Despite
the icy road-
ways, the city council refused to cancel last Thursday’s meeting. The turnout
was minimal, but with the humbling weather and small gathering, a general sense
of togetherness prevailed, spreading beyond the lobbyists and city officials to
touch even the few homeless persons in from the cold (fearful of the mayor’s
new encampment ordinance, none dared to sleep).
That sentiment never seemed to reach the center of the dais, though, where
Mayor Bruce Todd wielded a brand of chairmanship colder than the weather,
barring yet another constituent from exercising her first amendment rights.
The muzzled speaker this time? Environmental activist Karen Hadden, who
apparently prompted the mayor’s wrath by her participation in a group outburst
last year. She says she doesn’t know why she’s being censored. In a run-in with
the mayor at the AISD school board meeting on January 29, he simply asked her
to give him a call. “I [told him] I have time to speak tonight, and he said,
`No, I’m busy’,” she explains. “He said he wanted to talk about a noise
incident a few months ago. I couldn’t figure out why he would want to talk to
me; he usually avoids me.”
Hadden was unable to reach Todd. But prior to Citizens’ Communication last
Thursday, Todd wouldn’t allow Hadden to speak. Todd wouldn’t say why, but
stated that Hadden knew.
Nor would the mayor explain the censorship to this reporter. “That’s between
her and me,” he said during the meeting. The mayor’s mouthpiece, Trey Salinas,
says the ban comes because “Karen and [environmental activist] Neil [Tuttrup]
disrupted a couple of meetings last year.” He could not, however, name the
dates of the alleged outbursts.
Hadden presumes that the mayor wants her to apologize for an incident at the
April 27 council meeting last year, where she and others blew whistles and
shouted in protest of a cancellation of two public hearings.
“I don’t feel an apology is owed for any reason,” she says. “What he did on
April 27 was a violation of the Open Meetings Act.” Todd banned her from
speaking at the May 4 council meeting, but she was allowed to speak at
subsequent council meetings — until last week, and Todd plans to ban her from
future meetings.
The Mayor has also evicted Tuttrup for “damn[ing]” the council on July 20,
following a vote to provide sewer services to Freeport McMoRan’s Lantana
development. Tuttrup has not been allowed to speak for the last two meetings,
and won’t be allowed to do so until he apologizes. Hadden did not even attend
that meeting, but feels she is being blackballed simply for knowing Tuttrup.
“Jackie Goodman told me that in fairness to Neil, I would be banned,” she
says.
The mayor’s aide, Salinas, says that four members of the council support the
censorship, but no public vote has been taken. A city resolution, passed in
April, 1992, during the mayor’s first term, allows the chair of the city
council to bar citizens who disrupt the meeting only for “the remainder of the
Council meeting.” Any changes to that resolution, such as continual disbarment,
require a majority vote of the council. Worse yet, according to Hadden, Goodman
told her that the mayor may place a blanket gag order on others associated with
Tuttrup.
Interestingly, the order comes just as a 333-acre development in Northwest
Austin is close to returning to council for second and third readings. (For
more information, see “Naked City.”) The developer’s lobbyist is lawyer John
Joseph, of Joseph, Minter, & Thornhill, a regular contributor to the
mayor’s campaign fund apparatus, Friends of Bruce Todd. Hadden and her fellow
environmentalists are providing the most vehement opposition to the project,
since it encompasses the habitat of numerous endangered species.
n
The mayor’s penchant for suppression had some anticipating a gag order on the
ER (Eric Mitchell/Ronney Reynolds) tag-team duo. Not because Councilmember Eric
Mitchell had cursed out yet another constituent, but because the twosome
presented more numbers and theories than an algebra textbook on why senior
citizen homeowners should get a better property tax break. The first $50,000 of
a senior citizen’s property value is exempt from city taxes, and the twosome
wanted to double that exemption ceiling to $100,000.
An abridged version of their central argument: rising property tax appraisals
had stressed senior citizen’s fixed incomes to the point that the only option
is an exodus to the cheaper tax bills in that land aplenty called suburbia.
Thus, the city’s tax base suffers, and with less homeowners and more renters,
neighborhoods become a crucible for crime and all things apocalyptic. There
were many, many more sub-arguments and statistics (some hastily calculated by
accountant Reynolds right from the dais), but suffice it to say that in the
final analysis it seemed the fate of the entire city was at stake.
Yet there would be no collapse from Todd and Councilmembers Goodman and Gus
Garcia (Brigid Shea and Max Nofziger were absent), who had a return volley for
every argument served up by the relentless duo. For example, the $2.8 million
loss in tax revenue is a setback that the coffers can’t weather. And, the tax
break would actually be a tax shift to other segments of the population.
Finally, after Mitchell less than half-jokingly suggested that the city’s loss
be made-up by selling city-owned wilderness preserves (in the BCCP), the
council voted on a Garcia counter-motion for a staff review of the tax break.
It failed on a three-to-ER vote (a measure needs four votes to pass). But ER’s
valiant arguments didn’t sway a fourth vote either — the tax exemption failed
as well.
But hope lingered, even after the council had trudged bravely on to other
items. A sheepish Reynolds later raised his hand to ask whether the council
couldn’t just reconsider that little Garcia counter-motion. Todd obliged, it
passed unanimously, and the great tax-break debate lives to see another day.
n
The council’s bravery was sorely tested with the increasingly contentious
SCIP II low-income housing proposal (Scattered Co-operative Infill Program) for
the Anderson/Robertson Hill neighborhood in central East Austin. The warring
factions remained generally the same, with SCIP II supporters Mitchell and
Reynolds warding off attacks from Goodman and Garcia.
Garcia immediately went on the offensive, saying he couldn’t support SCIP II,
considering the latest twist in the plot: a letter of opposition from East
Austin church leaders, the Reverend Marvin Griffith of Ebenezer Baptist Church
and Father Bill Elliot of Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church. In an
interesting turnabout, Griffith had supported Mitchell and the SCIP II
counter-proposal until sending the letter in December. Elliot, and now
Griffith, object to having 100 rental homes in the small Anderson/Robertson
Hill neighborhood, because, they say, an over-abundance of rental units will
spell the continued decline of the area. Elliot heads the largest Hispanic
congregation in East Austin, and Griffith leads one of the largest and most
influential black churches in Austin.
Though it’s been more than six weeks since the letter was received, Garcia
requested a one-week delay of the SCIP II item, to meet with Griffith and
Elliot about making some of the homes owner-occupied. Goodman backed him.
Mitchell noted that the proposal, in order to secure a $1.2 million tax credit
from the state, is on a 45-day deadline, and expediency is a must. City Manager
Jesus Garza called for a resolution to the issue, and said the item could be
reconsidered at the next Wednesday work session. The council agreed.
n
This week in council: Returning today, February 8, are Mitchell’s Central
Urban Redevelopment fee abatement item, Nofziger’s Drainage Utility fee
abatement for churches, and tax abatement for downtown housing. Also, Goodman’s
resolution to disband the Housing Subcommittee.
This article appears in February 9 • 1996 and February 9 • 1996 (Cover).