Special interest politics

CCosart posted this comment:

The . . . problem with NAs is that they aren’t necessarily representative. It tends to be the same small group of people rotating through the offices. In some sense, that’s a classic problem of democracy. That small group is willing to invest hours and hours, and until a large group gets motivated to unseat them it’s hard to do anything about it. The current BCNA elections are all uncontested, for example. I could re-run for my former sector rep position, but 1) I’d lose and 2) even if I won, I’d spend a lot of time tilting at windmills in meetings. It wouldn’t really be worth it unless I had a slate of similar minded people running. I’m really not sure what the answer is...

I agree it's a classic special-interest problem.  NA officers, and ANC officers in particular, tend to be single-issue kind of people.  The rest of us aren't, so our mild preferences don't register with Council.

You see the same thing with trade subsidies.  We pay more for our sugar than we ought to because US sugar producers care only about sugar tariffs, while the other 299,999,000 of us don't spend enough on sugar to care very much. (As with too-restrictive zoning, there's a large, politically unrepresented pool of victims.  With zoning, it's the future residents who will pay more for housing than they otherwise would.  With tariffs, it's third-worlders who can't make money producing sugar even though that's where their comparative advantage lies.)

It might shake things up to focus more attention on the barriers to participation put up by the neighborhood groups.  I know my NG charges a fee to join which must be paid at least ten days before any vote.  And then the meetings are scheduled erratically, with poor notice.  Real decisions are made in the planning process anyway, which as CCosart notes is run by the die hards because of the huge time commitment needed.   

Perhaps we should insist that the City planning staff meet with dissenters, rather than just the neighborhood association's planning team.  Why should the neighborhood association have the exclusive right to bargain over neighborhood planning?  The City can't say they're representative;their elections aren't up to snuff.  (It'd be like an employer giving exclusive bargaining rights to a handful of union members just because they complained the loudest.)  If nothing else, the City might force neighborhood groups to run real elections and give opposing views a fighting chance.

Comments

[ccosart]

(So that's where those comments went. They were supposed to be for the "stakeholders" post. Don't know how I managed that.)

I think the NP team and NAs are supposed to be separate, but often it's the same group of people. My impression is also that it's much more staff-led now than in the past, but that it amounts to them pushing mixed use in the corridors and allowing SF-3 in the interiors. Maybe someone has direct experience and can correct me. I suppose if there was a push from the residents for infill in the interior staff would support it....

[AC]

I've seen complaints from my NA that staff has been pushing too hard for mixed use. My neighborhood doesn't have an adopted plan yet. But judging by the Bouldin FLUM, you've got the compromise exactly right: South First and Barton Springs will be zoned VMU, while almost all of the interior will be zoned for single-family. Virtually no multi-family.

I was encouraged by all the VMU at first -- high density stuff on South First! But then I remembered that neighborhoods can opt out of the VMU density provisions. We'll have to see if Council lets them.

[ccosart]

Bouldin's strategy seems to be to say "look we have infill, we support mixed use on the corridors!" Then when someone actually proposes something, they say "it's not compatible with single-family homes!" (Or my favorite, "it's next to a residential area!" as if a condo project is not residential.) I've heard the area where my family lives described as "non-residential." Not sure what it is we do in our apartment, if we're not "residing"...