Austin Contrarian

A six-word story

By Hemingway, via flevour unplugged:

"For sale: baby shoes, never used."

The Chronicle names the McMansion ordinance the Best New and Potentially Sexy Zoning Ordinance

Here

You'll learn that "it actually protects the little guy, the humble home dweller, you and me!"

No surprises here.  That exclamation point was uncalled for, though.

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.

The wrong bicycle helmet study

From today's Statesman, on a study planned by Brackenridge Hospital and St. David's HealthCare:

At no cost to the city, the study will track whether bike-related injury patients 18 years and older who show up at seven Austin hospitals affiliated with St. David's and the Seton Healthcare Network were wearing a helmet or not.  It will also track the rehabilitation time and cost of care for those patients.  Patients can refuse to be part of the study.

Thoughts:

• I don't see how studying just the costs of head injuries can settle the debate over a mandatory helmet law.  What's the cost threshold that justifies such an ordinance?  $100,000?  $1,000,000?  Is even one dollar enough?
• They shouldn't count costs covered by private insurance.  That's not an externality.  In fact, I imagine bicyclists are more likely to have health insurance, and therefore be able to pay for emergency treatment.  Since the insured subsidize emergency care for the uninsured, . . . well, you can complete the thought.
• Helmeted riders probably have a higher accident rate, either because they feel safer, or drivers drive less carefully around them.  Any study needs to figure out if that's true, and, if it is, account for the costs of the injuries from the extra accidents.
• A point frequently made by others:  Helmet laws discourage bike use.  How much?  And what's that cost?

This is an academic question for me.  I don't ride a bike.  (I'm afraid of getting run over.)

P.S.  Even if it turns out there's a "public cost" to riding without a helmet, it would be better to let bicyclists buy the right to ride without a helmet rather than mandating helmet use across the board.

P.P.S.  Made a couple of corrections.  First bullet: changed "too much" to "enough"; third bullet:  should have read "drivers drive less carefully" rather than "more carefully."

"Stakeholders"

A "stakeholder" is someone who holds the stakes of a wager.  It connotes a trusted, neutral party, someone disinterested in the outcome.

This is the neighborhood activist's favorite word.   Whenever there's a development to obstruct, you can bet an NA lurks nearby to complain that the developer showed too little deference to the "stakeholders." 

The NA most definitely does not use this word to mean a neutral party.  Just the opposite:  he means himself and other local homeowners.  Actually, that's too broad -- he means himself and the other dues-paying members of the local homeowners' association.  This is hardly a neutral and disinterested bunch. 

Why do NA's love this word?  It's not just their love of jargon (although you can be sure that anyone who uses "stakeholder" in a sentence will chase it with plenty of "FLUMs," "SF-3s" and "TODs").  And although "stakeholder" sounds more dignified than "activist," "advocate," or plain old "homeowner," I don't think that is why it's so popular with the status quoers either.

No, I think NAs love "stakeholder" because it is a very effective way for them to dismiss opposing views.  They've worked very hard to make "stakeholder" a synonym for "representatives of the local neighborhood association."  And they've succeeded.  Even Council staffmembers use the word as a euphemism for the neighborhood group representatives.

But this means that if you're not a local NA, then you're not a stakeholder.  If you're not a stakeholder, then you've got no stake in the outcome.  If you've got no stake in the outcome, then why should anyone care what you think?  Opposing views are thereby effectively neutralized.

It is nonsense, of course, to restrict "stakeholders" to the homeowners in the vicinity of a proposed development.  Lots of people likely will have an acute interest in the project.  (The property owner and developer have the biggest stakes of all.) If the project is to be a residential development, renters in the area have an interest in seeing their rents stabilized; more competition means smaller rent increases.  Renters in the 'burbs who can't find places close in to town have a stake in more rental units being built.  If the project's on a busy road like South Lamar, thousands of drivers a day have an interest in a new bookstore, clothing store, or Starbucks being built.  The City has an interest in the extra tax revenue.  And lots of us like dense urban projects -- we've got a stake too.

In short, the community has a stake in the typical development project. It's time to recongize this, and to stop NAs from misappropriating this word for their own cause.  Developers should meet with the stakeholders; just make sure the real stakeholders are in the room. 

A pawn by any other name . . .

Austin's neighborhood groups are gearing up to fight another development on Town Lake.  CWS Capital Partners has proposed building three 18-story towers on Riverside just east of Congress.  It will be a big development:  840 apartments and condos.  (That's about twice the size of Novare's 360, the biggest project downtown.) 

CWS wants a variance to build to within 80 feet of Town Lake; setback regulations require it to stay at least 150 feet away.  As a quid pro quo, it's offering to extend the hike-and-bike trail another third of a mile beyond its current dead end near the Statesman building.   

No other details of the project have been published.  The neighborhood groups, predictably, don't need to know any more to know they oppose it.  Their rallying cry?  "Save Town Lake!"  According to the Statesman, a South River City [i.e., Travis Heights] neighborhood rep already has announced the group's intention to fight:  "[T]he setback rule was designed to protect parkland along the shore for public benefit and should be sacrosanct." 

Well, that sounds reasonable.  We certainly ought to protect our Town Lake parkland.  And who would dispute that property along the shore should be maintained for the public's benefit?

Except the "Save Town Lake!" slogan is just a pretext.  By any objective measure, Town Lake and the hike-and-bike trail will be better off with this development than without it.

The property is now occupied by several low-rise apartment buildings.  According to the developer's attorney, some of the buildings sit within 20 feet of Town Lake.  I walked the property myself today.  Twenty feet is conservative; the buildings in places sit within a couple car lengths of the lake's banks.  In fact, at one point I found myself standing on a parking lot just four feet from the banks.  There was not enough room between that parking lot and the banks for a trail, even if there were any money to build it.  The shore behind the complex is so narrow and cramped it is off-limits to the public for all practical purposes.

So though the developer is asking for a nominal variance from the 150-foot setback requirement, what it's really proposing is to move all development 60 feet farther inland. This stretch of Town Lake will have a bigger buffer. And it will be truly accessible to the public, who will be able to enjoy it from the new hike-and-bike trail.

While I admit I don't know the financial details, I don't see how this project will be feasible without the variance.  The property consists of two irregularly shaped parcels.  Most of the western parcel is within 150 feet of the shore, as is a large chunk of the eastern parcel. I doubt a project of this scale can be done on just the sliver of remaining land.

I suspect the neighborhood groups have sized things up the same way, that no variance means no high rises.  But then they must also undertand that without the high rises, the old complex stays.  And if the old complex stays, this stretch of Town Lake will have no buffer, making a hike-and-bike trail or public access impossible.  The neighborhood groups, in other words, are perfectly willing to sacrifice these amenties -- which could be enjoyed by the entire city -- just to fight off this development.

Something is certainly "sacrosanct"; that something's just not Town Lake.