My assessment on the Central Austin Neighborhood Planning Advisory Committee in particular, is that it does not uphold the directives put forth in the Cityâs LDC and are instead used as a de facto waiting period for zoning changes.
Before any plan change can even be heard in front of the City, they have to meet with a Contact Team, whether or not the City takes the vote of the team into consideration. CANPAC in particular says on itâs website that it can take up to 6 weeks to even get a meeting with them. And prior to that, itâs stated that no proposed plan amendment can be heard (or voted on) at CANPAC without first having a review and recommendation from the affected NA. So in the case of Heritage NA, and many others, where we only have meetings once a quarter, this can add 20+ weeks to that time cycle - thatâs almost half a year.
And when a builder does finally get that CANPAC meeting, there is no record of the events or opinions presented (minutes havenât been published in over 5 years), and the members have significant leeway over how that meeting is conducted. The bylaws literally give them authority over everything in a meeting:
âCANPAC members may establish rules, processes, and procedures for certain matters including, but not limited to, the administration, governance, hearings, and proceedings of CANPAC, including but not limited to: (a) imposition of time limits upon speakers, presentations, and testimony, (b) sequence and recognition of such presentations, © scheduling of meetings, votes, and postponements of matters, (d) notification, and modifications to these bylaws and other rules of CANPAC within six (6) months of the original implementation of these bylaws.â
The only item in the Bylaws about Meeting Notification is literally one line and states nothing about notifying the public:
âA. All meetings shall be scheduled during a meeting or via other reasonable meansâ
Iâve never seen a public notice of issues (or even general meetings) that will be brought before CANPAC in my 5 years of living in that area.
There are a lot of procedural issues I take around membership in CANPAC in particular - itâs members are selected from â7 established neighborhood groupsâ without qualifying what established means, but goes on to specifically name those 7 groups.
There are a maximum of 2 members from each of those 7 pre-approved groups, which ends up an even number - an issue in the case of needing a tie breaker vote. Although, Itâs a moot subject in a landscape where we never hear or see any record of how membership has voted. And Iâm not exactly sure I want 14 people alone determining the planning future of Central Austin and holding any changes to Neighborhood Plans that have been found to disproportionally underrepresent renters and business owners in numerous city studies.
There are no term limits to members or CANPACâs 14 officers, who are also the ones creating the By-Laws - Youâll notice if you peek at the CANPAC site that all current members have served since 2011 at the latest.
Thereâs also a technical glitch in the CANPAC membership bylaws that states NAs must show that they have âOpen membership (without regard to dues requirements) to residents and/or commercial property owners within the neighborhood boundariesâ - but I donât think many NAs offer membership to business owners in their bounds. In my research to find which do I found that:
- Heritage in particular doesnât state that it allows commercial property owners or business owners to join, and solely refers to âHouseholdsâ in its bylaws.
- Eastwoods specifically invites business owners.
- Original West University Neigh Assoc is virtually clandestine - which makes it hard to know who to approach when a change is being requested
- NUNA specifically states in itâs bylaws âOnly individuals who are over the age of eighteen years, reside within the defined boundaries, and agree to pay the required dues and comply with the policies and procedures of the Association may become Members.â
- Shoal Crestâs only online presence is the existence of a yahoo-group.
- University Area Partnersâ by-laws and conduct is lost in a sea of bureaucracy at UT, and their website has just said âSomething Cool Is Comingâ for ages.
I think the reforms presented in the stakeholder meetings and summarized by Stevie Greathouse in the post above by brwittstruck are only a first step to creating a fair playing field that the LDC initially intended to create.