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October 23, 2008
Charter amendment ads on air, online
The Proposition 2 charter amendment fight has hit the airwaves (and YouTube).
The ad in support of Prop 2, which would prohibit city incentives for retail developments, can be found here. It’s from Stop Domain Subsidies, the group led by local real estate investor Brian Rodgers that collected enough signatures to get the measure on the Nov. 4 ballot.
The anti-Prop 2 television ad, featuring Mayor Will Wynn can be found here. He also lends his voice to a radio ad urging Austin to vote against Prop 2. Lynda Rife of Keep Austin’s Word, the group that paid for the ads, said they were taped after hours to avoid interfering with Wynn’s city work.
The next and final round of campaign finance reports, which will show just how much money each group has raised and spent, are due Monday. Stay tuned.
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September 10, 2008
PAC forms to fight 'Stop Domain' effort
The battle lines have been drawn for a charter amendment that will appear on the Nov. 4 ballot.
The amendment would prevent the City of Austin from paying out tax incentives to existing or future projects that have retail, including the Domain shopping center. In 2003, the City Council gave the Domain an incentives package worth millions in tax rebates over 20 years.
A group called Stop Domain Subsidies gathered thousands of petition signatures to get the proposition on a ballot.
Today, former Austin City Council Member Betty Dunkerley announced that she would lead a political action committee called “Keep Austin’s Word” to campaign against the proposition.
The proposition is “fundamentally unfair,” Dunkerley said in a written statement, because “it’s only about terminating agreements that were negotiated and executed in good faith many years ago.”
Bobby Jenkins, owner of ABC Pest & Lawn, will co-chair the campaign. He said the proposition would “send a clear signal that Austin is not a good place for business” and doesn’t honor its agreements.
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May 22, 2008
No council action on Stop Domain Subsidies
Austin City Council members this morning declined to take action related to the proposed Stop Domain Subsidies charter amendment, withdrawing an agenda item about possibly changing development agreements.
The charter amendment, bound for the November ballot, aims to halt subsidies for retail developments. Supports say the amendment targets the Domain, but city legal counsel has cautioned that it could ensnare other projects, such as the Mueller airport redevelopment.
The council meeting agenda, posted Friday, included an item that would have directed City Manager Marc Ott to negotiate and amend agreements between the city and developers of the Domain and Mueller.
The council withdrew that item after going into executive session for legal advice related to the proposed Stop Domain Subsidies charter amendment.
Brian Rodgers, Stop Domain Subsidies founder, has said that they city should not amend the Domain agreement but leave the decision about subsidies up to voters in November.
In 2003, the city gave the Domain an incentive package that could be worth $57 million over 20 years. Supporters of the charter amendment say such subsidies put local businesses at a disadvantage.
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April 22, 2008
The Domain not in compliance?
A news release sent today by Brian Rodgers’ Stop Domain Subsidies, the group of 450 small businesses opposed to the economic development package given to the Domain shopping center, accused the Domain’s owner Simon Properties of failing to meet city requirements.
Compliance and sales tax reports are overdue and have not been submitted, the news release states.
But Fred Evins, redevelopment project manager with the city’s Economic Growth and Redevelopment Services office, says Simon Property Group Inc. is not out of compliance as Rodgers claims.
The agreement between the city and Simon does not specify when they have to submit a compliance report, Evins said. Based on communications between the two parties, the city had expected to receive Simon’s compliance report in January 2008, a date mentioned previously during a presentation as well as in the news release. However, the date is not stated in the agreement, Evins said.
In addition, the agreement requires Simon to submit quarterly sales tax reports, a requirement also mentioned in the news release. But Evins said his office and Simon agreed to forgo this and instead the city would work with the Texas Comptroller’s office, which would gather the information needed by the city to calculate the payment Simon is due based on the city portion of sales tax proceeds. Evins said the state has done this for the city in other agreements.
The city would have verified Simon’s sales tax report with the state, Evins explained. The new arrangement is more efficient.
In order to receive economic development grants, the Domain project must meet certain requirements, including having low-cost, affordable rental units, budgeting $1 million to assist small local businesses to be part of the project and creating at least 1,100 permanent jobs upon completion of all phases.
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February 19, 2008
Domain charter amendment headed for November ballot
A charter amendment to ban tax incentives for retail projects in Austin will not be held on May 10, as anticipated, even though the signatures were certified earlier today.
The city charter can only be amended every two years. The previous charter amendment election was held May 13, 2006, so this year’s election date of May 10 is a few days shy of two years.
That means the Stop Domain Subsidies charter amendment cannot go before voters until November.
The Stop Domain Subsidies group had to collect more than 18,000 signatures from the city’s registered voters — 5 percent of the qualified voters — to put the amendment on the ballot.
The charter amendment aims to prevent the city from giving tax incentives to projects that have retail components. It would also prohibit the city, in effect, from paying the owner of the Domain shopping center the sales and property tax rebates negotiated in a 2003 agreement.
Read the city attorney’s memo on the eligible election date for a referendum.
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February 13, 2008
Domain petition certification going slowly
City Clerk Shirley Gentry reports that certification of the Stop Domain Subsidies charter amendment petition will not be done this week, as originally estimated.
She said her staff is finding a high rate of invalid signatures, which is slowing the certification process. But that does not necessarily mean that the group failed to collect enough signatures to qualify the charter amendment for the May ballot, she said.
Last Friday, the group turned in about 27,000 signatures, far exceeding the requisite 18,400 signatures, so there is a safety net. Signatures are needed from 5 percent of registered voters to make it to the ballot.
Gentry said the review will be done perhaps on Tuesday of next week.
The charter amendment aims to stop the city from giving tax incentives to projects that have retail components. It would also prevent the city from paying the owner of the Domain the sales and property tax rebates agreed to in a 2003 economic development deal.
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December 22, 2007
Council next to mull single-member districts
The single-member district question will soon face the glare of the City Council spotlight.
The council-appointed Charter Revision Committee on Thursday recommended that the council consider a May vote on changing the city’s election system to include single-member districts.
That decision would have to come before March 6 to make it on the May ballot, where there will be at least one proposed amendments to the city charter.
The charter can only be amended every two years, so the committee members said it was important to act quickly.
Council Member Mike Martinez praised the work of the committee.
“It’s now time to bring their work into a vision and plan for Austin’s future creating more accountability and a more open City Council that represents the many values and viewpoints of our citizens,” Martinez said.
The council members “should listen to our citizens and empower them in making this decision by placing an item on the May ballot for voters to ultimately decide if it is finally time to move toward single-member districts for electing council members,” he added.
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December 13, 2007
South Austin warms to districts idea
A good little crowd of 25 or so residents showed up in South Austin last night to speak about single-member districts.
The Charter Revision Committee that’s mulling over whether a plan should be put to a public vote met at the South Austin Senior Activity Center to take public input. All but one of the 10 folks who spoke liked the idea of changing Austin’s current system — seven council members who represent the whole city. Some of the speakers’ thoughts:
Public attendance at the committee’s meetings has been low because people don’t know the meetings are happening. A few speakers said the city should get the word out through the City of Austin’s online neighborhood registry. Others recommended changing the committee’s name to something less esoteric. (Committee member Stephen Shang agreed, joking that it should be changed to “Extreme Makeover: City Council Edition.”)
Districts could maybe improve voter turnout in Austin’s council elections (which is usually abysmal) because residents would be voting for someone who directly represents their interests.
Sandy Baldridge of the Oak Hill Association of Neighborhoods said that area is the last to get infrastructure and that it wants a district representative to advocate for its needs. Currently, it’s too time-consuming to have to talk to seven council members to get anything done, she said.
Mike Rodriguez of the Onion Creek Neighborhood said the districts issue should be framed in a way that stresses the importance of neighborhood representation over minority representation. “I could care less about the race of the person who represents me. I just want someone who represents me and my neighborhood,” he said.
Former Austin school board member Nan Clayton said Austin City Council members currently ignore “neighborhood plans” — the zoning and land-use plans that neighborhoods spend years crafting. A district representative would fight for those plans to be followed, she said.
Committee chairman Gus Garcia the city has already gotten more than 400 responses to an online survey about districts. The committee’s next meeting is next Thursday at 5:30 p.m. at the LCRA building on Lake Austin Boulevard.
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Phone survey on districts issue
Council Member Mike Martinez has asked the city manager’s office to hire a firm to do a telephone survey on the subject of single-member districts.
A citizens committee has until late January to advise the City Council whether to put a districts plan to a public vote in May. (Currently, all seven council members are elected by the whole city rather than by districts.)
The committee just put a survey on the City of Austin Web site to gather more public input. But Martinez, a proponent of districts, said a telephone poll could provide an even clearer picture of how the community feels about the idea.
The online survey is fairly limited with six of the ten questions devoted to demographic information.
It would cost about $14,000 to hire a firm that could reach at least 400 residents who are registered voters and have voted in recent city elections, he said.
The committee’s meetings have not been well attended, and Martinez said the poll could help the group gather more feedback.
City spokesman Gene Acuna said the city manager’s office is still reviewing and researching the phone survey idea.
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December 6, 2007
Charter amendment redux
In a flashback to 2006, the City Council is fretting over the “unintended consequences” of a citizen-initiated effort to change the city charter.
Today, the consternation is over a proposed charter amendment that would restrict financial incentives for retail development. The worry is that several city redevelopment projects could get caught in the amendment.
In 2006, it was amendments to put public records online and constrain development in the Barton Springs zone.
Several council members have said the “unintended consequences” show the problem with legislating through the charter rather than going through the council process.
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November 29, 2007
Districts debate heads to Northeast Austin
Hungry for some public input on the idea of single-member districts, the charter revision committee traveled to the Virginia L. Brown Recreation Center last night to hear what Northeast Austin residents had to say.
A group of about 20 people showed up — not bad, considering the dismal attendance at the committee’s recent meetings.
City integrity officer John Steiner began by presenting the pros and cons of three maps the committee has already considered that would divide Austin into six, eight or 10 districts.
Committee member Stephen Shang suggested midway through that the committee should move away from a technical discussion and hear audience members’ opinions instead. The committee, after all, is not supposed to draw or recommend maps — only tell the City Council by January whether it should put districts to a public vote in May.
“I think we’re missing the point,” Shang said. “I think we’re focusing on the too much on the technicalities. … I think we need to spend time focusing on the spirit of the issue.”
Yet only a few residents came forward to speak. Alan Weiss of the St. Johns neighborhood said districts might be a good idea because “we never see City Council members come out this way.”
Shang asked audience members to raise their hands to respond to several questions about whether they’re happy or not the current council system (all 7 council members elected citywide). Most were not. One brave soul even came forward to say she didn’t understand the districts concept and ask the committee to explain it.
The committee seems highly skeptical of whether a districts plan could pass if it’s put on a ballot. Committee members Gus Garcia and Chad Williams have repeatedly said, and they reiterated last night, that the public doesn’t seem fired up about moving to a districts system. Committee member Ricardo Chapa said the current at-large system doesn’t seem to be broken, and member Roxanne Evans said she’s concerned about the ward politics that have developed in other cities (such as D.C.) that have district representatives.
The committee’s next meeting is Wednesday, Dec. 12, at the South Austin Senior Activity Center at 5 p.m.
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November 16, 2007
Districts idea dying a slow death?
Does anybody out there care that the city is thinking about reverting to a system of single-member districts?
It sure doesn’t seem like anyone cares. The committee charged with figuring out whether Austin should put a districts-based form of government to a vote held another meeting last night and — once again — almost no one from the public showed up.
This reporter arrived 20 minutes late because of the Wal-Mart trial, and former mayor Gus Garcia (the committee’s chairman) was in the middle of a thought about how the public doesn’t seem to be fired up about the districts idea.
“I’m not sure there is the sentiment out there that would get us to propose another election,” he said. (When he says “another,” he’s referring to the six other unsuccessful votes the city has held about districts in the past few decades.)
Committee vice chairman Chad Williams agreed that the issue needs grass-roots support to get on a ballot and pass.
“I wish more people would come and tell us what they think (about this subject), but it doesn’t seem to be on their radar,” he said.
To seek more public input, the group will post a survey on its Web site in the next few weeks, posing questions such as, “Have you heard anything about the issue of single-member districts?” and “Do you feel well-represented with the City of Austin’s current at-large election system?” Austin Energy bills in December will also include a blurb about the committee and its desire for public input.
Timing could also prove to be a problem. The committee only has until January — six or seven more meetings — to decide whether to recommend that the City Council put districts to a vote in May. That would give the council only a few months to draw maps and rally public support for the concept — a really tight time frame.
The next committee meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 28 at 5 p.m. at the Virginia L. Brown Recreation Center in North Austin. Any resident can sign up to speak to the committee.
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October 26, 2007
Another empty room in districts debate
You could’ve heard a pin drop Thursday afternoon in the City Council chambers at City Hall.
The meeting held there — about whether Austin should change to a districts-based form of government — drew an audience of only eight people. And that included a couple of reporters.
The committee charged with determining whether to put districts to a public vote has only a few months left to make a recommendation to the City Council. They talked Thursday about posting a survey online or doing a phone poll to figure out if the public cares at all about the idea. It’s sure been hard to tell from the meetings.
“The response we’ve had at these meetings has been dismal,” said former Austin Mayor Gus Garcia, the committee’s chairman.
Gerry Hebert, a sort of national expert on districts, showed the committee three possible maps that would divide up Austin into six, eight or 10 districts.
The weirdest one was the first, which lumped a huge swath of Southwest and West Austin into one district and divvied up the rest of the city into smaller geographic chunks.
The 8-district or 10-district plans would create better opportunities for electing African American council members, Hebert said. Black voters are no longer concentrated in one part of town, which makes it hard to draw a district that fairly represents them, he said.
Districts drawn to have smaller populations would have larger percentages of black voters, he said.
Hebert also noted that Austin has the smallest number of council members than any of the 20 largest U.S. cities. Chicago has 50 council members and NYC has 51 — yikes — how do they get anything done?
Here are Hebert’s maps:
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October 11, 2007
Auditor charter change moves forward
Without discussion, the City Council kicked off the process of putting a charter amendment before votes next May to make the city auditor more independent from the shifting political winds of City Hall.
The item would require a six votes — from the seven-member council — to fire the auditor during his or her five-year term.
It is one part of an effort to better balance power between the council and the city manager. The second part of that that effort — giving the council the authority to hire and fire the city attorney — was delayed until November to answer out some lingering questions.
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October 5, 2007
Too few clash of ideas in Austin, veteran pol says
When veteran political consultant Peck Young speaks, you should listen. And not only for the entertainment value.
Young can turn a colorful phrase, indeed, but he also has decades of political experience. He believes Austin’s political system is fundamentally broken.
His primary gripe is about the “silly” campaign finance rules that limit contributions and prevent the candidates from running real campaigns about real differences on the issues, he said.
“That is wrong,” Young said. “It is not good government, it is not good democracy.”
Young also takes aim at the forums that serve as the primary means of campaigning. The forums are typically sponsored by a political group, a neighborhood association, or a community organization.
The groups invite all of the candidates for all of the City Council races on a single night to discuss their issue. It can get quite crowded with three or four races and typically three to five candidates — both contenders and not — in each race.
Each speaker has very little time to provide a nuanced response. The result is a sound bite campaign where there is little meaty debate, no “clash of ideas,” he said.
Young recommends not cramming all the races into a single night. He also suggests creating some sort of a fund raising threshold so that the debate is between the serious contenders. Such a move would not be politically correct, he said, but it would foster meaningful dialogue.
In Young’s mind, there is an opportunity to fix some of the problems in the system by creating single-member districts that will force candidates to focus on smaller constituencies and target their resources. Creating single-member districts might be on the ballot next May.
“That’s how you start dealing with this silly finance system,” Young said. “Then it stops being silly.”
With the campaign season creeping up on us, any ideas as to how to improve the political dialogue in Austin?
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September 27, 2007
Tax incentive petition opens for business
The petition-gathering drive will launch today to qualify a charter amendment restricting tax incentives for retail projects for the May ballot.
Stop Domain Subsidies plans to collect some 18,000 petition signatures at the 400 local businesses that have joined the coalition. A Stop Domain Subsidies Charter Amendment Kick Off! event for the petition-gathering is scheduled for 6 p.m. tonight at the Cedar Door, 201 Brazos St.
The petition language has been modified slightly since it was released two weeks ago. Read the Amendment to Article XII here.
But the two-fold objective is still the same: to prevent the city from paying the owners of the Domain shopping center the tax rebates granted in the 2003 economic development agreement; and prohibit future deals for retail projects.
Talk is already circulating about the “unintended consequences” of the proposed amendment.
Lawyer Jim Cousar, who specializes in land use and municipal law at Thompson & Knight LLP, said he would have to take a close look at each of all the city’s development agreements that include retail components, including those governing the work at Mueller airport and Seaholm, to determine if they will be adversely affected by the amendment.
But Doug Young, a lawyer helping the coalition, said any existing, binding contract would be not be touched. The amendment would only affect the Domain deal because a 2004 legal settlement states that Austin can rescind the agreement by not appropriating the payments, which could range between $37 million and $57 million over the course of the 20-year contract.
City officials have said such a move would have ramifications far beyond the Domain and send the wrong message to large employers that Austin hopes to attract with tax incentives.
“It is not a good business practice for the city to break its word and to fail to live up to its financial obligations,” Council Member Brewster McCracken said.
A City Council resolution being proposed by Council Member Lee Leffingwell could render the second part of the amendment unnecessary. He plans to bring to the council on Oct. 11 an item to change the city’s economic development policy so that incentives can only be given to firms (i.e. Samsung) rather than projects (i.e. Domain).
“It would accomplish what they’re trying to do, as far as I understand it,” Leffingwell said. “Whether or not that would be sufficient for the people who want to put it in the charter, i don’t know.”
Leffingwell’s resolution would not prevent the payments to the Domain.
Domain-owner Simon Property Group Inc. said in a statement that the project is much more than a retail operation and warrants the “community investment” because of the tax dollars it brings into the city.
“The community investment portion was carefully crafted by the City and County to be entirely “performance-based” — that is, the City, County and the developer will share only in the new taxes that the project creates,” the company said in a written statement. ” Additionally the Domain must include affordable housing units and create over 1,000 new jobs in order to receive any of the city’s investment dollars. It is a win/win situation.”
The coalition is taking a more passive approach to signature gathering than has been used in the past by not hiring petition gatherers. Proponents of two charter amendments on the 2006 ballot spent more than $74,000 to get the necessary signatures.
“We feel confident we will have the necessary signatures by January based on what we’ve gauged from the hundreds of contacts with Austin’s small, locally owned businesses,” said Linda Curtis, who is one of petition effort’s organizers.
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September 24, 2007
Diverse views on districts
Several folks called or e-mailed Monday to offer thoughts on single-member districts after a story on the subject ran Monday.
It was interesting to see how diverse the views were. A sample:
One woman left an irate voicemail message saying she had voted against districts every time it’s been on an Austin ballot — six times, to be exact — and “there was no way in hell” she’d ever vote in favor of them.
A man called from the Onion Creek area to say that he and several of his neighbors want a district representative and that they’ll probably attend the next meeting of the committee that’s mulling over whether districts should be put to a public vote.
A colleague forwarded a comment from a Northwest Hills resident who said he’s “all for a proposal that is based upon geographic and not racial lines.” He said he’d also like to see downtown drawn as a district because it has distinct issues.
A Northeast Austin resident wrote that districts promote “ward politics, NIMBYism, sectional rivalries, and segregation,” but if there must be districts, they should be drawn as concentric circles spanning outward from the city core — the thinking being that neighborhoods located at a similar distance from downtown would have similar concerns.
A woman e-mailed to object that I noted in my Monday story that very few people attended the district committee’s first few meetings. She said the low public attendance “is no mystery … The giant silent majority in Austin who are busy working, making dinner, taking the kids to scouts, mowing the lawn (need I go on?) are fed up with endless ‘public’ meetings. Holding meetings of this kind is known to be one of the least effective ways to determine what the public at large wants. The ‘public’ is BUSY and is turned off.”
Former City Council member Margret Hofmann — who served in the mid-70s — called to invite me to stop by and look at her notes from way back when about the pros and cons of districts. Kind of scary to think the issue’s still relevant 30 years later, huh?
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Petition drive's start bumped until Thursday
Those people itching to sign the Stop Domain Subsidies petition to change Austin’s charter will have to wait a couple more days.
Organizers of the petition drive said two weeks ago that the name-gathering would begin Tuesday, Sept. 25, but have now bumped the start date to Thursday to allow some more input on the petition language. A kickoff event is planned for Thursday at the Cedar Door at 201 Brazos St. More details to come.
The coalition of small local businesses opposing the tax incentives given to the Domain shopping center in North Austin need to gather 18,000 to 20,000 signatures from registered voters in the city to qualify the amendment for the May 2008 ballot. The amendment would prohibit the city from granting future tax incentives to retail projects and prevent the payout to the Domain.
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