Lifestyles of the well-heeled (cont'd)
Following the big election, Mayor White and his Council got back to business this week, deciding to postpone consideration of an "emergency" ordinance that was hastily crafted by the mayor to placate influential constituents from a wealthy part of town. As Mike Snyder reports for the Chronicle, the decision to postpone the ordinance came in response to the developers agreeing to postpone their efforts:
The council postponed voting on the ordinance after the developers, Matthew Morgan and Kevin Kirton of Buckhead Investment Partners, agreed in writing not to seek any additional permits during the 90-day delay.
Morgan and Kirton said their agreement to halt the project for 90 days was prompted in part by concerns expressed by other developers.
"We believe we have an obligation to other developers in this city, as more and more ad hoc rules continue to be proposed for the development of private property," Morgan said. "We were willing to make this short-term sacrifice for the good of the industry and the community."
The mayor said he had initially put the ordinance on a fast track — it was drafted and placed on the council agenda within a few weeks [1] — because the developers insisted on moving their project forward despite concerns about its impact on traffic. Their agreement to wait, White said, allows time to review parts of the ordinance needing more work.
Morgan and Kirton said Wednesday that other developers had expressed concern about the potential impact of the ordinance on projects they were planning. These concerns were the subject of a meeting White held with several developers and builders last week.
Jeff Gray, president and founder of Grayco Partners, a multi-family development firm, said the Bissonnet project and its reaction at City Hall had generated considerable discussion among some of his industry colleagues. Some developers were concerned that the ordinance gave too much authority to the public works director to require changes in projects, he said. [2]
"If there's going to be a new standard, they just don't want it to be arbitrary and left to the discretion of a city department head," Gray said.
With regard to Note 1: Didn't Mayor White previously insist that the wealthy, politically connected anti-Ashby high-rise people had received no special treatment? Except here, he admits they did. The Mayor's communications team seems to be sending conflicting messages! Of course, even absent the Mayor's admission, it is fairly obvious that the Mayor put this ordinance on an "unusually fast" (to quote the Chronicle) track, bypassing the usual vetting process.
And that takes us to Note 2: In the haste to throw together an emergency ordinance to benefit a wealthy, politically connected constituency, the Mayor and Council seemed ready to transfer a considerable amount of discretionary power to the city's public works director, with no real analysis of potential consequences and ramifications. As we have noted previously, that is not the best way to make policy.
Finally, we see that Mayor White has written to the Chronicle today, to argue with citizens who dare suggest that the hastily crafted anti-Ashby high rise ordinance amounts to special treatment for a wealthy, politically connected constituency:
In this section in the Chronicle, several citizens have asserted that this administration has moved more aggressively on an ordinance to blunt the traffic impacts of high-rise developments because one of those developments threatens a higher-income neighborhood. That is not true. The vast bulk of the neighborhood protection activity during this administration — as measured by spending, personnel and new laws — has dealt with chronic problems in some of the city's most neglected neighborhoods. We moved swiftly, for example, to shut down two apartment buildings with health violations in moderate- to low-income areas.
Note the rhetorical technique employed: "The accusation we have engaged in A is not true, because we have engaged in B." Of course, that formulation falls apart if both A and B can be true. We don't dispute that the White Administration has boosted neighborhood protection activities, as he suggests. But -- back to Note 1 -- even the Mayor admits that he put the concerns of a well-heeled constituency on a fast track. He may even have thought there were important reasons to do so that aren't crassly politically (we aren't mind readers, so we can't claim to know). But the fact is, a well-heeled constituency did receive special treatment, and developers who thought they had followed the pertinent regulations to develop their property have effectively seen the value of their investment reduced because Mayor White produced a punitive (unvetted) ordinance with unprecedented haste in response to the demands of wealthy, politically connected constituents.
At least the delay offers the Mayor and his Council a chance to reconsider the hastily-crafted, punitive ordinance, and to vet it with some semblance of a deliberative process.
Perhaps. The anti-Ashby high rise organizers don't sound too pleased about additional deliberations over their ordinance:
Neighborhood leaders said they were gratified that the mayor had reinforced his determination to block the project. But they were concerned about what might happen during a 90-day delay.
Leaders of other neighborhoods with concerns about negative effects of proposed developments might try to get their issues included in the ordinance, making its impact so broad that it becomes politically untouchable, said Chris Amandes, an attorney who co-chairs a task force of leaders of the Southampton and Boulevard Oaks neighborhoods adjoining the project site.
To quote Slampo: "In other words, Away with your wagon and other nettlesome development issues. This is our ordinance."
And that concludes our latest Lifestyles of the Well-Heeled update.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/11/07 12:55 PM | Print |
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