Edited by Andrea Barnett, with contributions this week by Dave Cook and Alex de
Marban.
WHAT NEIGHBORHOOD?: Prior to last week, Councilmember Eric Mitchell, the de
facto East Austin councilmember, “didn’t even know” the Swede Hill Neighborhood
Association existed. But approximately 15 residents of the historic East Austin
neighborhood dealt Mitchell a rude awakening at the council’s housing
subcommittee meeting on August 8. Rallying against a proposal by recent
Republican Congressional candidate Jo Baylor to turn the neighborhood’s
unofficial park at East 14th Street and Waller into an “affordable” housing
development, the neighborhood residents so infuriated proposal-enthusiast
Mitchell that he actually shouted “Screw you!” to one of the residents.
Unlike Mitchell, city officials from the Neighborhood, Housing, and
Conservation Office (NHCO), which wants to turn the city-owned land over to
Baylor in exchange for some of her property for Bergstrom housing, had heard of
the 175-member neighborhood association. The small neighborhood is bordered by
I-35, Navasota, East 12th Street, and Martin Luther King Blvd. The neighborhood
association has been registered with the city for decades, with the most recent
incarnation of the group reforming in 1987. Nonetheless, neither Baylor nor
city officials warned neighborhood representatives about the impending deal,
which had been percolating for six months, until eight days before the housing
subcommittee meeting. At the same time, however, NHCO officials did
direct Baylor to solicit the advice of four other neighborhood groups in East
Austin, all of whom supported the deal. The problem? None of those
neighborhoods are adjacent to the park.
Needless to say, Swede Hill residents aren’t happy about the proposal: It
would allow Baylor to swap six lots that she owns at the intersection of East
12th Street and Webberville Road for five city-owned lots, four of which have
been used since 1965 as a park by the neighborhood, a status made “unofficially
official” back in 1978 in an arrangement between the neighborhood and the
then-city council. The fifth lot in the deal, located at 1105 Navasota Street,
is adjacent to Baylor’s Navasota Center Office Development. The swap would
permit an office expansion, Baylor’s only profit from the deal, she says.
An unnamed developer would build as many as eight $80,000 houses at the
one-acre park. That proposed cost is considered by the federal Housing and
Urban Development agency to be the ceiling of affordable housing. Despite the
proposed houses’ hefty prices, the mystery developer will make nothing on the
deal, according to Baylor. “They’re making so much money these days that they
just want to give something back.”
Swede Hill residents say the development would remove the heart of the
community. NHCO officials and the Baylor-Mitchell tandem maintain that the
“park” should not be considered a park, although the Parks Department regularly
mows it and has enhanced it with a gazebo and jungle gym in times past. Baylor
said at the meeting that it’s not being used since she saw nobody there during
a drive-by assessment six months ago. As further evidence of the park’s alleged
neglect, Baylor read a letter from an elderly woman living adjacent to the
park, who supports the swap, saying the park provides no more than a
dog-training ground.
Neighborhood speakers scoffed at the assertion, saying the park is
frequently enjoyed for all types of recreation. In fact, the association holds
its annual picnics there, the latest being last Saturday, August 12. Speakers
also questioned the validity of Baylor’s supportive letter, because the alleged
author also signed a petition with 49 other residents opposing the deal.
Despite the proposal’s shaky foundations, Mitchell passionately supported
Baylor at the subcommittee meeting. He promised one resident, “I’m going to do
this [development]! I’m not going to let you or anybody else stand in my
way!”
The resident shot back, “That’s sound public policy.”
Mitchell replied, “I’ve never been accused of having sound public
policy. I’m not a politician.”
A voice from the audience countered, “So basically you’re
telling us, `Screw you.'”
“I never said that,” Mitchell answered.
When another speaker shouted that Mitchell was talking out of turn,
the city councilmember answered, “But I will say, `Screw you‘ to you!”
By the time the row subsided, the other housing members at the
meeting – Gus Garcia, Brigid Shea, and Jackie Goodman – decided that the idea
needed more work. Shea wondered aloud if the city would benefit from trading
five centrally located lots for the six outlying lots. In the meantime, city staff will look for other potential lots in the area to swap with
Baylor. The proposal is expected to return at the next housing meeting,
sometime in late September.
By the way, hardly anything written here was evident in a Statesman story by reporter Chuck Lindell printed this Tuesday. The headline, “Park pits
East Austin residents vs. city,” in addition to statements like, “Now the city
wants to build affordable homes on the land… pitting one of the city’s
serious needs, affordable housing, against the interests of residents,” not
only obscures the issue, but misrepresents the players. Buried at the end on
page B5, this statement appears: “The housing proposal is in reality a
two-pronged venture involving a land swap between the city and Jo Baylor… ”
Better late than never. – A.M.
NO HABLA INGL�S? TOO BAD: The Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP) has
decided to appeal to the state Supreme Court a case in which a Smith County man
was jailed for a year because he didn’t speak English and so couldn’t
participate in a probation program.
The man, Aristeo Lira Flores, was convicted in 1991 of driving while
intoxicated. Most people in his position receive probation, on the grounds that
they attend a rehabilitation program. Since no such program existed in Smith
County for people who speak only Spanish, Flores was instead sent to jail for a
year.
Although Flores has been out of jail for about two years now, his supporters
say his sentence amounts to racial discrimination and point to a whole body of
case law as proof. “One trigger used by the federal Voting Rights Act to find
national origin discrimination is language-based discrimination,” wrote TCRP
attorney Jim Harrington in the July 17 issue of the Texas Lawyer.
Harrington says that instead, the court could have ordered Flores to take
English classes and then sent him to a rehabilitation program.
But the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals disagrees. Judge Stephen Mansfield
penned the court’s majority decision in June, saying that since language is a
condition that can be changed, and that people of many ethnicities speak
Spanish, Flores was not discriminated against.
“An individual is free to choose the language he or she speaks and one only
needs to look at the history of the United States to find millions of examples
of individuals who came here speaking many different languages but who learned
to speak at least one additional language, general English,” Mansfield wrote,
justifying his position.
Harrington finds this ridiculous. “What do you do when you come to the U.S. –
pick up a language pill to learn English? You don’t learn the ability to speak
English overnight,” he says. “What surprises me is that [Mansfield] picked up
four other judges who agreed with him.”
Harrington says the TCRP intends to file its appeal within the next two
months. – A.B.
WHICH WAY DO YOU SWING?: Last week saw a flip-flop of Clintonian
proportions by Phoenix Firebirds/Austin Swing owner Martin Stone. He began the
week by stating outright, in an interview with Austin American-Statesman editor Richard Oppel in the latter’s Sunday, August 6 column space, that his
Triple-A team would pull out of Austin if former city councilmember Bob
Larson’s Save Austin From Extravagance (SAFE) campaign managed to force a vote
on the city’s $10 million in promised Certificates of Obligation (CO) and
surplus tax revenues. But at a Firebirds press conference last Friday, he
surprised everyone with the news that there should be be a vote after all. City
staff advised council to schedule a special election for October 7.
The council’s official approval of the special election may not come so
easily. The Statesman reported August 15 that the election could cost
$190,000, and Councilmember Brigid Shea is not only opposing city funding for a
special election just on the bond issue (she wants the Firebirds to pay the
$190,000), but also objects to using $1.6 million in surplus tax money and may
call for the full $10 million to come from bonds. (See Daryl Slusher’s story,
p.17.)
Mayor Bruce Todd, who’s been one of the staunchest supporters of bringing the
Firebirds to Austin, joined Stone at the podium in the Pleasant Valley
Sportsplex as he made the announcement, during which it was also disclosed
that if the measure passes, the city plans to issue the bonds on January 15,
1996.
With Stone putting up around $2 million of his own money for the time being so
the stadium construction schedule does not fall behind should the vote come out
positive, the question becomes: Why? What made Stone shift his position so
quickly?
First, there’s the obvious answer: Bob Larson and SAFE. Until recently, Stone
was probably hoping that, as suggested in a June 9 article in the daily, the
city would require SAFE’s petition to be turned in as much as 30 days before
the CO issuance, which had been scheduled for September 7, so all the
signatures could be validated. SAFE never would have made it. Then it was
discovered that such a requirement is against state law. The city announced,
after an executive session on the matter August 10, that as long as the
petition were turned in on, or before, September 7, and had at least 15,000
signatures which would represent 5% of the voters, the CO issuance would be
halted.
With a reported 11,000 signatures already on the petition, Stone says he “was
becoming more and more convinced that the mood was becoming negative about
baseball,” and thus he caved in and asked for the vote.
Larson says that if council actually schedules a vote, “SAFE is finished…
that was our only issue. Am I going to campaign for or against the stadium?
No.”
But the biggest thing Stone has to gain by calling for the vote – perhaps the
only thing – is time. After the expected approval of amendments to the
Firebirds’ contract with the city, Stone will have until January 15 to sell his
seating options – and sales had been disappointing so far, with only about 800
sold as of August 11, according to Firebirds GM and Vice President Craig
Pletenik. (The Firebirds estimate they’ll need to sell 4,000.) And if Stone had
waited to see how things turned out with the SAFE petition, he probably would
have seen his city money go on the November ballot. Now he gains a month by
agreeing to a special election October 7, assuming it’s approved, which will
also allow seating option sales to resume in earnest between then and January
15 if the results go his way. But the October election date will still leave
the Firebirds plenty of time to crank up all the positive PR they can – and
then we’ll find out which way Austin’s going to swing. -D.C.
This article appears in August 18 • 1995 and August 18 • 1995 (Cover).