If
Channel 6 displayed
sound meters during telecasts of council meetings, it’d be a lot easier to
predict Gus Garcia’s vote. You’d only have to determine which faction made the
most noise. It would help Garcia too, since he could just look at the meter to
figure out where he stands on an issue. Indeed, when Eric Mitchell complains of
councilmembers “folding like accordions” to persuasion, he no doubt has the Pro
Tem in mind.
There are numerous examples, but Garcia served up the waffle especial back in February. The council chambers were electric with revolt. A packed
house thundered for approval of another Eric Mitchell development proposal, and
maybe Garcia lost his head. After the rabid public debate, the eldest
councilmember, the Mayor Pro Tem, would do an about-face before his core
constituency — the brown ballot of East Austin proper.
Only the night before, at a public gathering of a key Hispanic bailwick, the
Guadalupe neighborhood, he had promised to help jettison the old SCIP II
(Scattered Cooperative Infill Housing) project. SCIP II would create 100
“low-income” houses in East Austin’s Blackshear neighborhood, but Hispanic
residents in the area dislike the plan because SCIP II proposes primarily
rented homes, not home ownership, a situation that threatens neighborhood
stability. Garcia would quash the deal, or so they thought.
Now, every councilmember errs at one time or another, but this was major. In
the eyes of his people, his integrity plummeted like the value of the peso.
David Zapata, a long-time member of the Guadalupe Association for an Improved
Neighborhood (GAIN) in Central East Austin, says, “I’m a lot unhappy with Gus
right now. He’s proven that he can look the Hispanic community in the eye and
lie to us.”
That sentiment seems far removed from Garcia’s first term in office, after
which he rode a crest of popularity into an uncontested re-election bid in
1994. Now, with a year left in his second term, everyone is watching. Though
he’s never made it official — rumor has a strange way of fossilizing into fact
— he’s on everyone’s short list for a mayoral bid in 1997. Recently, though,
he’s made a series of blunders that could haunt his political life.
In addition to the aforementioned example, Garcia shared an accomplice role
with Mitchell in a shady deal last fall. Each convened a group of
well-connected friends — one Hispanic group, one black — to covertly
designate $2.8 million in orphan federal housing money to various East Austin
causes of the groups’ choice. The scheme unraveled when more grassroots
Hispanic groups caught wind of the secret society, known as East Austin 2000,
and arrived at a meeting with their own proposals.
“I thought that was sleazy of both of them,” says Lori Renteria, of the United
East Austin Coalition, one of the groups that “outed” the shenanigans. Renteria
is not alone in her opinion of Garcia’s behavior with the funds, but Garcia’s
stately disposition — his ability to disagree without attacking his colleagues
— and his longtime service to the Latino community, beginning in the Seventies
as the first Hispanic on the AISD board, helps defuse accusations of
wrongdoing. With East Austin 2000, many think Garcia was just led down the
wrong path, and wanted desperately to save face after all Mitchell had done for
the black community. “Latinos have been pissed,” adds Renteria, “because Eric
Mitchell got $9 million [for the redevelopment of East 11th and 12th streets]
and what did we get?”
Very little, in comparison. While Garcia won council approval to decommission
the Holly Street Power Plant after several explosions, many complain that he
has only reluctantly supported Mexican-American political causes. For instance,
the proposed Mexican American Cultural Center (MACC) and Saltillo Plaza both
remain virtual quixotisms, and though Garcia has aided the projects along, he
hasn’t gone full-throttle � la Mitchell and his redevelopment plans.
Voters rejected the MACC in a 1992 bond proposal, but Hispanic visionaries
believe it vital to their heritage and have kept the flame alive. They
successfully pushed Garcia for a council designation for a site two years ago
— on vacant, downtown property that used to be Mexican-American ground until
gentrification forced a trans-highway migration to the Eastside. Now it’s part
of what’s called the Rainey Street neighborhood, and being prime downtown real
estate — the northwest corner of I-35’s Town Lake overpass — it recently came
under siege by unnamed private developers who wanted an option on the land
after the council designation expires in 1999. Shivers spread through the
Hispanic Eastside, and supporters called for a permanent designation. They got
one in April, but complain that Garcia was almost retrograde in pursuing it.
“We do not have a champion on the council,” says one MACC activist. “Gus was
never supportive of it.”
Garcia is also taking a beating for his involvement — or some would say lack
thereof — with the Saltillo Plaza. The driving vision there is a Central East
Austin zocalo — a retail/public transit hub to draw “the other side” to
the business and restaurant district along East Sixth and Seventh Streets.
Business leaders are awaiting a $542,000 grant for the plaza, but a near-deal
between the city, Capital Metro, and the Longhorn Railway Company nearly ruined
their efforts. According to the plans, Longhorn would transport aggregate to
the Capital Metro railyard at Fourth and Waller. From there, 180 trucks a week
would pick up the aggregate on route to the Austin-Bergstrom International
Airport, cutting through neighborhood streets and using East Seventh as the
main thoroughfare. “It would have been catastrophic to this area,” says Diana
Valera, president of Ol� Mexico, a group dedicated to seeing Plaza
Saltillo accomplished.
Garcia claims no knowledge of the proposal, and that seems likely considering
that the contract the council agreed to in February excluded the railyard. The
proposal surfaced last week and Garcia reacted quickly; on today’s agenda is an
item to push the aggregate-exchange site farther east, preferably beyond Ed
Bluestein. But Eastside Hispanics are a hard lot to please, and they say it’s
just as bad that he had no knowledge of something within the community that
needs him the most. “Hopefully,” says Valera, “this has served as a warning
that Gus has to be more careful about this community, that he should pay a
little more attention because we’re in a very vulnerable position.”
That would be a wise move, considering he’ll need his traditional support base
if he decides to face off in 1997 against heavyweight Ronney Reynolds, who has
made his mayoral dreams abundantly clear. Garcia can ill afford mistakes, lest
he go from the great brown hope to the great brown dope, something Hispanics
don’t want to see. “Despite that the community is frustrated, if Gus decides
not to run for Place 5 and runs for mayor and loses, we’re fucked,” says Kathy
Vasquez-Revilla, do�a of La Prensa. “Who knows the system like he
does? He has so much credibility, despite all the shortcomings. It’s just that
we need so much.”
n There was no council meeting on June 20. Coming up this week: Reynolds and
Mayor Todd are sponsoring the repeal of the pedestrian coordinator position.
Central South West Communi-cations, the company that promises a citywide
broad-band network, is seeking approval of a city franchise agreement.
This article appears in June 28 • 1996 and June 28 • 1996 (Cover).