At 70 items, today’s City Council agenda (March 21) is not terribly robust, but there are a handful of matters likely to draw controversy. For signal example – although it’s listed as a consent matter and was debated in a previous meeting and postponed – Item 22 will raise some renewed sparks, as it concerns the city’s project duration/project dormancy ordinance. The state attorney general recently opined that the city’s ordinance – which kills certain development projects when their permits have expired — violates state law on vested land rights. City Legal has accordingly drafted a proposed rewrite, but it has triggered Austinites’ allergies to grandfathering. The matter didn’t raise any new debate at Council’s Tuesday work session, but Save Our Springs Alliance has sent out a call for public opposition: “Such [AG] opinions are only advisory,” wrote SOS director Bill Bunch. “They are not binding on anyone including the courts. … Wholesale abandoning of our expiration ordinances is a drastic action that will cripple our ability to manage growth.”
The Austin Energy governance issue is also still simmering: There’s no action item pending – Council is awaiting a proposed ordinance to create an independent management board – but Council Members Laura Morrison and Kathie Tovo want to ask the City Manager (Item 41) for a detailed state and national comparison of the relative performances of utilities with and without independent governing boards. Several advocates have signed up to testify against such a change during Citizen Communication. At Tuesday’s work session, other Council members spoke against any further delay in taking up the proposed governing board (currently anticipated for an April vote); Morrison offered to work with staff on trying to research the question without gumming up the works.
Second and third readings (Item 49) appear for the Downtown parking ordinance revisions, which would repeal minimum parking requirements (with exceptions for bicycles and disability parking); a public hearing on revised bicycle parking regs is also nominally on the agenda (Item 67) – but staff has asked for a month’s delay, so anticipate punting; and the first morning briefing (Item 51) features the Parking Reduction Incentive Pilot Program, followed conveniently (Item 52) by the Air Quality Program Recommendations.
Thursday’s wild card is likely Item 44, a proposal by Tovo and Morrison to codify into ordinance the Downtown Density Bonus Program, adopted in 2011 as part of the Downtown Austin Plan but not yet codified into ordinance. Council has been split on the issue, related to its ongoing debate over “contract zoning” (see “Zone Defense“).
This article appears in March 22 • 2013.
