This REALLY pisses me off.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/met....971b0327.html

Task force ready to give away the farm?

Web Posted: 02/11/2005 12:00 AM CST

John Tedesco
San Antonio Express-News

A task force that is supposed to fix the way developers seek exemptions from city codes is veering toward a policy that "gives away the farm" to developers, a member of the task force claims.

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Mitch Meyer, a developer himself, also said in the e-mail to his colleagues this week that the policy would hamper the city's ability to grow responsibly.

The city's "vested rights" committee is scheduled to vote March 2 on recommendations that the City Council eventually could consider.

Mayor Ed Garza formed the group in September to examine how the city interprets a state law that allows residential and commercial developers to avoid city rules, such as tree protection ordinances.

Meyer complained the vested rights committee is crafting a complicated, "mind-numbing" policy that will burden city staffers and open the door for more grandfathered projects.

"This issue is entirely too complex to reduce every vested rights case to writing," Meyer wrote. "Because of our vain attempt to do this, we have created something that is more confusing than what we had."

Invoked hundreds of times by developers over the years, the vested rights law says city codes are locked in for a project when a landowner files a permit such as a plat.

Developers say the law protects their investments and boosts profit margins. But it also dilutes new rules designed to protect the environment and foster pleasant neighborhoods.

Builder Pulte Homes razed a forested hillside last year at Stone Oak Parkway and U.S. 281, leaving a barren landscape at the gateway to the Texas Hill Country. The project was exempt from the city's 2003 tree ordinance.

Hundreds of North Side projects, such as the one on Stone Oak, don't have to follow the city's 1995 aquifer protection ordinance, which limits the amount of streets, parking lots, and other forms of "impervious cover" that can taint storm water and plug recharge features.

The city task force has spent months listening to the concerns of the law's critics and supporters.

In past meetings, Meyer was openly skeptical of developers who say vested rights provide a volatile industry much-needed "certainty," a word that has become something of a mantra in real estate circles.

"I'm on your side. I'm a developer," Meyer said after engineer Gene Dawson Jr. spoke to the committee. "But I keep hearing, 'My pocketbook, my pocketbook.' You chose this risky business to be in."

At another meeting, Meyer, an "in-fill" developer who builds projects in established neighborhoods, proposed that building permits should be the only do ent the city should accept in allowing vesting.

"You really don't know what you're going to have until you get a building permit," Meyer said.

Such do ents are filed toward the end of the project, so such a move wouldn't be popular among developers.

A key question has vexed the committee: When is a project a project? If a vague plat is used to justify vested rights, for example, the city argues there's nothing to vest, because no project is described.

The task force is considering a solution: a project affidavit. The new do ent offers some detail on the type of development planned and can be filed with another permit to clear up any ambiguity.

Meyer argues the project affidavit "serves no purpose" and would actually make it easier for developers to obtain vested rights.

He also suggested developers were crying wolf about the city's interpretation of the law.

"The city record on vesting is not as bad as people think," Meyer wrote, noting that over the years most vesting applications have been approved.

Meyer declined to be interviewed for this article, saying his memo was being made public prematurely. But his thinking appears to reflect a side of the task force that generally doesn't see a problem in how the city handles vested rights permits.

Architect Robert Hanley, a member of the task force, also said he hasn't seen any proof the city is mishandling vesting cases.

Two other committee members, Susan Wright and Francine Sanders Romero, favor the project affidavit and disagreed the task force was "giving away the farm" to developers.

"It's definitely not true," Romero said. She noted that the task force agreed with the city attorney's office that not every permit describes a project, a position opposed by many in the real estate community.

Wright pointed out that developers were hardly leaping for joy at the idea of a project affidavit.

At a recent meeting, lobbyist Bill Kaufman spent more than an hour going point-by-point through the proposals, noting what he called shortcomings.

Then environmentalist Richard Alles stood and did the same thing.

"I haven't heard anybody who's thrilled with anything," Wright said. "That makes me feel like we must be doing something in the middle."

Wright said she didn't know if Meyer's proposal will complicate their next meeting on March 2.

The group spent months listening to the public in an attempt to hash out its recommendations, and busted an October deadline imposed by Mayor Garza.

Three city councilmen and four members of the city's planning commission sit on the committee.

Wright, chairwoman of both the city planning commission and the vested rights task force, said Meyer's thoughts "need to be expressed and mulled over by the committee ... We have concentrated more on doing it right than doing it fast."