by Alex de Marban
During his three-minute ration of participatory democracy, gadfly and homeless
person Kirk Becker recently offered the council what he thought was a harmless
and logical solution to the mayor’s proposed anti-homeless ordinance. Why not
use federal housing grants earmarked for Eric Mitchell’s pet project, the $9.6
million Rosewood Entertainment Center, to build new shelters?
To most of the politicians on the dais, it was just another in a series of
inconsequential notions, but to the center’s shepherd it was nothing short of a
personal threat. After the citizen’s closing remarks, the 41-year-old
councilmember and business-owner bolted out of the chambers and into the foyer
where he dead-eyed Becker and seethed, “Go fuck yourself!”
It was nothing if not quintessential Mitchell. “Bullying,” charges colleague
Brigid Shea, is his modus operandi. Indeed, the de facto East
Austin councilmember has displayed a temperament and a cavalier attitude worthy
of his self-described upbringing as a teenage Atlanta gang-member. He’s
repeatedly bad-mouthed fellow councilmembers and average citizens, leaving in
his wake an outraged and offended public. But for all his ferocity – perhaps
the manifestation of a man who sees the world as racially unjust – Mitchell may
well be the best councilmember the Eastside has ever had. Relying on a small
but vociferous group of supporters, as well as a political sleight of hand and
an understanding of urban development minutiae that far outstrips his
predecessor, Mitchell is on track to pull off the impossible: the redevelopment
of East Austin.
Question is: who’s benefiting? To hear staunch Eastside supporters like
Dorothy Turner tell it, the newest and most volatile councilmember is the
Messiah of the East Austin masses. “Eric is what we’ve hoped and prayed for,”
says the head of the Black Citizens’ Task Force. “He’s the most dynamic
councilmember we’ve ever had, and you haven’t seen nothing yet. He’s doing
everything that some of the other councilmembers started and couldn’t
finish.”
Mitchell’s biggest victory by far was winning council approval on June 22 for
the funding of the once-doomed entertainment center, accomplished with a
political savvy that belies his penchant for public tantrums. To revive the
project from the somnolent agenda of his predecessor, Dr. Charles Urdy, he
immediately changed its scope from a private-development venture to a
community-enhancement project. The new designation made the lack of private
interest inconsequential, since start-up money could now come from a federal
housing loan. The strategy paid off in the form of an $8.8 million advance
available by the middle of next month.
The change made funding possible, but using public dollars for entertainment
was politically risky. So, months before the approved loan was to arrive on the
dais for council acceptance, he periodically called for a simple vote to deem
the center a “council priority,” often before the backdrop of angry black
citizens clamoring for racial justice. The predictable results: always
unanimous approval. Thenceforth, with more crucial decisions at hand, Mitchell
would publicly harken back to the council’s earlier commitments. It worked. The
groundbreaking ceremony is October 21; staff hope to open the center – complete
with bowling alley, movie theatre, skating rink, and other amenities – by the
end of next summer. Though estimated operating losses total $950,000 a year in
a best-case scenario, only Max Nofziger and Brigid Shea, she through
abstentions, have taken to opposing the center.
Mitchell’s accomplishment is
especially noteworthy considering East Austin’s years of neglect. In the 12
years prior to Mitchell’s ascension, Urdy’s self-described efforts of “working
with other councilmembers and building alliances with other councilmembers”
yielded only an often-vacant rec center (De Witty). Mitchell, on the other
hand, immediately drew lines between himself and the rest of the council,
refusing to meet with everyone but Jackie Goodman and Ronney Reynolds in the
initial months of his term. “Eric doesn’t need to be diplomatic,” says Turner.
“He has the community’s support.”
He embarked on an even more independent political course last winter, when he
began a media blackout against the city’s two largest newspapers. In the case
of the Austin-American Statesman, his reticence began shortly after the
daily quoted him on the front page in late February calling about 600 or so
environmentalists “a bunch of assholes,” a few days after they had remonstrated
against another proposed Freeport-McMoRan development above Barton Creek. He
accused the Statesman reporter of breaching an off-the-record
agreement.
Mitchell stopped talking to The Austin Chronicle shortly after
this reporter made an initial inquiry into his insurance firm, Wormley,
Mitchell & Associates, in February. Mitchell’s last words at the time were,
“You tell your editors I said, `Up yours!'” For this article, Mitchell
would not respond to repeated requests, both verbal and written, for an
interview. Nor would he consent to having his photo taken, turning askance each
time the photographer approached him.
Indeed, perhaps as a symbol of his separatist struggle, Mitchell hung up a
picture of Malcolm X shortly after moving into Urdy’s old office, tossed out
the perfectly good brown furnishings, and with the council credit card spent
approximately $5,000 on a leather sofa arrangement, desks, chairs, and the
like, all in his “favorite color.” Black.
It’s a fervent ethnocentrism that may be the biggest difference between
Mitchell and Urdy. Years will pass before the public forgets Mitchell’s
flamboyant reaction early this summer to the mayor’s request to move him from
one end of the dais to the other. Acting as though he suspected a racial plot
of the highest order designed to sucker him into the traditional “black
councilmember” chair, Mitchell stated prior to the day of the proposed
relocation that police would have to bodily drag him to the new seat. While
such a spectacle would have done wonders for Channel 6 ratings, the cops never
arrived. After a majority of his colleagues approved the proposal, Mitchell
willingly moved, although he wouldn’t sit in the chair for the rest of the
councilmeeting. He blamed the occupant of his old seat, Nofziger, for working
behind the scenes for the switch, and accused him of failing to step up to him
“face-to-face, as a man…” To some of the public, it was just another dose of
Mitchell’s vainglorious theatrics. But it was unsurpassed heroism to Turner and
a crowd of black supporters, who three weeks later publicly lauded Mitchell for
his resistance. To soothe his angst, they presented him with a $1,300 “Relax
the Back” leather chair – black, of course. Upon receiving the gift, Mitchell
promised to continue fighting for black Austin, especially black males, no
matter where he sits.
Surprisingly, perhaps, Mitchell’s propensity to turn anything into an issue of
color has not hurt the chances of his Eastside proposals, except maybe with
Shea, an East Austin resident, and with Nofziger, who is becoming more vocal in
his opposition after recently receiving Mitchell’s trademark “Screw
you!” for criticizing the entertainment center. Part of the reason for
Mitchell’s success to date may be that, as Portia Watson, former president of
the Chestnut Hill Neighborhood Association in central East Austin
explains, the current council is one of the most sympathetic to Eastside
issues, and Mitchell’s ideas are the only ones out there. Another factor,
reasons Shea: Nobody wants to be tagged a racist. But even she, like the rest
of the council, respects Mitchell’s verve and nonconformity. “We agree on many
fundamental issues, but we have different ways of coming to a solution. He’s
got Malcolm X’s philosophy but we both question the status quo.”
True, Mitchell maintains a sharp eye for African-American firms getting
undercut by the city’s contract selection process. Before the council adopted
the budget two weeks ago, he pointed out that black artists traditionally
receive a smidgen of the city’s annual arts endowment. Indeed, this year they
were slated for less than 3% of a $1.9 million endowment. “In all the years
past it has probably gone by without anybody saying anything about it,” he
noted during one of his calmer moments. The rest of the council, save for Max
Nofziger, who had just left the podium, earmarked an extra $20,000 for the
Black Arts Alliance.
In fact, Mitchell’s eagerness to help minority companies landed him in a
potential conflict of interest in December; he joined his colleagues in
approving a Bergstrom construction contract with a company that lists his firm
as a subcontractor. According to the contract, Mitchell’s firm will receive
only about 6% of the approved contract, or $5,000. At the time, the issue was
whether he was in violation of the city’s ethics code, which flat-out states
that no councilmember may receive financial “benefit from any contract with the
city.” Since then, City Manager Jesus Garza has decreed that all is above-board
since Mitchell has a general, not project-specific, insurance contract with the
contractor. According to Garza, Mitchell’s company should never have been
listed as a subcontractor.
Now, it’s become clear that the predicament would have never arisen
had Mitchell, upon taking office, revoked his company’s designation as a
Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) with the city’s Small and Minority
Business Resource (SMBR) center. Having subcontractors with DBE status allows a
contractor to receive a higher minority participation percentage, and thus
greater consideration during the contract selection process.
Moreover, Mitchell’s company recently had the opportunity to revoke the
designation, but didn’t take it, meaning there’s nothing to prevent the
situation from occurring again today. SMBR officials say that in June they sent
Mitchell an application to recertify his company’s soon-to-be-expired
designation as a DBE; the application was returned later that month and the
status re-awarded.
On June 23, I reached Mitchell on his car phone and asked him about the
contract. After one of his more caustic verbal assaults, Mitchell replied, “No
comment!” and hung up. Later that day, his executive aide called The Austin Chronicle, threatening legal action if I made future attempts to
interview Mitchell. The aide declined to specify the legal action under
consideration, but did mention that her boss appeared to be frustrated with the
financial sacrifices of a $30,000-per-year public position and was not planning
to run again.
For some, especially in the
traditional bailiwick of the place 6 seat, Mitchell’s absence from the dais
would spell relief. Remember, Mitchell, who lives in Oak Hill, a Southwest
Austin neighborhood, lost the Eastside precincts during his surprising run-off
victory over long-time East Austin activist Ron Davis. With the support of the
development community and shining rhetoric like, “I… appreciate and value the
opinions of other people, even when I disagree,” Mitchell instead swept the
city’s more affluent outer ring. (And he’s remained true-blue to his backers,
nearly always favoring developers over neighborhoods in zoning cases.) Some
East Austinites, however, say Mitchell’s brand of exclusionary and abusive
politics have left the community he promises to help more divided than ever.
Since Mitchell took office, “the divisions among black groups have become even
more defined,” asserts Watson, a life-long East Austin resident. “You have
those that have hitched their wagon to Eric Mitchell’s situation on one side,
and the common people on the other side. The average individual can’t relate
because we’re on the outside of this. It’s almost like he has a hidden agenda.
Whenever the [housing department] talks about his proposals, our neighborhood
association is notified on the day of the meeting, or the day after.”
While Mitchell has the support of the African-American FM-radio station, KAZI,
and two black Eastside papers, Nokoa and The Villager, his
public hearings on Eastside proposals have never drawn more than 75 supporters.
A few are Hispanics, nearly all African-Americans. Some of those supporters
call Watson’s accusations “lies,” but other central East Austin groups have had
similar experiences with Mitchell’s tactics. Latesia Cantu-McGarrahan,
president of the Guadalupe Association of Independent Neighborhoods (GAIN), the
political arm of the Guadalupe neighborhood in central East Austin, says
Mitchell has even less respect for the residents of the core white and Hispanic
neighborhoods there than he does for the black neighborhood groups.
For the most part, the groups’ dissatisfaction is related to the Austin
Redevelopment Authority, or ARA, Mitchell’s $75 million plan to use the city’s
powers of eminent domain to, as he declaims, “wipe… out” the blighted
structures on East 11th and 12th Streets, and replace them with city-owned
complexes. The project, which slumbered under Urdy in a slightly different
form, is the linchpin to Mitchell’s redevelopment dreams.
To jump-start the ARA, the city applied for an $8.5 million federal housing
loan that staff say will likely be approved by the end of this month. Again,
Mitchell’s thorough understanding of redevelopment intricacies, refined during
his five-year stint as a board member for the Travis County Housing Authority,
has accelerated the project. Mitchell didn’t want to waste time incorporating a
new ARA board, to be comprised of community representatives charged with
acquiring land along the two streets. Instead, Mitchell recently asked staff to
“dust off” an already incorporated, but inoperational entity. The move saved at
least two months.
Mitchell also used his sway with city housing officials to squeeze another
$900,000 from the 1996 Neighborhood, Housing, and Conservation budget, the
first large allotment of funding for the plan. About $750,000 of that was
transferred from the Neighborhood and Commercial Management Program (NCMP), a
successful division that matches private loans for small, underprivileged
businesses.
Throughout his first year in office, Mitchell incessantly threatened to
eliminate the NCMP. He initially complained that Hispanic entrepreneurs
received a drastically larger portion of NCMP loans than black business owners.
When staff produced numbers debunking that myth, Mitchell switched gears, and
began an assault on the program’s lack of concentration in the poorest areas,
namely central East Austin. And perhaps as a result of the charges, there’s
been a fundamental change in housing department philosophy.
“In the past, it’s been thought that maybe we could use NCMP [to redevelop
central East Austin],” explains Bill Cook, head of the housing department.
“Now, I see we need something more closely aligned with the traditional urban
renewal approach.”
The provocation for change? Says one council aide, on condition of anonymity:
Cook, as well Cook’s boss, Assistant City Manager Oscar Rodriguez, are “scared
to death” of Mitchell. And another councilmember says that Mitchell’s meddling
in housing department affairs has made Cook extremely “cautious.”
Cook responds, “Maybe it’s just that we agree with Mitchell.”
Regardless, some of the neighborhood groups bordering the ARA, like GAIN to
the south and Chestnut Hill to the north, fear that their disagreement with the
plan, based on the possibility of gentrification and the plan’s eminent domain
powers, will result in their exclusion from the ARA board.
“All ARA will do is move the lower-income farther east,” says Mark Rogers, a
white GAIN member. “If that’s revitalization, then all they’re saying is poor
people shouldn’t live near downtown.”
When Mitchell unveiled the ARA last year, he promised to displace no one. Such
a tack is less common nowadays. On a recent Eric Blumberg radio show on KVET,
he responded to the white and Hispanic concerns of upheaval. “When I hear
people talking about gentrification, and I’m looking at a room full of Anglos
and Hispanics that live in a historically black area… What does that mean?”
Father Bill Elliot of Our Lady of Guadalupe at the corner of Lydia and East
Ninth Streets says that kind of attitude only reveals Mitchell’s lack of
understanding for the Eastside, which has been the dumping ground for both poor
Hispanics and blacks for some time. Father Elliot blames Mitchell’s attitude on
the councilmember’s exclusionary politics. “If he was more open, then maybe we
could find a solution for the whole community, not just part of the community.
The ARA is 50% Hispanic. It’s a multi-ethnic community and any solution has to
include everyone.”
That doesn’t seem likely, as far as Mitchell is concerned. One councilmember
said, on condition of anonymity, that because of GAIN’s opposition, “[Mitchell]
sees Guadalupe as the enemy. He assumes that anyone connected with GAIN will
try to stop the ARA.”
GAIN members believe they were the target of a January 25 memo from Mitchell
to Assistant City Manager Oscar Rodriguez regarding the ARA. In the memo,
Mitchell warns city staff “not to spend a lot of time talking to individuals or
groups that have a history of being negative or opposing everything that is
brought forward without ever offering positive concrete solutions to issues.”
The letter continues, “If this happens, I will view these actions as a
deliberate attempt to undermine these initiatives hoping they will fail to
receive the necessary support from council and the community at large.”
When the neighborhood group heard scuttlebutt that Mitchell, at an August
meeting of the council housing subcommittee, would attempt to create an ARA
board without a GAIN representative, members of the association trekked down to
city hall to protest the oversight.
The issue never came up. In a surprising turn of events, a different item
involving another East Austin neighborhood – Swede Hill – occupied the entire
meeting. The Swede Hill Neighborhood Association, whose boundaries are I-35,
Navasota, East 12th, and Martin Luther King Blvd.,
protested a housing deal
being pushed by Mitchell on behalf of Eastside developer and former
congressional candidate
Jo Baylor. The deal would allow Baylor to swap six
of
her own lots on Webberville Road for five city-owned lots, now used as
greenspace by the mostly white neighborhood. Baylor says she wants to build
“affordable” townhomes, although they are expected to cost about $80,000 apiece
– $10,000 more than the highest-priced house in the area. Though the deal had
been percolating for six months, no one informed the association until a week
before the meeting. Worse, the agenda item, posted by Mitch-ell, called for the
subcommittee to vote on the item that day.
Naturally, the neighborhood residents were angry. During a terse exchange
between the association and Mitchell, East Austin’s lead councilmember admitted
that he “didn’t even know” the association “existed.” Pouring the proverbial
salt, Mitchell told an association member, “I’m going to do this [development]!
I’m not going to let you, or anybody else stand in my way!” To silence another
resident, Mitchell unleashed a memorable “Screw you!” After that
outburst, the other members of the housing subcommittee – Gus Garcia, Jackie
Goodman, and Brigid Shea – recommended shelving the proposal until October to
allow Baylor and city staff to find alternative lots.
Over the past week, however, Mitchell successfully by-passed the
normal review process for the “affordable” housing proposal. Usually, such a
project would have to pass through the council housing subcommittee and the
planning department, allowing for neighborhood involvement. Yet the proposal is
on the council’s agenda for this Thursday. So far, Mitchell has refused to meet
with Swede Hill representatives about their concerns.
As justification for the housing proposal, Mitchell and Baylor have said they
have the support of the main neighborhood association in East Austin, the
Anderson Community Development Corporation (ACDC). The ACDC’s boundaries
represent much of central East Austin, encompassing numerous neighborhoods,
including those mentioned above. The overlap is possible because boundaries of
any size can be determined by any one person. While it’s difficult to know how
many people make up the ACDC (Ray Dell Galloway, ACDC president, declined to
say), GAIN members say the corporation has only four members.
But perhaps the greatest affront to the central Eastside neighborhood associations has been Mitchell’s
lack of grass-roots involvement in their community. They say Mitchell is only
concerned with development, and has done nothing to address underlying issues
like joblessness and illiteracy. “Eric Mitchell has an understanding of East
Austin that’s not in tune with what we feel,” says GAIN member Mark Rogers. “He
was elected with the money and support of developers in Northwest and Southwest
Austin. He understands their programs very well, but not ours.”
While Mitchell often credits the entertainment center as a job provider, park
department officials, who will likely manage the center, estimate it will
provide only 20 full-time jobs. Meanwhile, in efforts to find funding for the
ARA, Mitchell has attempted to remove money for proposals that would provide
educational or occupational opportunities. For example, when the council
approved the partial tax abatement ordinance in the spring, Mitchell tried to
funnel some of the taxes that would be collected into an ARA account. The rest
of the council (except for Nofziger, who voted against the abatement policy)
wanted to use the taxes for a job training program. Because his attempt at ARA
funding failed, Mitchell abstained from the vote. And when the mayor attempted
to include a computer education lab at the entertainment center, Mitchell
refused to accept the offer, resisting what he called an attempt to once again
stall the process.
“Eric wants to make the facade look good, but underneath, the whole economic
and social deterioration is not being addressed,” says Watson. “All that
development’s going to be a wasted effort. When you have a commercial center
located smack dab in the highest crime area in the city, it won’t stay in
business long at all.” (Although it doesn’t specifically address Watson’s
issues, since the funds are not currently designated for East Austin, Mitchell
this week is attempting to boost the police, fire, and EMS budgets by $3.9
million. The money will come from reserve funds.)
In the future, there’s little doubt that Mitchell’s good fortune will
continue. Though his most difficult task, the implementation of the ARA,
is yet to come, he’s already proven his knack for success without the
historical stratagem of media cooperation. The success has come, too, despite
assaults on everyone from the general public to city staff to his own
colleagues. And since it’s unlikely that the rest of the council will actually
come up with their own ideas for East Austin’s revitalization, there seem to be
no obstacles to Mitchell’s redevelopment dreams. The irony, of course, is that
unless Mitchell’s plans stray from a straight redevelopment format to include
more complex issues like joblessness and poverty, the same Eastside
gentrification that he blames on Hispanics and whites will only continue.
Property values will inevitably rise; even his small group of fervent
supporters may not get a cut of the pie as more affluent residents take
advantage of the Eastside’s attractive proximity to downtown.
And for all the unflinching duplicity, divisiveness, and ill-mannered behavior
he’s used to win those proposals, Mitchell has still won some hint of
appreciation even in enemy camps. To sum up: He’s going about it the wrong way,
but something is better than nothing. Like everyone else who has lived through
the decades of neglect, even Watson finds a silver lining in Mitchell’s rule.
“Urdy never did anything for East Austin at all, but Mitchell has, if nothing
else, improved awareness about what’s going on here. Before him, nobody cared.” n
This article appears in September 29 • 1995 and September 29 • 1995 (Cover).