Leslie Pool

Why I requested Leslie Pool recuse herself on deciding the Grove

~ dankeshet

I was one of twelve community members to write a letter to District 7 Council Member Leslie Pool requesting that she recuse herself from deciding the future of the Grove, a mixed-use neighborhood planned in District 10, extremely close to CM Pool’s residence.

CM Pool has made the case that this decision for her is much more than a disinterested balancing of the interests of the entire city; it has personal implications which weigh heavily on her mind:

“I have a lot invested in this effort and its outcomes … I also happen to live within a 1⁄4 mile of the land. I also played a key role in assembling the neighborhood consensus…”

–email from CM Pool to Mayor Adler

Recusals were invented precisely for cases when a Council Member has “a lot invested.” If CMs do not recuse themselves, we may never know whether she is acting in the best interests of the city or her own best interests. CM Pool has already unsubtly reminded her colleagues exactly how much she has riding on this decision. Her continued presence in the Council debate puts her colleagues in the awkward place of balancing the best interests of the city against the best interests of their colleague. Elected officials should be strong enough to manage this awkwardness, but rules should be strong enough to prevent it.

CM Pool has made ethics a centerpiece of her campaign. But ethics, if the word has any meaning, cannot merely be a weapon you use to attack; it must be a mirror you use to examine yourself. CM Pool, from her own words, should have recused herself from this case long ago.

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If you plan for everyone to drive cars, they will

~ dankeshet ~ 10 Comments

On June 18, City Council took its first look at an ordinance to make it easier to build granny flats, also known as ADUs or backhouses. A granny flat is a small home on the same lot as a single-family home. They have traditionally been used to keep multi-generational families together or as an affordable option for rental housing. Very few new ones have been built in Austin lately, in part because rules make it hard. But this column isn’t about granny flats. It’s about one comment Council Member Leslie Pool made, about the requirement that each new granny flat be paired with an off-street parking space:

I want to acknowledge that while we’re moving in other transit-oriented directions, which I support, the reality is that people in Austin still drive cars, which is why we have the requirement for at least one [off-street] spot for a car to park.

In the past, CM Pool has showed vision toward what she calls “other transit-oriented directions” by signing AURA’s pledge to make a transit-oriented Austin. So I’d like to challenge her and any others thinking along these lines to think bigger about how they as Councilmembers can shape our city.

Off-Street Parking Doesn’t Just Reflect Our Driving Reality, it Drives Our Reality

Not every new household in Austin must bring or buy a car. I get around without a car and it’s getting easier all the time. But many people will weigh whether to own a car and decide that, as things stand, they’d be better off with one. Some of the people who decide to own a car are actually close to choosing not to have one, but are ultimately swayed by the particulars of their situation.

Our parking requirements are one of the prime reasons driving the decision to own a car:

  • Some potential ADUs in older, central neighborhoods, won’t get built because a legal parking space can’t fit on the lot or the homeowner doesn’t want to pave  their little paradise to provide a parking space.  Potential residents who would’ve chosen to live in an affordable, small, central home are forced to live further on the periphery and drive in.
  • Instead of some ADUs being built with a nice garden and no car parking, and others with a small or non-existent garden but a parking space, all will have the parking space. Deprived of the potential benefits of doing without parking, residents may as well make use of the space.

Requiring parking drives the reality of people choosing to own cars. It’s important for policymakers to not just react to life as it is now, but to be move us towards a future where people have the practical freedom to live with whatever transportation mode they choose.

How it works downtown

The city council ended parking requirements downtown a few years ago. The result has not been a parkingpocalypse of car-drivers unable to move downtown because they can’t find parking. Most new projects that have gotten built since then have included parking. This shouldn’t be surprising: downtown is mostly a high-end market and people who can afford to spend a lot of money on housing can afford cars as well. New apartment and condo complexes like Fifth and West, the Seven, or the Bowie include parking as an amenity.

But some projects are getting built with less or no parking. A new office building on Guadalupe was built completely without parking to lower rents; it advertises availability at a garage a couple blocks over. The JW Marriott hotel was built with limited parking. Some employees take public transit in; others park at a leased parking lot a few blocks away. Conference guests are encouraged to take public transit or use spaces at the convention center garage. The Aloft hotel is going to be built using a valet-only model that shifts cars to existing underutilized garages. There’s even rumors of new apartments planned for downtown without parking for a much lower price point than typical downtown living. Even though downtown is the most accessible place to live in the city without a car, the transition has been slow and gentle.

From here to there

If Council Members fear the consequences of allowing ADUS without parking, there are half-measures they could take that would get most of the benefit. One example would be to allow no-parking ADUs only near high-frequency bus lines that can support carless mobility. This would let the city continue to dip its toes into accommodating folks like me who get around without a car, while maintaining the vast majority of the city for guaranteed parking.

Other Policies

ADU parking requirements are really only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how policy makes it impractical for most people to live in Austin without a car. Off the top of my head, some other ideas:

  • Dedicated transit lanes.  About half of those who travel down the Drag do so in buses, packed efficiently into only 6% of the vehicles. If one street lane were allocated for buses to zoom by, like the transit priority lanes downtown, this could benefit half of the street’s users in a stroke.
  • Mixing uses. The city maintains a fairly rigid separation of residential space from commercial space. This has some advantages, but the disadvantages for people getting around without a car are obvious: they have to go further from their homes to reach convenient places to work, shop, and dine.
  • Allow more residents in transit-accessible places.  There’s a limited number of places in the city that are already convenient to live without a car: downtown, West Campus, and other inner-city neighborhoods.  Building new transit-accessible places is a time-consuming and sometimes expensive process. The simplest way to allow more people the freedom to live without a car is to allow more people to live in the places that are already transit-accessible.

Vision

The reality is, Austin can’t wait until an imagined transit-oriented future before we give more people the practical freedom to choose whether to own a car. We must forge that future for ourselves. Every day that we delay, the hole we’ve dug for ourselves gets bigger. As I write, there are construction crews building subdivisions in District 6 that will be pretty much impossible to live in without a car for decades to come. Other construction crews are spending tax dollars widening MoPac so that the residents of the new subdivisions can drive into downtown. Shouldn’t we also be building places where people who choose to live a transit-oriented life can do so without paying for parking?

New Councilmembers’ Approach to Zoning, In Their Own Words

~ dankeshet ~ 6 Comments

On the City Council meeting on Thursday, 2/12, we had our first major look at the approach that many of the new Councilmembers will take to zoning and land use policy in practice.  The Item that I believe gave us the most insight was a re-zoning case.  For background, check out the Austin Monitor story. The basic gist of this case is that the owners of an auto repair shop are retiring and want to sell their land to a developer to build apartments.  As this was the first major rezoning case to come before the Council, many of the Councilmembers took the opportunity to state their principles.  I present to you the Councilmembers’ own words (not in the order they spoke at Council):

Don Zimmerman

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE39SFC_fIU]

Zimmerman views his decision through a lens of competing property rights: that of the property owner to build as they see fit and an implicit contractual expectation of neighbors that the city will not rezone nearby land.  As the opponents didn’t frame their argument in property rights, he decided to vote with the applicants’ property rights. CM Zimmerman voted for the motion to signal support for the project.

Kathie Tovo

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hdquk6N-Cg]

Kathie Tovo, generally more skeptical of new development during her first term, doesn’t speak directly to her approach, but asks questions related to whether development could still be profitable with less housing, as well as arguing that the developer should provide more larger (2 and 3+ bedroom units) units.  She also mentions “zoning is always discretionary,” pointing to a larger role for Council to play in deciding the details of what gets built and where. CM Tovo voted against the motion to signal support for the project.

Ora Houston

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovmbez3WYQc]

Similarly, Ora Houston asks questions regarding how many guaranteed Affordable Housing and accessible units the complex will have.  CM Houston voted against the motion to signal support for a larger complex.

Leslie Pool

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXgltmc0Ma4]

Leslie Pool puts forward a theory of balancing the needs of current members of neighborhood associations and future (Millenial) residents.  She argues for a slower development process in which infrastructure gets built first, followed by more housing.  CM Pool voted against the motion to signal support for the project.

Sheri Gallo

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7oUGFfNlMA]

Sheri Gallo expresses support for neighborhood voices in general, but says she doesn’t “understand the neighborhood thought process” on this particular case. She supports the larger complex in part because it is buffered from single-family homes, and because the housing is needed and desired by younger people. CM Gallo voted for the motion to signal support for the project.

Sabino Rentería

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWhjJnCLDoo]

Very much like Gallo, Sabino Rentería expresses support for neighborhood voices in general, but also for density. He argues that there isn’t enough land to build single-family housing for all the people who need housing. He also adds a different line of reasoning, arguing that further density will lead to higher quality of place, via slowing traffic, increasing viability for restaurants and other retail and increasing “eyes on the street.”  Contra Gallo, he argues that housing creates the political support for more infrastructure. CM Rentería voted for the motion to signal support for the project.

Greg Casar

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R975m3mN3Ec]

Greg Casar asked questions that indicated an interest in finding the way to make the market-rate housing most affordable, as well as asking whether, if this project wasn’t built, whether there would be other places to place similarly dense housing nearyby, arguing that “more people should have the right to live in that area.” CM Casar voted for the motion to signal support for the project.

Steve Adler

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MrfOOx_XTM]

Adler expresses a lot of process concerns, arguing against ad hoc zoning cases like this one, in favor of more comprehensive citywide plans. Nevertheless, he argues that while these planning processes are going forward, we need to keep moving forward. He also makes a plea for compromise. Mayor Adler voted for the motion to signal support for the project.

Delia Garza, Ellen Troxclair, and Ann Kitchen

These three councilmembers didn’t offer enough comment on this case to get much insight into their approach to zoning.  CMs Garza and Troxclair voted for the motion to signal support for the project; CM Kitchen voted against.