On March 7th, environmental protection rollbacks demanded by The Trail Conservancy (TTC) were approved by Austin City Council. Three members (R. Alter, A. Alter and M. Kelly) left the dais without explanation during the public testimony and did not return to vote.
Public testimony fell in two camps once again—seasoned environmentalists versus nonprofit boosters and board members.
They rammed this through under the radar, with the public largely unaware of the request and the implications. We had only a couple weeks’ notice that this was going to Council. There were so many versions and it made so little sense that it was hard to understand what level of threat these code changes posed to Lady Bird Lake. Anyone speaking out was accused of misinformation.
City staffers sold it as a change in the wording of the code to “bring the trail into compliance.” But why would TTC need a change in the code? The change allows the trail to be widened without restriction, paved, and exempted from effective standards of mitigation? Mitigation means having new areas brought up to ecological standards to offset any area taken by capital projects, and they are a check or restraint on development. No one could answer when we pointed out the absurdity of the logic. Finally, the Chief Environmental Officer (former TTC board member), under close questioning by an alert parks board member, offered some truth. It was to provide flexibility for the nonprofit partner for fundraising for capital projects, and to provide them surety.
So now, instead of complying with the previous 2:1 or even 1:1 mitigation requirements to protect the lake, there’s another option. Parks and Recreation Department (PARD) director Kimberley McNeely can now provide “alternative compliance”—whatever that means. It is neither spelled out nor specified in the resolution, which passed unanimously, with no discussion, by the remaining seated council members and Mayor Watson.
A member of the powerful Planning Commission spoke for TTC (Felicity Maxwell, D5), as well as an agent for the Ann and Roy Butler estate. The guy who was president of the board last year (and is still on the board) got 6 minutes to speak because people donated time to him; he went on an unhinged rant that included deceptively framed excerpts from Claire Hempel’s (Planning Commission chair, TTC board president and lead designer of the proposed ZPVP) email communication with Rewild ATX (Rewild Zilker, at the time).
There was a large police presence because city officials were afraid of peaceful ceasefire activists who were also there that day, asking city council for a resolution to end the killing of Palestinians. After the vote was summarily taken following public testimony (with R. Alter, A. Alter and M. Kelly still inexplicably off the dais) the scene was chaotic. The former TTC board president went on another red-faced tirade and tried to involve a police officer in his hysterical persecution delusion. The officer declined to assist him as a personal security detail.
No one could quite figure out why TTC was so desperate to get these changes now, but people wearing garments with Live Nation branding were seen in the audience in council chambers. The amendments were regarding what can take place along the river in the Critical Water Zone. Years ago, these codes were written because environmentalists and water quality professionals saw the necessity of preventing development along the riparian edges of Lady Bird Lake.
Do you trust Live Nation to care for the riparian edges of Lady Bird Lake? Do you trust C3? These are the forces at work behind the nonprofit faces. I doubt Live Nation cares about the waterfront ecology beyond shaping it to best serve their interests.
The land use codes were written on the strength of the robust environmental wins in the ‘90s. Citizens rose up to protect Barton Springs from developer disasters. The hike and bike trail around the lake was exempted from the rule that nothing could be built within 50 feet of the water. The land use code only applied to future development. Any trail maintenance that didn’t bring it more out of compliance would be allowed.
Then came a city council resolution last spring (when the ZPVP resistance was gaining momentum), directing staff to reconsider the city code “relating to environmental protections in a critical water quality zone at the Ann and Roy Butler Hike-and-Bike Trail.”
The department that handles this is Watershed Protection. Watershed Protection has (or once had) an environmental reputation in Austin with a “Mr. Rogers” level of trust.
Shocking Austin environmentalists—many of whom had worked hard for those protections—three Watershed staffers, including the Chief Environmental Officer, went before several boards and commissions—including the Environmental Commission—and requested a land use code change on behalf of TTC. (PARD handed the keys to the trail to a nonprofit following their vision planning process in 2007.)
Of note was the fact that two of these staffers used to be on #TeamTCC (a former board member and a former staffer). It is inexplicable why Watershed Protection would make these choices. It’s an alarmingly bad portent. Especially when you add it to the fact that the TTC CEO is on the Environmental Commission and recently put forward a resolution directing the consideration of new “green parking” garages IN ZILKER PARK. If you are beginning to see that the nonprofiteers have seeded and infiltrated city staff, boards and commissions in order to influence the process, you would be correct.
TTC has millions of dollars in “restricted” funds. Nonprofits are allowed to keep restricted funds a secret from the public. The Parks Department wouldn’t be allowed to do that. But the Parks Department isn’t a business, and TTC is very much into partnering with commercial interests and branding; and at their level of PARD partnership, they are allowed to “realize revenue” on parks concessions (concessions are a business that operates in the park).
This is a bad deal for the city because we already pay TTC to manage the trail. Director McNeely hires it out instead of managing the trail. The City of Austin pays TTC $900,000 per year to run the trail (ha).
If you look at the pics of their project gallery on their website, the work they’ve done looks mostly fine. I would even be proud of some of it if it had been done by PARD. (And by PARD, I mean by the parks staff and the artisan workers PARD could have contracted with instead of going through a 3rd party. Rich people don’t get tax write-offs in that scenario, nor do they get disproportionate influence.) When I’m on the trail it doesn’t look like it does in the photos. There are many places that neither Watershed Protection, nor PARD, nor TTC have stepped up to fix the erosion. It has been years!
It hardly needs to be said, but no one trusts PARD right now. Not the citizens of Austin after what they co-signed for Zilker; not City Hall—which acts more like the Chamber of Commerce these days and needs the trail to promote the city; not PARD itself—or it would have risen to the challenge instead of farming out the work; and not even the nonprofits that benefit from taking over as a private parks sector. Especially not the nonprofits. They don’t trust PARD to do anything except provide official cover, indemnify them and keep that public money flowing. No one thinks they know better than PARD—than the parks nonprofiteers.
The Trail Conservancy positions itself as the heir of the land and work done by Ann Butler and Lady Bird Johnson (who were good friends) and activists like Roberta Crenshaw in the postwar period up until the ‘80s. It’s as if Roy Butler—mayor for a number of years in the ‘70s—gave it to his wife, Ann, and her friends as a project, and now these people, chosen out of their social group, get to do whatever they think is right today, decades later.
Yes, they will engineer public commentary, but they don’t have to abide by anything the public says. They just have to “engage” with us.
I’ve seen the TTC signs inviting public commentary on the signage around the trail. I’ve seen invitations to weigh in on public art on the trail. I don’t at all like what they’ve done recently in terms of branding and cluttering the trail with their saccharine messages and appeals for donations. I definitely have input, but I know that if I go to one of these “public engagement” sessions it’s going to get ugly. I might even be arrested for something stupid like harassment for telling them their business. Who is going to these things (their friends)? And why isn’t parks public engagement done through a nominally neutral agent like the city?
The change to the code doesn’t specify TTC, so now any agent that TTC partners with (as long as it controls the trail) can use these land code changes to do what they want as long as the parks director says OK. The public currently has no legitimate recourse to influence what happens to the hike and bike trail. If they tell you different, ask them how. —Teri Adams