| Having served on Austin's Planning Commission, Galindo calls himself an "urban planner." But he has no urban planning in his education. Though he claims professional planning experience, he hasn't pointed to any examples of his work. His work with "the Galindo Group" of companies makes clear that he is a business and real estate guy in his father's firm. There's nothing wrong with that, so why call your self something else?
There are no legal limits on who can claim the "urban planner" title, like there are for "attorney" and "professional engineer," so Galindo can call himself whatever he likes.
Cid's plan for managing Austin's growth, the "Galindo Plan," has admirable goals: to focus a higher density form of development within Austin's Desired Development Zone, or "DDZ," (mostly to the east) and to limit total impervious cover in the Barton Springs watershed to no more than 10 percent overall.
How would Cid do this? He proposes "regulatory and market intervention strategies," "public-private partnerships" to establish "seven major new town centers" within the Desired Zone, and a voluntary "transfer of development rights" scheme to move development out of the Drinking Water Protection Zone ("DWPZ") and into the DDZ.
The "Galindo Plan" (as he calls it) starts with the assumption that Austin has grown at 3.5 percent per year for 100 years and, therefore, this will continue for the next 30 years at least. Accepting this fate, he joins Mayor Wynn in insisting we cannot do anything about it, so our only choice is to deal with it. (I hear an echo of Republican gubernatorial candidate Clayton Williams who infamously said: "if you can't do anything about it then you might as well lay back and enjoy it.")
If we really are helpless in affecting our growth rate, then the first thing Galindo (and Wynn) should do is cut off all subsidies and other economic development spending. If it's "gonna happen anyway" every penny spent promoting growth is a penny wasted.
This core assumption is wrong. It is also undesirable.
First, the historic trend blurs Austin growth and with metropolitan area growth. Second, it reflects growth resulting from decades of consistent and highly aggressive marketing of Austin. It didn't just "happen."
Third, and related, city policies can affect growth rates. We can't stop growth. There are many factors outside our control that affect growth. But we can implement policies that promote slower, more manageable rates of growth. That would start with, for example, requiring all corporations to pay their fair share rather than handing out tens of millions in tax rebates and other subsidies.
Hypergrowth is inherently unmanageable and is the root cause of almost all of Austin's worst problems: a shortage of affordable housing, increasing air and water pollution, worsening traffic, disappearing habitats and farmland, and increasing taxes and utility rates. Since infill development-the kind Galindo wants-is inherently slower than "greenfields" development, the rate of growth Galindo assumes as a given will, if realized, doom his plan to failure.
Yet Galindo insists without doubts or misgivings that Austin's population will more than double in the next 25 years, going "from 925,000 people to more than 2.5 million people." This is not sustainable, manageable or desirable.
Starting with the 3.5 percent per year growth rate assumption, Galindo then seeks to allocate that growth, with a goal of 5 percent per year for the "Desired Development Zone" and 1.5 percent for the Drinking Water Protection Zone. His key strategy for achieving this differential is a "transfer of development rights" mechanism whereby development that would take place in the DWPZ is transferred to the DDZ by means of a voluntary trading scheme. Developers in the DDZ would purchase the right to build more densely by buying "rights" from landowners in the DWPZ.
The only problem is that "TDR" schemes have, for decades, been proven to fail in the absence of total, iron-fisted control of development opportunities. Absent such control, developers know they don't have to purchase anything - they will just get it approved anyway. First, the City would need to strictly limit development in the DWPZ, so that the only real potential for profit is in trading the development potential to the east. State grandfathering law makes this problematic at best. At would Cid or the City Council really tell DWPZ landowners they could only trade rights to the east rather than develop their own property?
Galindo knows the answer to this question is "no." He also knows that much of the development threatening to bust his proposed 10 percent impervious cover limit in the Barton Springs watershed is completely outside Austin's regulatory jurisdiction. Hence, he calls for "voluntary" trades. But such trades will rarely make sense - development in the DWPZ is highly profitable and much of development in the DDZ is already entitled.
For a TDR scheme to work, the City Council would also have to limit zoning in the DDZ to less than acceptable levels and forsake all granting of variances, upzonings, and the like absent a purchase and transfer of development potential to the DWPZ. How likely is this to happen, even in those places where grandfathering does not prohibit such action? Not likely.
In short, TDR is a planner textbook idea that only works in the rarest of places where the essential components of sufficient legal powers and political stability co-exist. That describes Aspen, Colorado, for example, not Austin, Texas.
But let's do at least give him credit for favoring more compact, more sustainable greenfields development within the DDZ and agreeing that we need to minimize development in the Barton Springs watershed.
However, he shows his true colors on Barton Springs protection when he writes that he opposes the Fix 290 Coalition's parkway alternative to the CAMPO plan for a massive, tolled mixmaster at the Oak Hill "Y." If he believes his own plan, then the mega-mixmaster won't be needed. And building it with 40-year bonded debt that relies on future toll revenues generated from predicted endless Hill Country sprawl, would force him (and us) to choose between saving the Hill Country and bankrupting the toll project or paving the Hill Country in order to save the toll project. It's a financial and environmental nightmare waiting to happen.
Galindo also writes that he supports the recent SOS ordinance amendments. Those amendments were opposed by the Austin Sierra Club, the Save Barton Creek Association, and the Save Our Springs Alliance. Why? Because they allow yet more intensive development in the Barton Springs watershed and thus more, not less, pollution. They also allow the worst kind of "redevelopment" - on steep slopes, on top of recharge features, and within critical water quality stream buffer zones.
Galindo goes another step, attacking the site-by-site limits on impervious cover in the SOS ordinance in favor of a more "holistic" approach of limiting impervious cover over the entire watershed. This equates to saying "Austin gets to pave as much as we want and everyone else out there - Dripping Springs, Buda, Kyle, Hays County-don't get to develop anything." Rather convenient if you are running for city office in Austin and want to give developers within Austin's jurisdiction even more development rights than they already have.
On these points Laura Morrison supports the Fix290 Coalition plan for the "Y" and opposes the recent SOS redevelopment amendment. (It's worth noting that Robin Cravey sides with city staff and council and against the environmental community in his support for the SOS amendments.)
In short, the "Galindo Plan" is unworkable, with his core assumption of endless 3.5 percent annual growth rate and his key strategy of TDRs, dooming the plan from the start. And his positions on critical Barton Springs protection issues make clear that he is no friend of Barton Springs. Galindo is the developer candidate, and Laura Morrison is the candidate for protecting our neighborhoods and environment. |
