Austin City Council bogs down parsing abstractions in draft land code

Austin City Council members meeting on Tuesday morning failed to agree on the language of a document setting out broad goals behind the city’s CodeNEXT draft land code, marking a contentious start to deliberations on the code.

Today’s meeting comes after public hearings last week on the latest 1500-page draft of the Land Redevelopment Code. The document represents the first major effort to rewrite Austin’s land development code in 30 years.

Mayor Steve Adler tried to set a collegial and positive tone from the outset of the meeting by passing out ‘Team Austin’ hardhats and safety vests to council members and city staff but ended up presiding over a sometimes testy hours-long discussion on abstract general principles without touching on the substance of the draft land code.

At the outset of the meeting Adler shared his view that the status quo is unacceptable and the land code needs to change. Then, after council members agreed to briefly discuss a minor agenda item to review goals and principles behind the CodeNEXT redesign, they unexpectedly engaged in a more than 2-hour back-and-forth parsing the wording of various articles.

Several times during the meeting Mayor Adler encouraged members not to get caught up on language but was thwarted in his effort to keep the meeting on track. The mayor was forced to bookmark numerous suggested changes from council members in an effort to move past disagreements and move on to discuss substantive issues. City staff will be given the task of reviewing and changing language to achieve a consensus among members that could not be reached this morning.

“We are word-smithing down a rabbit hole,” commented one member.

Another member, Delia Garza, representing District 2, threatened to boycott such discussion altogether, saying, “If this is the way it’s going to go I’m not coming back after lunch.”Garza referred to the document on shared principles as a “document about being nice to each other,” before pointing adding that she thinks “lines have been drawn” and the Council ought to dig into the specifics of the code changes.

Garza left the room shortly after making these remarks and did not return after the lunch recess. Other members including Ann Kitchen disagreed with Garza’s position saying that the discussion on principles was helpful and should continue. Members Ann Kitchen, Leslie Pool, Jimmy Flannigan, and Alison Alter were among those who asked for language changes.

At the start of the afternoon session, the mayor said he was keen to begin with a topic on which members could reach easily consensus.

City staff began a briefing on coding along major transportation corridors but got sidetracked by member questions on preferred vocabulary terms such as uses of the terms ‘urban core’ and ‘desired development zone.’

Adler sought to shape consensus around the general proposition that most new higher-density mixed use development should take place along major transportation corridors “rather than in the core of existing neighborhoods.”

Council Member Ora Houston initially appeared to be not fully on board with this categorization, saying more density also ought to be considered within existing neighborhoods too, in order to create more affordable housing, although she later voted to approve the statement.

“Mayor, with all due respect, at some point we have to get into the nitty-gritty of stuff… and I’m trying to figure out how to get there,” said Council Member Alter, adding that disagreements arose in the details and needed to be discussed. “I’m just trying to understand how we move from these questions to a deeper level.”

“My concern is that we’ll end up in like seven or eight different places,” Adler replied.

Opponents of CodeNEXT are pushing for a November ballot measure against the plan. They have collected signatures for a petition and filed a lawsuit to try to make that happen.

Different interest groups have been active in the CodeNEXT process, including groups opposed to rising property taxes and gentrification, real estate developers, affordable housing advocates, among others.