Great news!
City Council voted yesterday to zone as Natural Open Space the 900+ acres in Representative Byrd's plan. Council also held off voting on lifting restrictions on land along Trans Mountain until an environmental assessment is made regarding the proposed freeway plan.
The 5-2 vote to zone land in the Trans Mountain scenic corridor went this way: Byrd, O’Rourke and Ortega were joined by Lilly and Holguin voting “aye”. Emma Acosta and Carl Robinson voted “Nay”. This followed an exploratory motion by Byrd to rezone all PSB land east of Gas Line Road as NOS. That vote failed with only Byrd, O’Rourke and Ortega voting “aye”. However, that vote, along with the Mayor’s honest declaration that he would veto rezoning all of the land but that he could live with rezoning some of the land, led to the second and successful motion.
In addition, Council now wants further study about the number of overpasses for the proposed freeway. Maintaining the scenic corridor really requires not extending Paseo del Norte. An alternative plan presented by the Borderland Mountain Bike Association would bend Paseo del Norte to the proposed Plexxar interchange. This plan may have some traction.
It was revealed that the overpass at/for Plexxar was never part of the Master Thoroughfare Plan – a legal condition to be built. It would seem that that overpass was put into the freeway plan as a favor to Plexxar, a development company, so they could turn around 18-wheelers back and forth on Trans Mountain at state expense. They could still be benefited by “their” overpass becoming the “Paseo del Norte” connection to the freeway and abandoning the current planned extension of Paseo del Norte to Trans Mountain in order to preserve the scenic corridor. Some would call this a win/win.
The Franklin Mountains Wilderness Coalition collected over 1100 signatures on hard copies of its petition to zone all of the NW Master Plan as NOS. In addition, nearly 900 signatures have been recorded online. Bill Addington of the El Paso chapter of the Sierra Club announced at Council yesterday that they have over 2,000 signatures on a similar petition to save the Franklin Mountains. FMWC has no immediate plans to stop collecting signatures.
The number of signatures makes it clear that there is not and has never been a consensus on the NW Master Plan. In fact, elpasonaturally has learned that there was no consensus of stakeholders even when the plan was concocted in 2005. (More on that later.) The vote at Council reveals that there is not a majority of Council members willing to rezone now the entire area as Natural Open Space. On the other hand, it reveals that there is a consensus on Council as to what constitutes the scenic corridor and that that scenic corridor should be preserved.
The Open Space Advisory Board has already called for revisiting the NW Master Plan in light of new smart growth ordinances and insights which will come from the Dover Kohl review. Council has concurred.
As reported in a story in today’s El Paso Times, City Council “voted to postpone the release of several rezoning conditions necessary for the construction of the freeway until Nov. 30 in anticipation of a report from the federal government about the environmental consequences of building the highway.” Developers argued that failure to remove the restrictions may jeopardize the building of the freeway because the $80 million for the TxDOT project may “go away” when the Texas legislature convenes again in January. On the other hand, one could argue that the insistence that the restrictions be lifted is the real hold-up. After all, the City could just seek to condemn the frontage area to move the project along.
The recent tragedy on Trans Mountain was the basis for one argument to move immediately on approval of the freeway and not to zone Natural Open Space. However, it was pointed out that improving the road (2 lanes to 4 lanes) does not require the particular plan being proffered by TxDOT. Zoning something Natural Open Space or not has no impact on the safety issue. Those who used such faulty logic also felt that doing careful study and analysis has led to paralysis.
Since there is not the consensus that freeway/development advocates purport, a bit more time to do some due diligence cannot be anything but good.
The last slide in the presentation below shows the key intersections in the proposed Trans Mountain project:
Byrd Proposal for PSB Land on Trans Mountain Road
No comments:
Post a Comment