by Jenny Staff
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At some point, advocacy is also effective by saying less. Apparently, beating us into submission is now the tactic, and I don’t think that’s appropriate.” — Mayor Kirk Watson, to supporters of the Up to Me drug rehabilitation facility about two-thirds of the way through the hours-long hearing on the facility’s request to move from its North Lamar location to a new one on Webberville Road in East Austin.
Pressed to approve or deny the request, and with only hours remaining before the end of the 60-day deadline prescribed by state law — the council called upon all its reserve stamina to hear out the 137 people signed up to speak on the issue, most of whom chose to use all of their allotted three minutes, despite the mayor’s mini-lecture on effective advocacy.
Watson suggested that the near-filibuster of the Up to Me partisans was representative of a larger problem: that the Up to Me boosters had been insensitive in dealing with their potential new neighbors along and near Webberville Road. Jolyn Piercy of the Rosewood/Zaragosa Neighborhood Association agreed, saying that the Up to Me folks had employed a “contemptuous, patronizing, dogmatic” manner with the neighbors. But she said the tensions were largely the result of the heated hearing atmosphere: “Outside the City Council, we are just as polite as we can be to each other.”
Piercy said the neighborhoods’ opposition to the facility was based mainly on two factors: that it was inappropriate for a neighborhood setting such as theirs, and that Up to Me had failed to adequately notify neighbors or answer their questions and concerns. Though Up to Me administrator Patricia Jennings cites flyers placed on neighborhood doors, a newspaper ad, and an Aug. 26 public hearing as beyond-the-call-of-duty efforts to communicate with neighbors, residents said the group was evasive and failed to make its case to their satisfaction.
Up to Me had already signed the lease on their new property when the controversy started late this summer, when neighbors opposed to the move started appealing to their elected officials. They found out that Up to Me was subject to a 1997 law that required correctional facilities to gain approval from the relevant governing body — in this case the Austin City Council — within 60 days of filing the request. (Since it gets funding from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Up to Me is classified as a correctional facility.)
Such squabbles over “the process” have become par for the course in Austin’s frequent neighborhood land use wars; as more than 100 members of the greater Austin community traded soliloquies, the hearing turned into a compelling exchange of ideas on what revitalizing communities — and meeting the needs of addicted ex-cons trying to make a new start — is all about.
There was no shortage of longtime East Austinites protesting the addition of yet another unwanted land use, citing a history of bad zoning and the use of the Eastside as a dumping ground for undesirable projects of all descriptions. They are tired of fighting this battle and losing, they said. When will the front lines of this battle move elsewhere, they wondered? When will it be the Tarrytown neighbors who have to spend their evenings fighting tank farms and warehouses and drug treatment facilities?
But quite a few East Austinites disagreed. Citing Up to Me’s excellent track record and lack of criminal disturbances involving its clients, they argued for the facility as an essential haven for a group of people who — just like the East Austin neighborhood in question — is working hard to turn itself around. Said the Rev. Nathaniel Thomas of Eph-Phatha Baptist Church: “There was such contradiction tonight — ‘Yes, we believe these programs are helpful, but no, not in our neighborhood.'”He cited the testimony of one woman who opposed the facility, but who complained of drug use among the children in her neighborhood. “That’s exactly why we need this program in this neighborhood,” he said, adding that East Austinites had an obligation to their fellow citizens equal to — maybe even greater than — anyone’s. “Crack cocaine is in East Austin,” he said, “but clinical track records are not.” Orange Jefferson, a former client and Up to Me success story, testified to its value, and to the positive influence its graduates would have on the neighborhood: “Who would you want for a neighbor — someone with a vengeance for crime? Because crime stole my life.”
Up to Me had several witnesses on hand testifying to its effectiveness in treating drug abuse and its benign effect on current neighbors. A neighbor at its current North Lamar site said, “The facts are, we have had no crime in our neighborhood, no senior citizens abducted, no children molested. They are 25 feet away from me, and I’ve never heard of any kind of disturbance in the four years I’ve lived here.”
One Up to Me employee insisted that the facility would provide a direct benefit to the area: “We are a clinical training institution which would allow people from the new ACC campus to do their internship with us; we’re right down the street.” She suggested that the neighbors had misrepresented how things were in their neighborhood. “It’s real nice for them to come here and talk about how beautiful their community is. We’ve got the police reports.”
Among the most salient criticisms is that while Up to Me will serve some members of the East Austin community, that is not the center’s primary mission — it’s a halfway house for ex-prisoners from around the state. When a staffer was asked how many clients would be from the Eastside — or from anywhere in Austin, she had no idea: “We get a lot of people from out of the county, because there aren’t many transitional centers in Texas,” she said. But administrator Jennings said that in addition to the 56 beds for statewide clients, Up to Me has a contract to operate 26 beds that would be reserved for local clients, and plans to offer free AIDS education and testing for the community.
In the end, however, the merits of Up to Me were not the deciding factor in the council’s decision. Councilmembers went out of their way to praise the program and congratulate its staff and participants, but said they have to defer to the wishes of the neighborhood, especially this one that has been so put upon for so long. Councilmember Daryl Slusher said that while he is sympathetic to the facility, “We have to rely on the wisdom of the people who have rebuilt this neighborhood,” who believe that Up to Me’s presence among them would be inappropriate. Councilmember Gus Garcia added that while “there’s no question that this community needs this kind of institution, this is a neighborhood that is coming back; putting an institution like this can be a blow to the neighborhood.”
Calling Up to Me “a terrific program of which we need a lot more,” Councilmember Bill Spelman observed, “I don’t think this program ought to be as scary to the neighborhood as it appears to be; on the other hand, I’m not sure we’re doing the program any favors by allowing it to relocate in a neighborhood as solidly against it as this neighborhood appears to be.”
The council asked Up to Me to withdraw its request, and work with the neighbors, or the neighbors at another site where they wish to relocate. Up to Me’s Jennings said that she has met with the mayor’s office about initiating talks with neighborhood representatives with the help of a mediator, and that Rosewood/Zaragosa Neighborhood Association president Liz Snipes indicated last Thursday that she would be open to working with Up to Me.
Chances are, Up to Me would not pose any more of a problem to its new East Austin neighborhood than it did for Central Austin, and it’s unfortunate that Up to Me has reaped the consequences sown by others on the Eastside. But the council was wise to take seriously the concerns of a group of Austinites made fearful and suspicious by decades of getting the short end of the development and land use stick.
This Week in Council: Council will not meet this week. Its next meeting is Nov. 19.
This article appears in November 13 • 1998 and November 13 • 1998 (Cover).