, whether that job is digging a hole or creating the design specifics that allow a rocket to land upright in the spot where moments ago it was shot off 27 miles into space. It’s doing the job. And that’s what the two who voted against sending this to P&Z — council members Shane Arabie and Tracy Scheel — didn’t seem to get. I’m not certain that even all the council members who voted for the measure really understood what Mitchell was trying to do.
Now to get to that specific job Mitchell wants done. What Mitchell tasked P&Z with doing is, to be honest, rather pedestrian: "Gather public input and conduct a short-term rental study. P&Z shall provide this feedback in the form of a memo which shall be presented to council by or before the first council meeting in May. P&Z is not required to include in the memo the opinions of the individual commissioners and/or any proposed amendments to our code of ordinances related to short-term rentals."
In other words, just get "the lay of the land." Conduct a series of "focus groups" and objectively report your findings back to council. That’s all. Listen to what different people have to say. Homeowners — those who live in the immediate vicinity of short-term rentals, those who offer their homes for short-term rentals, those who travel to other destinations and use short term rentals; professionals in the hospitality industry; business leaders; vacation planners and others directly involved in tourism. Learn what actions, if any, other municipal governments are taking in reaction to short-term rentals while accepting and noting the truism of Newton’s Third Law of Physics. Then assemble and put all this information into a well-written, easy to understand report and get it to the City Council on or before Tuesday, May 1.
It kind of reminds me of those days many, many years ago when the teacher assigned a book report. The teacher never told each student what book he or she should read. That was irrelevant. It was all about the report, not the book.
That’s a lesson a lot of folks on this council should take to heart.
In other action last night, the council announced The Knight Law Firm LP of Austin will return as the city’s legal representative with principal Page Saenz acting primarily as the city attorney for Kyle. All I know is that I immediately trust and have all the confidence in the world that a law firm whose URL is cityattorneytexas.com probably knows a thing or two about serving as a city attorney.
Every other action item besides the P&Z assignment on last night’s agenda was approved by a 6-0 vote. Council member Daphne Tenorio called in sick and was excused from attending the meeting.
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