For county and municipal development authorities, one of the less appealing aspects of their jobs is dealing with the dreaded “cocktail napkin” application. These are incomplete, thrown-together development applications submitted for no other reason than to grandfather developers out of looming ordinances. The Travis Co. Commissioners Court, for example, received five new applications for development permits the day before it was slated to vote on new water-quality rules last week.
Commissioners ultimately opted for a freeze on new applications rather than adopting new rules, but that might not matter much now. The House Land and Resource Management Committee approved a bill Friday that would make it even easier for developers to claim that their plans – even cocktail napkin ones – supersede local regulation. Developers, bust out your martini shakers.
Everyone agrees grandfather clauses exist for a good reason. If you’re working on a development and the city passes an ordinance that changes the rules before you’re done, you should have “vested right” to finish your development under whatever rules existed when you busted out the bulldozers. However, HB 1704 would broaden (the bill’s supporters say “clarify”) the proof needed to vest rights to include a utility service agreement or postmarked application.
That, say local government representatives, opens the door to a floodgate of applications. John Reynolds of the San Antonio Water Service, for example, told the committee that his office was already drowning in challenges from developers who dredge up old, abandoned plans as evidence that someone at some point was planning to build something on their land, and so they should be grandfathered out of existing regulation. “We are being sued in court by a developer who says he has rights stemming from 1922,” he said. “Eighty-three years of government regulation are said not to apply to that piece of property.”
The only committee member to agree was David Leibowitz, D-San Antonio. “My problem,” he said, “is that developers in San Antonio are using skeletal plans that they filed pre-1995 in 2005 to bulldoze every tree in sight.”
The bill now goes to the full House.
This article appears in March 25 • 2005.