This Week in Austin

I've spent about 12 hours this week in one sort of city related meeting or another. Do not be impressed, I'm not a council member or anything, just a citizen trying to take more part in local government. Turns out, they basically try to discourage you from that.

What does he mean? Well, the primary point of contention is the lack of contention. At most public meetings the citizens are allowed to get up and speak; at most of these there is a 3 minute time limit and they only allow a certain number of speakers. After all the public that they want to let speak has spoken, the council may ask questions, but usually they don't. Instead they go straight to a vote, and you never hear anything about why the points you made on the behalf of item X are good or bad or otherwise. They will vote against your position without giving any reasons whatsoever, as though your point of view does not exist. Even if the council members have disagreements, they will not discuss them there. Perhaps they have a forum where they do discuss such things, or perhaps they are actually prohibited from open debate in the council chambers (something I'll have to look into).

At the council meeting yesterday they gave 45 minutes; this is first come first served. The items I was interested in were #5 and #10 concerning the building of a new water plant and its transmission lines. The Mayor gave 45 minutes for public speaking, saying he would give no more since this was not a public hearing (was there a public hearing on this, I don't know). Now, at one point in time in Austin's history, there was no such limitation; as many people could come and speak as might wish to. I have no doubt this slowed things down tremendously, but who says democracy should be fast?

30 minutes were taken up by neighborhood association folk who basically said the same things over that time, leaving 15 minutes for an SOS member who had written a report the likely rate increases of water this would cause when there really was no demand from more water. In fact, we are well behind expected water expenditures this year because of rain and because of people's on conservation; thus, the water utility is not pulling in as much money as usual. His point was, then, that it would be foolish to spend a very large sum of money when we aren't even using up close to all the supply we currently have (they have broken up the project into bits, so its hard to say how much, but the items yesterday I think added up to somewhere between 60 and 100 million--I know those are disparate numbers, but they are in the tens of millions, and therefore, well, pretty big even on the low end).

The night before this, more presentations were given at the water/waste water commissioners hearing. The SOS presentations were actually pretty good with lots of information that the commissioners clearly had not heard before, and which the city staff present could in no way counter, though he insisted that data to support his position existed, it just was too much to bring before the panel. One member of the commission, a Ms. Faust, actually seemed to take the new information into consideration, including an apparent fact regarding the necessity of having a Fish and Wildlife inspection to receive a permit to build on a land with several endangered and/or threatened species. The inspection is slated to take at least 6 months. Faust suggested they postpone moving forward until the permit was received, as it seemed foolish to allocate resources (made through contractual obligations) when they could not be sure that they could even build on the land. But her motion did not even receive a second. No reasons were given as to why a second should not be given, once again leading me to believe that they might actually be forbidden to have open discussion or debate of issues. The other commissioners sat coldly by, and at the motion to recommend the project be approved by city council, three voted for, and one against, the others abstaining.

Likewise, at the city council meeting, council member Speldman and one other (whose name I will need to look up) asked questions, and they were 2 of the 3 of the dissenting opinion. Those who did not ask questions and did not give their opinion in any way shape or form voted for the project to proceed.

Frankly, after the presentations given by the public at the council meeting, this made some sense. Most of the speakers came off as NIMBY, and even Mr. Henson with his presentation on likely water rate increases (expected to rise 74% in the next 5 years by his calculations, to pay for the bonds needed to build this plant) did not seem as professional as the previous night. Some of the SOS folk gathered near the mic in quiet protest of not being allowed to speak. Among these were Bill Bunch who had given a very good presentation on the environmental dangers of building the plant in its suggested location as well as reasons why water use by Austin Water customers has not been going up (interesting to note, in San Antonio water use has been flat even after gaining 100,000 in population--if I recall correctly, there were a few figures like this, but 100,000 would be on the low end, it might have been 250,000).

The best protest site for this is here: http://savewatersavemoney.org/

Note: I am in no way affiliated with the above site, SOS, etc. I receive newsletters from SOS and regularly check my county and city websites.