Nearly three years have passed since Brigid Shea and Jackie Goodman joined Max Nofziger and Gus Garcia for what many hoped was the dawning of a progressive-minded council. But as the years have passed, so have the aspirations. While the liberal majority, as they are called, has ably defended the status quo, they've produced few new initiatives. Such is the lament of a growing number of the city's progressive faction, who ask themselves, "Are our lives really any better?"
Indeed, Shea and Nofziger, both of whom will hang up their council hats on June 15, seem to be asking themselves that same question, and are working with a heightened sense of urgency on new initiatives, as if to justify lost time. Chief among them is a package of enhanced testing and monitoring regulations for Barton Springs and the Edwards Aquifer, proposed by the office of the liberal figurehead and elder statesman, Nofziger.
Shea's biggest idea is a ban on future city services provided outside the city limits unless the city voters approve. She says she wants to put some protections in place before she departs.
But for all the councilmembers' new-found ambition, researching and enacting the proposals in the next four months may be nothing but a pipe dream. Things are no longer so cozy between the liberals after the recent flap over Neighborhood Housing funds and projects (see the January 19 "Council Watch"). And Garcia, who's not up for re-election this spring, doesn't see any urgency.
"Max has put a lot of items together because he's going off of the council," says Garcia. "But I don't believe in doing something that could just be reversed. We don't know who will get elected. It could be another liberal majority, or it could be a whole new council."
Moreover, implementing the proposals would be a complicated and potentially controversial affair, a combination that hasn't exactly portended good fortune for past initiatives. In fact, if the liberal majority's past performances are any gauge, the new ideas don't stand a chance.
"It seems like this council should have been a beacon for progressive causes, and it hasn't been," says council observer Robert Singleton of CODA (Citizens Organized in Defense of Austin). "They've let us down."
Ask the councilmembers themselves what major ground they've broken and they mostly draw blanks. Shea mentions the passage of insurance benefits for domestic partners of city employees in 1993. Goodman's Citizens' Planning Committee (CPC) has forged ahead with the immense task of righting the city's Land Development Code. And Nofziger recently won passage of a tax abatement to spark downtown residential projects.
But of course, domestic partner benefits were quickly repealed by the voters with the success of Proposition 22, practically during the same summer season they were implemented. The CPC, meanwhile, has faced mostly preliminary and procedural challenges. When it's time for implementation, however, might they get watered down or ignored like the rest of the city's comprehensive development plans? It will depend on who takes over on the dais in June.
On the environmental side, the council has made even fewer attempts at new initiatives. And what they have done has been minor. They've introduced a minute portion of the city's fleet of autos to alternative fuels, and they've provided a small amount of funding for air-quality safeguards.
That lack of environmental initiatives is a complaint being heard more and more frequently these days. Singleton wonders why no back-up protections for the Barton Creek watershed have been pursued in the interim while the city appeals for reinstatement of the SOS ordinance. Nofziger, who doesn't come into his council office on Mondays and Fridays, says it was an idea he thought about, but never carried out. He, like Shea and Garcia, says that the legislative and judicial attacks against the ordinance were a major roadblock to new ideas.
"It was a time of the city coming under tremendous attack," says Shea. "We were in a position where it wasn't acceptable to be spending any more public dollars on water-quality issues. We had the ordinance in place. We just had to defend it from the Legislature and development interests and talk radio."
"We have been defending ourselves," Garcia remits. "The attack has been pretty fierce."
The councilmembers seem to believe in the old coach's adage that a good defense makes the best offense. They applaud themselves for funding legal defense for the SOS ordinance (a total of $1.2 million) in the face of heavy criticism that the money was coming out of the Drainage Utility. And they say another round of applause is deserved for their efforts in defeating the Super Bowl of all proposals -- providing sewer service to Freeport McMoRan's Barton Creek PUD.
But everyone knows that a team needs some kind of offense, and council observers say a defensive playbook is about all the liberals seem to have. While producing few of their own initiatives, Shea and Nofziger have filed numerous counter-proposals or adjustments to major efforts from Mayor Bruce Todd and Eric Mitchell. Last year, Shea and Nofziger counter-attacked Mitchell's proposed development of the Swede Hill neighborhood's greenspace by requesting that staff find other lots. Nofziger responded to the mayor's encampment ordinance by giving churches a utility bill break if they take in the homeless.
Meanwhile, Todd, Eric, and Ronney Reynolds have been on a tear, what with proposals like the baseball stadium from Reynolds, the encampment ordinance and industrial tax abatement from the mayor, and Mitchell's multi-million dollar proposals for Eastside development.
That discrepancy has not been lost on Eric Mitchell. Angered at Shea's counter-proposal to turn an Eastside rental housing development (SCIP II) into a partial home-ownership venture, Mitchell aimed this comment at Shea at the February 8 council meeting: "I've been here two years. What have you done since you've been here?"
Mary Arnold, the president of the Environmental Board and a close associate of Shea and Goodman, could ask the same question. She suggests a slew of proposals that she says should have been pursued. For example, the council should have placed more pressure on the city manager to unify the Drainage Utility under the Environmental and Conservation Services Department. That would have allowed it to stay under then ECSD Director Austan Librach. As it was, the city manager created the Drainage Utility Department (DUD), and gave the directorship to Mike Heitz, who has no water-quality experience -- even though water quality is one of the DUD's main functions.
"It's hard for me to say why something didn't happen. I guess they're just busy," says Arnold. "This council could have made more use of its time."
"Could have" is a potentially infinite undertaking; what is certain is that the liberal majority has come up with few new ideas. And though at times they take strong independent stances -- Nofziger's lonely resistance against a tax abatement, Shea's opposition to the baseball stadium, Goodman's almost uniform support of neighborhood petitions in zoning cases -- they've hardly come together as the team many expected to them to be. But maybe, as the old cliché goes, it's better late than never.
"There's still time to do some things," says Nofziger. "There's a bit of frustration that with a full majority we could have done more, but the tougher you try to get, the shakier things become. I'm in things for the long haul. We didn't accomplish everything, but we moved the ball."
Yes, some would say, perhaps a lateral pitch to the next council.
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There was no council meeting on Feb. 22. Coming up this week: A marathon meeting it will be.