The City Council does not have a particularly heavy posted agenda today (Thursday), but that’s not always indicative of how much time they’ll spend nailed to the dais on Channel 6 like a row of tiny pumpkins. Last week they were deep into tinkering with the Transit-Oriented Development Ordinance – mostly over how to protect the Saltillo and MLK station districts from overdevelopment and how to draft the affordable-housing goals – when they ran out of gas and kicked it to this week, when (presumably) it should fly through.
A good bit of the slowdown was due to extended discussion of a potential settlement of the Canyon Creek MUD dispute, aka the Twenty Years War. CC residents, who chafe under the “double taxation” of city water bills and previously assumed MUD debt (although that was the deal when they bought their homes), proposed a “compromise” whereby the city would take on half the debt (by forgiving $12 million or more in water bills over 20 years) in return for – well, that was the rub. In theory, residents will try to persuade the MUD board (which has already sued the city on this issue, lost, and appealed) to forgo additional debt, transfer some land to the Balcones Canyonland Preserve, stop lobbying the Lege for Austin-bashing bills, and maybe even drop its lawsuit. Will Wynn, Brewster McCracken, Betty Dunkerley, and Jackie Goodman were on board, describing the issue as one of fairness to residents who didn’t create the problem. But Daryl Slusher (who said this was the first he’d heard of it) balked hard, followed more circumspectly by Raul Alvarez and Danny Thomas. Slusher complained, reasonably enough, that the Council was promising real money for a bird in the bush, while Goodman and others argued that the CC residents (present in some numbers) couldn’t be expected to speak for the board.
Slusher et al. wanted to wait for MUD action before committing the city. Instead, the proposal passed but on first reading only, and presumably before it returns – today – the litigious MUD board will have determined whether it wants to play nice or continue lobbing lawyers and legislators at the city.
This article appears in May 20 • 2005.
