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Animal Shelter
October 16, 2008
Court affirms ruling on animal shelter
The Texas Court of Appeals today upheld a lower court’s ruling that will allow the City of Austin to build a new animal shelter in East Austin.
The city plans to build the facility on its Health and Human Services campus on Levander Loop, rather than at the current animal shelter location on Cesar Chavez.
Three neighborhood groups sued the city over the plan last year, arguing that the city was ignoring a neighborhood zoning plan that calls for building affordable housing on the Levander Loop land. They also said city officials violated open meetings laws by forging ahead on plans for the Levander Loop site without taking a formal vote or holding a public hearing.
A district court judge ruled in favor of the city in March; now Third Court of Appeals Justice Jan Patterson has affirmed that ruling.
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February 19, 2008
Animal shelter controversy heads to court
Neighborhood groups that oppose the site chosen for a new animal shelter got their day in court today.
The groups want the city to use $12 million in bond money to rebuild the 50-year-old shelter at its current location, 1156 W. Cesar Chavez. City leaders want to build a new shelter at the city’s Health and Human Services campus at 7201 Levander Loop in East Austin.
Some animal activists say the move would deter animal adoptions because stats show that most pet adopters live in zip codes west of Interstate-35.
Groups including the Govalle Johnston Terrace Neighborhood Planning Team and the animal activist group Fix Austin sued the city last fall, arguing that city leaders needed to hold a public hearing and formally amend the Govalle neighborhood plan — which describes residents’ land-use desires for the area — before deciding to build a new shelter at Levander Loop. The neighborhood plan calls for affordable housing on that land, not an animal shelter, lawyer Bill Aleshire argued in a court hearing today.
Lawyers representing the city told State District Judge Margaret Cooper that neighborhood plans are merely advisory, not set-in-stone zoning documents that the city is required to follow. The Levander Loop land is zoned for public uses such as an animal shelter, they said.
Cooper did not rule today; she told both sides she would issue a ruling in writing.
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October 12, 2007
SOS to blame for shelter brouhaha?
Austin City Council meetings often seem a bit like hallucinations; as the discussions stretch deep into the night, folks start saying things and doing things that don’t make much sense.
Like, for a minute there last night, Mayor Will Wynn appeared to be blaming the animal shelter site-selection debacle on Prop. 1 and Prop. 2, the SOS-backed ballot propositions from November 2006.
Those propositions — which SOS petitioned to get on the May 2006 ballot — would have required the city to post more records online and further restricted development over the Edwards Aquifer. City leaders reviled the propositions, calling them poorly crafted and costly to implement; Austinities voted down the Props.
Last night, Wynn began a somewhat rambling speech about picking an animal shelter site by talking about the bond process. He said that a committee worked for more than a year whittling down city needs to figure out what should be included in a May 2006 bond package. Then the SOS propositions came along, he said, and ruined the timing.
“There were a couple of blockheaded propositions on the ballot and we thought there would be a big pushback to those poorly thought through propositions,” he said. City leaders did not want a “bunch of angry voters” showing up at the polls to vote on what could be considered touchy-feely projects, such as a new animal shelter, affordable housing and green space, he said, “so we had to stall the election for another six months.”
The city had to further whittle down the bond package to decide what to put on a November ballot, and concluded it could spend only $12 million for a new animal shelter — not enough to buy a new piece of land. So, Wynn said, the shelter would inevitably have to be built on city property such as 7201 Levander Loop, the site the council chose last night after much public debate.
The council’s feelings about the SOS props are no secret, but the group would probably dispute the idea that the animal shelter controversy is somehow its fault.
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October 8, 2007
Martinez on the animal shelter
Council Member Mike Martinez called to add his thoughts about the animal shelter issue.
He said and Jennifer Kim withdrew the council agenda item about halting plans for an East Austin animal shelter location for two reasons: It would’ve been redundant. given that Betty Dunkerley and Will Wynn also posted an animal shelter item, and he wasn’t convinced they had enough votes to get it passed.
Martinez said he does not want to delay deciding on a site, but does want more information about the criteria city staff members used to determine that 7201 Levander Loop is the best site.
He said city staff have given him a list of five other sites they considered — the Travis County Expo Center, the old Robert Mueller airport, Vision Village, a vacant store on East Stassney Lane and a piece of property in Onion Creek — but have not explained in detail how those sites came to be considered and why they were ruled out.
Martinez said he has also asked the city manager and an assistant city manager for a list of developable properties citywide that are owned by the City of Austin, but has not received one.
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More Austin animal shelter weirdness
Conflicting items on Thursday’s Austin City Council agenda foreshadowed a catfight over the location of a new city-run animal shelter. But the fur might not fly after all.
Council Member Jennifer Kim said Monday that she and Council Member Mike Martinez now plan to withdraw an item they had proposed that would have stalled plans to build a new shelter in East Austin (7201 Levander Loop) and required the city manager to brief the council on other site options.
Instead, the council will only vote on an item proposed by Mayor Will Wynn and Council Member Betty Dunkerley, which calls for designating Levander Loop as the animal shelter site and proceeding with plans for the facility.
Three neighborhood groups and the animal advocacy group Fix Austin want the 50-year-old Town Lake Animal Center rebuilt at its existing location, 1156 W. Cesar Chavez St., because they say it’s more centrally located to attract volunteers and pet adopters.
Kim said it would be cumbersome to take up conflicting agenda items, and that she and Martinez could still object to the East Austin site by offering an amendment or substitute motion to Wynn and Dunkerley’s item.
It also might be tough to cobble together the four votes needed to stop the East Austin plan. Council Member Lee Leffingwell has said he prefers the Levander Loop site. Council Member Sheryl Cole said Monday that she hasn’t made up her mind. Martinez and Council Member Brewster McCracken didn’t immediately return phone calls.
Even Kim said she thinks the Levander Loop location would be accessible to patrons, but she needs to hear more information from city staff members to decide whether it’s the best site.
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October 1, 2007
Groups sue over animal shelter
Three neighborhood groups and FixAustin are suing the city to stop a new animal shelter from being built in East Austin.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in Travis County District Court, says city leaders violated open meetings laws by proceeding with a plan to build the new shelter at 7201 Levander Loop without taking a formal vote on the site or seeking an amendment to an East Austin neighborhood plan.
“The actions of the city staff, in apparent conspiracy with some weak-kneed members of the City Council who did not want to publicly face and vote on this controversial issue, constitute a deliberate attempt to hide this decision-making from the public,” wrote the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Bill Aleshire.
Austin’s chief of litigation, Anne Morgan, said today that city officials had not thoroughly reviewed the lawsuit and were not ready to respond to it.
The plaintiffs want a judge to void the Levander Loop plan so that the current, 50-year-old shelter can be rebuilt at its existing 1156 W. Cesar Chavez St. location using $12 million in bond money. The plaintiffs — People Organized in Defense of Earth and Her Resources, an East Austin environmental activism group, the Govalle/Johnston Terrace Neighborhood Planning Team, the Old West Austin Neighborhood Association, and FixAustin, an animal advocacy group — say the current site is more centrally located to attract pet adopters.
The Govalle/Johnston Terrace neighborhood plan calls for affordable housing at the Levander Loop site, and the city has not gone through the months-long process to change that plan and build a shelter, resident Daniel Llanes said.
Council Member Mike Martinez has asked the council to discuss and vote on a shelter site at its Oct. 11 meeting, saying he is not convinced that city staff members thoroughly vetted all potential sites.
Council Member Lee Leffingwell said he is willing to take such a vote, but that he doesn’t think it is legally necessary. He added that a council subcommittee that he leads has already heard public testimony about the Levander Loop site.
The 2006 bond election ballot did not specify an animal shelter site, and e-mails from council members — such as one in which Betty Dunkerley calls the Levander Loop location “just one possibility” — show the council never voted on one, the lawsuit says.
But in a March 20 e-mail to an animal activist, City Manager Toby Futrell wrote that “the City Council has already voted on the new location for the (shelter) … and the council approved those dollars and plan.”
The lawsuit says council members voted to spend bond money on the shelter and several other projects on March 8, but “there was not a public notice in any way, shape or form that a shelter location would be discussed, and it was not discussed,” said Ryan Clinton of FixAustin.
In another email to an animal activist, Futrell said she fears “infighting and negative dynamics” among animal advocates will result in delays, cost overruns and no shelter getting built.
“It is not the job of the City Manager or her staff to save the City Council from a messy public argument,” the lawsuit says.
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September 26, 2007
New chapter in the animal shelter saga
There’s a new twist in the debate over a proposed location for a new animal shelter.
City Council Member Mike Martinez said today that at his request, the Council will hear a staff presentation about proposed shelter locations and vote to select one at its Oct. 11 meeting.
The current 50-year-old animal shelter, located at 1156 W. Cesar Chavez, is slated to be rebuilt with $12 million in bond money. But city officials and animal advocacy groups disagree on where it should go.
Health department officials want to rebuild it at 7201 Levander Loop in East Austin, and an animal advocacy group called FixAustin wants the shelter rebuilt at the current site, which it says is more centrally located for volunteers and pet adopters.
The City Council has never formally voted on a new location, and it should, Martinez said. “Just because the citizens agreed to indebt themselves to build an animal shelter does not give staff the policy-level ability to say where it goes,” he said.
Martinez said he isn’t convinced that city staff members thoroughly vetted other sites — including the current animal shelter location and sites west of Interstate 35 — before endorsing the Levander Loop location.
A contract the Council was supposed to vote on on Oct. 11 to hire an architect for the project will be postponed, he said.
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