The semi-impossible revitalization task facing P&Z

The Planning & Zoning Commission held the first of what promises to be dozens of meetings Wednesday night to figure out what the City Council had in mind when it gave the Commission a downtown revitalization task. As I wrote earlier, the Council voted 6-1 to instruct the Commission to review what land uses are currently allowed in two zoning districts — CBD 1 and CBD 2 — to determine which uses to keep and which to ditch.

CBD, when employed by city planners, refers to Central Business District, which, in itself, presents P&Z with its first dilemma. As you can see by this map, Kyle’s CBDs, basically runs along and on either side of Center Street from the railroad track on the east to just west of Wallace Street on the west and then along Scott Street to include the library. But that is not Kyle’s Central Business District. Kyle’s current CBD is at the intersection of I-35 and Kyle Parkway and is slowly shifting north along FM 1626. Within a few years, the principle intersection of Kyle’s CBD will be at the Parkway and Kohlers Crossing.

That doesn’t mean there should not be a revitalization in this Center Street area. In fact, quite the opposite. As the only candidate to become a completely sustainable neighborhood in the entire city, this area should be the focus of any municipal revitalization effort. But the neighborhood needs another designation other than CBD, because it is not now and never will be again the city’s Central Business District.

That’s one issue. But P&Z is facing other obstacles as well. It can go through the long list that currently exists that delineates all the types of businesses are currently allowed in this area and then decide which types to excise and which to add. But that could be complete waste of time and energy when, for all practical purposes, there’s nowhere within this district to put any of these businesses. There are no vacant lots in the district.

That means if the City is serious about revitalizing this area it must (1) develop a program that incentivizes developers to redevelop the existing properties within the district and (2) extend the boundaries of the district to places where vacant land exists; i.e., along Old Highway 81 north of Center Street and along RM 150 on the east side of I-35, perhaps all the way to Lehman Drive.

I would encourage P&Z to complete the task the Council assigned it — come up with a completely revised list of allowable uses within the district (with the addition, as I mentioned in my earlier article, of R-3-1 multifamily residential) — along with recommendations that the City (1) create a zoning designation for the district to replace CBD, (2) extend the boundaries of the district to incorporate vacant properties, (3) create a program designed to incentivize revitalization redevelopment, and (4) develop a visual images for what the City wants this area to look like post-revitalization.

The City must also decide the audience for these revitalization efforts — exactly who do they want to attract to this revitalized area. Three possible audiences exist, but only one is truly realistic for Kyle. It’s also the easiest to attract. The first audience is the out-of-town audience. Kyle City Manager Scott Sellers said when he assumed his current position, his No. 1 goal was to make Kyle a destination city. With the events surrounding Pie in the Sky, he has been successful beyond just about all expectations in this effort. But Pie in the Sky does not attract a steady stream of out-of-town visitors. The Texas Pie Company does and the City should be happy with that. Now it needs to develop other places along Center Street for people to go when they come to Kyle for pie. I know Kyle has visions of developing a main street analogous to the one in, say, Fredericksburg, but that main street sprung naturally from the German heritage that pre-existed that development. To borrow from the medical vernacular, Kyle doesn’t have those kinds of pre-existing conditions.

The second audience is those who already live in Kyle and, for reasons outlined earlier, the only local residents this area, when revitalized, is going to attract are those who live within comfortable walking distance of it. 

Which naturally brings me to the third audience — those who already live in the district, the low-hanging fruit. Fortunately for Kyle, because the district is already largely residential to begin with, that built-in audience is already considerable and can be easily enlarged by allowing, as I said above, R-3-1 uses. If P&Z and, ultimately, the City Council decide to concentrate on this audience, they are well on their way to a successful revitalization effort.

The nature and challenges of downtown revitalization

 Following an apples-to-oranges discussion that was, for the most part, wildly off-subject, the City Council voted 6-1 Tuesday night to direct the Planning & Zoning Commission “to revise the CBD 1 & the CBD 2 zoning codes.” 

In introducing the measure, council member Dex Ellison said it was part of the council’s “downtown revitalization” initiatives.

However, council member Robert Rizo, who was the lone vote against approving the item, talked solely about “downtown development” projects, which is simply extraneous to the notion of “downtown revitalization.” Development involves the inanimate; i.e. increasing the number of buildings or, worse, the number of parking spaces in a specific destination. Revitalization involves the animate; i.e., increasing the number of people going to a specific destination.

“This (revising the zoning) is not what’s going to start the development downtown,” Rizo said. “What’s going to start the development downtown is what this council is doing.”

Which may be true, but that was not the point of Tuesday night’s discussion. It does, however, raise another point which is simply: What should the City Council concentrate on — development or revitalization? I would argue for the latter, even though that presents a two major challenges the council, for some reason, refuses to address, possibly because it is not even aware of their existence. The first is the fact that Kyle is not a walkable city and the second is the nature of Kyle’s workforce.

That first challenge is obvious to anyone who lives here. For example, in order for just about any resident of Kyle to go grocery shopping, get a haircut, eat out a restaurant, go the bank — whatever — he or she must use some form of a motorized vehicle. Kyle’s Comprehensive Plan even recognizes this obstacle in its section on Downtown Revitalization. Page 241 of the Comp Plan lists a series of goals for this effort, one of which is “Encourage trail system connections to the downtown and other commercial centers.” In other words, make Kyle more walkable, a most-worthwhile goal. But then I have been arguing for a separate section in the Comprehensive Plan devoted exclusively to hike/bike trails ever since I moved here in 2014.

The problem with the workforce is that the overwhelming percentage of it is not employed in Kyle. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the mean travel time to work for a Kyle resident is 36 minutes. Its data also shows 93 percent of Kyle’s workforce drives to work, 6 percent above the national average. While 3 percent of Americans walk or bicycle to their place of employment, that number in Kyle is 0 percent. What this means for downtown revitalization is that when workers have to drive long distances to and from work five days a week, the last thing they are going to want to do after they get home is to get back in their cars and drive to downtown Kyle, unless it’s for a specific event such as Pie in the Sky or a concert in the park. And successful downtown revitalization requires steady streams of people on a daily basis, not event-predicated streams four or five times a year.

But there’s a partial solution to this as well, as Community Development Director Howard Koontz told the council Tuesday.

“Our downtown is a neighborhood and that’s absolutely unique,” Koontz said. “There’s a lot of small towns in Texas — and I certainly don’t know all of them — but I’ve been trying to find an analogous city somewhere that has a downtown as residential as ours is. Most towns — especially the ones in the Hill Country — have a commercial square and residential once you get blocks away. But we have residential uses right on our main thoroughfares.”

Rizo argued that the City needed to develop more parking opportunities in order to spur revitalization. That, in fact, is the worst thing the City can do. Simply look at any city that has experienced a successful downtown revitalization effort. All of them have followed one simple rule: The only way to get a lot of people into a downtown area is to have a lot of people living in that downtown area.

That means the first step in achieving a downtown revitalization in Kyle is to capitalize on that important fact Koontz pointed out: “Our downtown is a neighborhood.” Create a sense of community in that neighborhood. Develop a survey that asks downtown residents what amenities they would like within walking distances of their homes and then take the time and make the effort to go door-to-door to every residence in downtown to get that survey completed.

The second step would be to encourage even more residents to live in or within easy walking distance of downtown. And this is where revising the CBD zoning codes comes into play. For example, remove the multifamily restrictions in both CBD1 and CBD2 zoning. Not that you would want the type of apartment complexes you see on Cromwell Drive located downtown, but some two-story, all-brick exterior, loft-style apartments could fit very comfortably downtown and attract just the type of empty-nesters that spur neighborhood revitalization efforts.

For the first 30 years I lived in Dallas, downtown became a ghost town after 6 p.m. City leaders made all kinds of efforts at downtown revitalization, none of which worked. Then, in the 1990s, developers began turning vacated downtown warehouses into residential lofts. After they became 100 percent occupied, others began building townhouse projects downtown and other residential projects quickly followed. Suddenly downtown Dallas became an attractive place to live in the city. A development of single-family homes called Bryan Place on the eastern edge of downtown built in the 1960s saw property values skyrocket in the 1990s. Today, downtown Dallas is a buzz of activity between 6 p.m. and midnight. Downtown Austin is still active after dark even though its principle attractions from years gone by — the music outlets — have diminished to the point of almost disappearing completely. However, if you look at the Austin skyline, most of those skyscrapers are residential buildings and it’s those residents that breathe life into the downtown area.

It’s not rocket science: To revitalize downtown, you have to get people to live downtown. As Koontz pointed out, Kyle is unique in that it already has a lot of downtown residences. So concentrate any revitalization effort in (1) determining what will get them to walk outside of their homes and (2) attracting more people to live downtown who don’t want to rely on the automobile to get them to where they want to go.

Council erects barriers to affordable housing in Kyle

 Affordable rental housing has three requirements. The first requirement is that it be housing, places where individuals can actually live. The second requirement is that the housing that is offered be for rent, not for sale, and that usually means an apartment complex. The third requirement is that it be affordable; i.e., housing where the rents are lower than the market average. One of the first requirements for such a project to be affordable is that the property on which it is built should cost less than the market average. Those affordable land opportunities are most often found on certain fringes of the city; rarely, if ever, are they found closer to the city center. In Kyle, specifically, the affordable fringes are going to be found almost exclusively on the east side of I-35.

However, last night, the City Council voted 4-3 it doesn’t want affordable rental housing built on affordable land on the east side of Kyle, effectively creating an impenetrable barrier that will prohibit the construction of any affordable rental housing, as defined by HUD, in the city. In effect, the City has decided it doesn’t want folks who live on fixed incomes like Social Security to live here, especially at a time when the City is taking so much pride in constructing its “Uptown” haven for the well-to-do and increasing property taxes to construct an ecologically unfriendly police headquarters. Send “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" to Buda or San Marcos because we definitely don’t want them in our city.

The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, as the name suggests, is a state government agency that, among other things, makes program funds available throughout the year to qualifying applicants for a wide range of housing and related activities. The TDHCA accepts applications for these funds and weighs them through a point system it has developed that is too complicated and too multi-layered to detail here. What you need to know is that the applications with the most points are granted the funds and the TDHCA normally declares only three winners per geographical area each year. Kyle falls into the Austin area geographical area. One of the necessary ingredients in any application is a formal resolution from the city in which the development is to be located that states the local government supports the project and such a recommendation is worth a whole lot of points. 

A company called KCG Development, LLC, was seeking to locate affordable rental housing, specifically a development for individuals 55-years-old and older, at 1351 Bunton Creek Road, and was hoping to win one of the awards from the TDHCA that would provide about 58 percent of the costs of the project. Thus it came before the City Council last night asking it to approve a support resolution KCG could include in its application to the TDHCA. The council said “no.”

Why did it say “no”? The argument was, essentially, a majority of council members don’t want affordable multi-family rental housing located on land that’s affordable; it can only be located on unaffordable land. Go figure.

Mayor Travis Mitchell said he could not support endorsing the project “just because there’s no multi-family in that area,” neglecting to point out that when Seton Hospital was approved for Kyle there were no other hospitals in that area either.

But then the mayor made a surprisingly (at least, to me) elitist comment: “While affordable housing is a great program, it’s to be administered in limited supply especially where it’s not close to areas where it makes more sense. I have high aspirations for Bunton Drive up there along that new road.”

Council member Dex Ellison put it just as bluntly: “I am in agreement on the need for 55 and up affordable housing. I’m empathetic to that idea. I would certainly be supportive of it, but in another part of our city — not in this area.” This statement marked the first time I had ever heard a Black public official support segregated housing.

“I know there is a need for more housing for 55-plus folks,” council member Robert Rizo, who sponsored the agenda item, said. 

Mayor pro tem Rick Koch and council member Michael Tobias joined Mitchell and Ellison in voting to kill the project.

How the City Council voted Tuesday night

 APPOINTMENTS
Item 4: Appointment of Brandon James to the Planning and Zoning Commission to fill unexpired term.
Approved 7-0

Item 5: Reappointment of Roman Wommack and Victor Medina to the Kyle Parks and Recreation Board to fill expired terms.
Approved 7-0

CONSENT AGENDA
Item 12: Approve Amendment No. 3 to LJA Engineering, Inc., Austin, Texas, in the amount of $11,702.00 increasing the total contract amount not to exceed $244,682.91 for the Schlemmer & Porter St. Wastewater Project. 
Item 13: Approve Amendment No. 9 to Espey Consultants, Inc. dba RPS, Austin, Texas, in the amount of $79,481.00 for a total contract amount not to exceed $1,010,481.85 for additional engineering services associated with the Southside Wastewater Improvements Project.
Item 14: Approve the conveyance of a 15-foot wastewater line easement to the City of Kyle from Mountain Plum, Ltd.
Item 15: Approve the conveyance of two (2) 15-foot wastewater line easements to the City of Kyle from Majestic Kyle, LLC.
Item 16: (Pulled at the request of the applicant) Assignment of Agreement Regarding Roadway and Drainage Improvements – Spooner Tract between the City of Kyle and Sandera Land Development Company, LLC.
Item 17: Plum Creek Phase 1, Section 7B - Final Plat (SUB-20-0132) 23.492 acres; 2 mixed-use lots for property located north and along Kohler's Crossing, east of and along existing and future Marketplace Ave.
Item 18: Plum Creek Uptown Central Park - Final Plat (SUB-20-0164) 1.672 acres; 1 lot for property located approximately 580 feet north of Doherty.
Approved 7-0

ITEMS FOR INDIVIDUAL CONSIDERATION
Item 19: (First Reading) An ordinance of the City of Kyle, Texas, amending the City of Kyle Code of Ordinances; amending Chapter 29, “Sign Standards and Permits”, to amend the definition of billboard; amending provisions related to prohibited signs; establishing maximum size and height of signs; providing a severability clause; providing an effective date; and providing for related matters.
Approved 7-0; no objection to waiving second reading

Item 20: [POSTPONED 2/2/2021] (First Reading) An ordinance amending Chapter 53 (Zoning) of the City of Kyle, Texas, to rezone approximately 19.5 acres of land from Retail Service District ‘RS’ to Multi-Family Residential-3 ‘R-3-3’ for property located at 5492 Kyle Center Drive, in Hays County, Texas.
Motion to keep public hearing open and postpone consideration to next council meeting approved 7-0

Item 21: (First Reading) An ordinance amending Chapter 53 (Zoning) for City of Kyle, Texas, for the purpose of assigning original zoning to approximately 29.8 acres of land from Agriculture 'AG' to Single Family Residential-3 'R-1-3' for property located southeast of Lehman Road and south of Lehman High School, in Hays County, Texas.
Approved 6-1, Flores-Cale voting “no.”

Item 22: A resolution of support for a housing tax credit application for the Katherine, a 55+ affordable rental housing development, and commitment of development funding by a local political subdivision.
Failed 3-4 on rollcall vote; Ellison, Tobias, Koch, Mitchell voting “no.”

Item 23: Consider and possible action to direct the Planning & Zoning Commission to revise the CBD 1 & CBD 2 zoning codes.
Approved 6-1, Rizzo voting “no.”

Item 24: (First Reading) An ordinance of the City of Kyle, Texas regulating sex offender residency within the city and establishing child safety zones; amending Chapter 23 of the Code of Ordinances entitled “Miscellaneous Offenses” by adding Article XI to be entitled “Child Safety Zones;” making it unlawful for certain sex offenders to reside within 1500 feet of premises where children commonly gather; providing exceptions to the ordinance; prohibiting property owners from renting real property to certain sex offenders; providing penalties for violations of the ordinance; repealing ordinances or parts of ordinances in conflict therewith; providing a severability clause, findings of fact and providing for open meetings.
Postponed by agreement, no formal vote taken

Kyle is missing one sex offender

Two weeks after unveiling a proposal to (1) effectively prohibit sex offenders from moving to Kyle and/or (2) creating sex offender ghettos in the city, Kyle Police Chief Jeff Barnett is returning to the City Council Tuesday asking members to pass on first reading an ordinance regulating where, or if, registered sex offenders can live within the city limits. During this two-week interim, it appears the city lost one sex offender.

In his presentation Feb. 2, Barnett presented a memorandum, dated Jan. 14, that included a table listing a dozen Central Texas communities, which one of the dozen cities had ordinances restricting where sex offenders could live, how many sex offenders lived in each community and the ratio of sex offenders to the overall population in each burg. According to that table, 68 registered sex offenders lived in Kyle.

Tuesday, Barnett will come forward with a new memo, this one dated yesterday, the first sentence of which reads: “Today, there are 67 registered sex offenders in Kyle.” I know this is a minor detail, but it bothers me: What happened to that missing sex offender? Did he/she leave on their own accord or was he/she driven out of town? Or was there a miscount? It also bothers me that the memo doesn’t address the discrepancy. I have asked the City for a clarification on the whereabouts of Sex Offender 68, and Chief Barnett replied: “I have checked with our staff to make certain that my assumption was correct. We had one move out of the city during that short time period. This is common as they move in and out of the city from time to time.”

I must also admit I am bothered by other numbers offered with the new ordinance, particularly numbers concerning renters. The latest memo, which is actually one written by Dago Pates, the Kyle Police officer who came up with the idea for the ordinance, to Chief Barnett, states nine of the now 67 sex offenders living in Kyle are renters and only those nine “would eventually be affected by this ordinance when their lease expires.” I am bothered by this because Pates’ memo then says “9 of 67 is 7% of the group that would eventually be affected by this ordinance.” That is simply not true. Nine of 67 is actually almost double that — it’s 13.4 percent. So that makes me suspect all of the math associated with this entire project, including the number of actual registered sex offenders living here, the maps they are offering showing where sex offenders might be allowed to pitch tents in Kyle — all of it. Simply put, I’m quickly losing trust in this whole project.

Among the “Whereas’s” in the ordinance there is one that states “the City Council finds from evidence and statistical reports reveal that the recidivism rate for released sex offenders alarmingly high.” Forget for a moment the strange wording of that whereas. The pertinent question to ask is whether that statement is accurate. Do City Council members actually have in their possession “evidence and statistical reports (that) reveal that the recidivism rate for released sex offenders (is) alarmingly high”?  And, if they do, why don’t they share that evidence with the rest of us so that, for no other reason, some of us who might feel skeptical can feel more reassured about the justification for this action? What do you suppose would happen if you approached your city council representative and asked that person to show you those “statistical reports”? 

What this essentially means is that of the total number of sex offenders living in Kyle today — whether that number be 67 or 68 or even another number entirely — at least 58 or 59 of them, depending on which memo you read, would not be affected by the ordinance because they are homeowners. The ordinance would, once the ordinance goes into effect, simply prohibit anyone listed on the state’s sex offender database from moving to Kyle and establishing “a permanent residence, establish a temporary residence or to be a recurring visitor at a residence, located within 1,500 feet (or 1,000 feet or maybe 500 feet) of any premises where children commonly gather.” The ordinance defines a “premise where children commonly gather” as “all improved and unimproved lots where the following are located or planned to be located: a public park, private or public school (excluding in-home schools), day-care center, or private recreational facility, including a park, water park, pool, playground, skate park, arcade or youth athletic field owned by a residential property owners association, or for which an entrance, admission, or rental fee is charged.”

The reason I added the 1,000 and 500 feet designations is because Barnett has included in his presentation maps that illustrates how much of the city would be declared “off-limits” if the ordinance contained a 1,500-, a 1,000- or a 500-foot restriction. The Police Department is pushing for the 1,500-foot restriction, which, according to its map of that restriction, would essentially create a couple of sex offender districts in Kyle — in the apartment complex on Marketplace Boulevard, parts of the Trails subdivision, parts of the Post Oak subdivision, along Quail Ridge Drive, and an area under development on Opal Lane. Another alternative for registered sex offenders would be to create lofts out of the spaces in the new business parks in North Central Kyle.

Interestingly, there is no public hearing attached to this agenda item, Item No. 24, so anyone from the public wishing to speak on the issue would have to use the Citizen Comment period at the beginning of Tuesday’s meeting. Anyone wishing to speak virtually at the meeting may register to do so by clicking here.

City seeking volunteers for one-day trash pickup drive

The Blanco River comes close, I guess, but really there aren’t any rivers flowing through Kyle. That minor inconvenience, however, is not stopping the City from participating in an event known as the Great Texas River Cleanup. The event is the brainchild of the Texas Rivers Protection Association, based in San Marcos. The TRPA started it in an effort to clean all 90 miles of the San Marcos River including creeks and tributaries that flow into the San Marcos and Blanco Rivers. These days the event is sponsored not only by the TRPA, but also the City of San Marcos, Keep San Marcos Beautiful, Habitat Conservation Plan, and Texas State University. Together, these organizations set Saturday, March 6, from 9 a.m. to noon, as the date and time for this year’s cleanup.

Kyle city officials decided this was a nifty idea and imported it to collect trash in areas around Plum Creek and elsewhere, although this year Kyle’s March 6 cleanup will begin an hour earlier and end five hours later than the one to the south of us (from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.). Kyle will, however, follow the changes initiated by the TRPA due to COVID-19 conditions, the main one being the elimination of a headquarters for check-in. “We’re also encouraging everyone to keep their teams to a maximum of 10 people, wear a mask, and practice social distancing,” said Community Enhancement Initiatives Manager Amy Thomaides.

Five areas in Kyle have been targeted for the trash pickup. Three of them are in Waterleaf Park. The others are Cool Springs Park and Trail and Bunton Creek. However, anyone wishing to pick another spot needing trash pickup is free to do so. Those wishing to participate can register by clicking here.

“The City will provide gloves and bags to groups that will be distributed based on the preference chosen at sign up,” the City said in a statement released today. “Volunteers can either pick up supplies from City Hall between Monday, March 1 and Friday, March 5 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. or they can have supplies dropped off to the cleanup site they selected at sign up the morning of the event. They will just need to text 512-618-8296 when they arrive at their site. Once the group has completed cleaning their area, volunteers can text the provided number and a City staff member will drive to the site to collect all bagged trash and give volunteers pizza vouchers.”

The site for volunteers wishing to work one of the three Waterleaf Park areas will be 628 Abundance Lane. The Cool Springs Park and Trail volunteers are asked to convene at 115 Florida Springs Drive and the Bunton Creek volunteers at 980 Bunton Reserve Blvd.

“All participants are asked to practice state and local orders regarding social distancing and using face coverings when out in public or interacting with those outside of their household,” the City said in its statement.  

Hays County: When they get it right ...

 Last month, I wrote a story about how Hays County officials totally botched its Covid vaccine distribution with a plan that made receiving the vaccine akin to winning the lottery. I had no idea these folks could do a 180 this quickly. But they did. Not only did they come up with a different plan, but they came up with one that was not only efficient in its concept, but also in its application.

So, in all fairness, I need to take back all those nasty things I wrote back on Jan. 30.

I must also admit I’m writing this seconds after returning from receiving the first of my two Pfizer vaccine doses. And, my heavens, was it smooth.

It began with a registration web page that was just that — a site on which a person could actually register to be in the que for a dose, not a place where you battled not only the odds for 30 minutes or less against thousands of others people scrambling for a few slots that were available on one particular day. If you can imagine a game of musical chairs in which there are 500 players and three chairs — that was what the first sign-up site was like.

So I registered and, low and behold, I received an email Friday, just couple of days after registering, notifying me I had an appointment to get my first of the two required shots at 5 p.m. today at the First Baptist Church in Wimberley.

Expecting the worse, I left nothing to chance. I left home at 3:30 p.m. for what is supposed to be the 25-minute drive to Wimberley — heaven forbid I should get a flat tire or something on the way there, be forced to abandon the car, at least temporarily, and hitchhike my way there. And, if I had to wait for any length of time, I brought along the book I’m currently reading, my iPod and some earbuds.

I received a healthy jolt of reassurance the moment I pulled into the church’s well-marked parking lot. I was greeted at the first checkpoint by none other than Mike Rubsam, the legendary former chair of Kyle’s Planning & Zoning Commission (among other distinctions), and I just know in my soul of souls that anything Rubsam is involved with should be a well-oiled machine. And I was not disappointed.

There was one minor hiccup. The person checking folks in at the entrance of the church, a nice-enough fellow armed with a tablet containing, I assumed, a list of all those with appointments on this particular day, said my name wasn’t on the list. I pulled out my phone and showed him the email I had received informing me of my appointment. He summoned another worker, another nice-enough young lady, who asked me to step inside to a desk. She took my Covid Consent Form, pulled up her appointment list on her laptop and immediately told me “I don’t know what he was thinking, but here you are.” She directed me into the church where I stood in a line containing all of three persons. And when I got to the head of that line, which seemed like it took, at most, 30 seconds, I was directed to table No. 7 where sat the person with the vaccine destined to find a home in my left arm. This person had a sense of humor I cherished (“Just relax, I’m about to place a GPS tracking device in your arm.”), she gave me the shot which seemed less than a simple pin-prick, and then I was escorted to one of the pews in the church where I was told to wait for 15 minutes to make sure there were no after-effects. And to make it even easier — right in front of me was this huge digital display of a clock to use to count off those 15 minutes. The people involved in this operation thought of everything to make this as simple, as painless, as easy as possible for the vaccine recipients.

In all, I was back home, preparing my dog’s evening meal, by 5 p.m. As for me, I’m having crow for dinner. 

A shout-out to everyone involved in this effort. Hays County — this time you did good, you did it right, and this someone nestled back in his office somewhere in Kyle is tipping his hat. I owe you this after what I wrote about you guys a little more than a week ago.

Council endorses new name for Rebel Drive

The City Council last night seconded the recommendation of the committee it appointed to come up with a new name for Rebel Drive and said it wanted to coordinate renaming that section of FM150 to Veterans Drive with a special ceremony on or near Memorial Day.

Although no vote was actually taken on the matter, council members generally agreed on the new name and asked the city to schedule the required ordinances to come before council for a vote at an interval so that an official Memorial Day street-renaming could be held during a ceremony which, presumably, would include unveiling the street signs containing the new name.

Council member Dex Ellison voiced some reservations that those soldiers who fought for the Confederacy — the “rebels” the city is trying to distance itself from through the street renaming — could also be considered as veterans. He suggested the initials “U.S.” be added before the word “Veterans,” but that suggestion triggered no support among his fellow council members.

Actions to rename Rebel Drive  — that section of RM 150 from Center Street to Old Stagecoach Road  — began in earnest last year when students at Hays High School, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, voted to abandon “Rebel” as the school’s mascot. The council voted to rename the street “Fajita Drive,” but that suggestion created a backlash from an extremely vocal segment of the community. As a result, the council backtracked and then created a special 15-person committee to come up with a new name. Vanessa Westbrook, the chair of this committee, reported on that body’s recommendations at last night’s City Council meeting.

Last month, Hays High School announced its students had voted to adopt “Hawks” as the “Rebel” replacement.

Kyle police call city “hotbed for sex offenders”

You can add yet another distinction to the city of Kyle. In addition to being “The Pie Capital of Texas” and whatever honor the city plans to bestow upon itself for selling the first fajita in the entire Free World, the city, according to the police officer whose job it is to monitor such things, can now add the title of “Hotbed for sex offenders.”

And despite cautions from Mayor Travis Mitchell and council member Michael Tobias that the City Council might be trampling on the civil rights of some of its citizens, the majority of the Council voiced arguments last night I had not head in more than 60 years, back during the days when local officials were trying to pass laws prohibiting members of racial minorities from living in certain communities. “As a mother, I just don’t want one of those types of people living next door to me,” said council members Yvonne Flores-Cale and Ashlee Bradshaw.

This all came about during the City Council’s discussion of an idea from the Kyle Police Department that would essentially prohibit a person convicted of a sexual offense against a child from living anywhere in the city. They could purchase a home in Kyle, the police admitted, but they could not live in that home.

“These people do have civil rights,” Tobias said. “They did serve their time. They are paying the price for it. But they are still part of our society, still part of our city. They work. They could be business owners. They could be living a perfectly normal life.”

“But we have to feel safe in our homes,” Flores-Cale said, although she stopped short of advocating a similar ordinance against persons convicted of home invasions, rapes, or even home burglaries.

City attorney Paige Saenz said the courts have ruled such laws are constitutional as long as there are still places within the city in which a sex offender could live. Although it appears there are small pockets on the fringes of the city that would not be covered by the ordinance, it doesn’t appear any residences are located in these pockets. The proposal presented last night would bar a registered sex offender from living anywhere within 1,500 feet from “where children commonly gather.” Mayor Mitchell asked the police department to return with maps that showed what areas would be covered with that footage at various intervals between 1,000 and 1,500 feet from those areas. He did not, however, specifically ask to determine what, if any, type of housing is available in those areas that are not impacted by the ordinance.

It’s also interesting to note that Texas law allows registered sex offenders to carry guns beginning on the fifth year anniversary of being finished with that person’s sentence, including probation. In other words, five years after their sentence, registered sex offenders can drive into Kyle and shoot local citizens, but this ordinance would not allow them to live among them.

“We’re five minutes south of Austin, right next to San Marcos,” officer Dago Pates, who first came up with the idea for the ordinance, told the Council last night. “We’re a hotbed for sex offenders to want to be in. The price is right, The location is right. We’ve just had an influx of sex offenders coming in.” That “influx,” he said, totaled 68 persons living in Kyle who are registered with the state as a sex offender. The ordinance would not affect any of those 68 who are currently homeowners, but if they are leaseholders, they would be prohibited from renewing those leases. Bradshaw said she would be in favor of riding all 68 out of town on a rail.

The next step is for the Council to consider adopting such an ordinance, which could possibly take two separate votes and, one would assume, a public hearing attached at least to the first reading of the proposal. It is expected the Council will take up debate and possibly vote on a first reading at its next meeting, Feb. 16.

How the Council voted Tuesday night

APPOINTMENTS
Item 4: Consider nominations and take possible action for reappointment of Lana Nicholson to the Kyle Parks and Recreation Board to fill expired terms.
Approved 7-0

CONSENT AGENDA
Item 11: Declaring parks maintenance equipment as surplus and directing city staff to identify the equipment to be placed on the surplus property listing and the equipment  to be declared without value to be disposed or recycled.
Item 12: Consider and approve Assignment and Novation of a contract from Edmondson Reed & Associates, Inc., to the City of Kyle for the 104 S. Burleson Street and City Square Park capital improvement projects. 
Item 13: Approve a purchase order to Fugro USA Land, Inc., Austin, Texas, in the amount of $25,250 for providing geotechnical and environmental services for the 104 S. Burleson Street and City Square Park capital improvement projects.
Item 14: Approve and ratify a purchase order to Byrn and Associates Surveying, San Marcos, Texas in the amount of $16,000 for providing topographic services for the 104 S. Burleson Street and City Square Park capital improvement projects.
Item 15: Approve an interlocal agreement between Hays County and the City of Kyle authorizing reimbursement in the amount of $700,000 by the City to Hays County for road construction materials required in the reconstruction of Old Post Road (CR 134) from CR 158 to FM 150.
Approved 7-0

ITEMS FOR INDIVIDUAL CONSIDERATION

Item 10 (Pulled from the consent agenda): (Second Reading) An ordinance amending Chapter 53 (Zoning) of the City of Kyle, Texas, for the purpose  of assigning original zoning to approximately 5.87 acres of land from Agriculture ‘AG’ to Retail Service District ‘RS’ for property located at 1400 E. RR 150, in Hays County, Texas.
Approved 6-1 (Flores-Cale voting No)

Item 16: (Second Reading) An ordinance amending Chapter 53 (Zoning) of the City of Kyle, Texas for the purpose of rezoning approximately 57 acres of land from Single Family Residential-2 'R-1-2' (42.3-acres) and Retail Service District 'RS' (15-acres) to Planned Unit District 'PUD' (Single Family Attached 'R-1-A', 54-acres) and (Retail Service District 'RS', 3.3-acres) for property located at 1821 W. RR 150, in Hays County, Texas.
Approved 7-0

Item 17: (Second Reading) An ordinance amending Chapter 53 (Zoning) of the City of Kyle, Texas, for the purpose of  assigning original zoning to approximately 1.4 acres of land from Agriculture ‘AG’ to Retail Service District ‘RS’ for property located at 101 Sunflower Circle, in Hays County, Texas.
Approved 6-1 (Flores-Cale voting no)

Item 18: [Postponed 1/19/2021] (First Reading) An ordinance amending Chapter 53 (Zoning) of the City of Kyle, Texas, to rezone approximately 19.5 acres of land from Retail Service District ‘RS’ to Multi-Family Residential-3 ‘R-3-3’ for property located at 5492 Kyle Center Drive, in Hays County, Texas.
Motion to keep the public meeting open and postpone until Feb. 16 council meeting approved 7-0

Item 20: (First Reading) An Ordinance of the City of Kyle, Texas, Amending the City of Kyle, TX Code of Ordinances Appendix A - Fee Schedule, to reflect an increase in building inspection fees to cover costs associated with third party inspections.
Approved 6-0 (Koch absent), brought back later when Koch was present and was then approved 7-0 so it could go into immediate affect without a second reading.

Item 21: Consider a request to remove the required public utility easement for the Plum Creek Uptown Central Park.
Approved 6-0 (Koch absent)