Clarifying Three Major Issues

There are several items on the table now and it can get confusing. Keep these three things separate: Plan El Paso Comprehensive Plan (the City’s Comprehensive Plan re-write), Transmountain Road (Scenic Corridor) and Northwest Master Plan (sometimes referred to as the Westside Plan), and the TxDOT Transmountain West Project and the Sierra Club Lawsuit.

First, the most pressing item on the table now in terms of time is the Plan El Paso Comprehensive Plan. You can review Volumes One and Two of the Draft document online at Plan El Paso. Read the letter from the City’s Planning and Economic Development team. It  points out the level of participation and the time spent in concert with Dover Kohl & Partners developing this very forward thinking plan:

“Over the last 18 months, the City of El Paso has been engaged in one of the most exciting and publicized planning processes in over a generation–Plan El Paso, a rewrite of the City’s Comprehensive Plan.  During this time, the City partnered with Dover Kohl & Partners, one of the country’s top planning firms (www.doverkohl.com).  We met with over a thousand residents and many of you were active in giving us recommendations, drawing ideas, and expressing your hopes for a more prosperous, sustainable, and vibrant El Paso.  Nearly 20 separate community-wide meetings took place in all parts of the City.  We met with seniors, families, young professionals, developers, college students, military personnel, realtors, homeowners, and even held several “hands-on” design sessions with elementary age children.  We had over one-hundred face-to-face meetings with stakeholders and neighborhood associations, and formulated an advisory committee comprised of your friends, neighbors, and colleagues  to provide guidance.”

Know that there are some powerful El Pasoans who would like to jettison or water down the plan that all of us together helped to write. There have already been some delays in the schedule to approve the plan but it looks as if all is moving forward now.  Several meetings are coming up that will lead to a final approval of Plan El Paso. But approval is not a sure thing. Please mark your calendars for the following meetings and attend as much as you can. I will alert you prior to each meeting.

Comprehensive Plan Advisory Committee

Monday, February 20, 2012, 10 a.m. to Noon, 10^th Floor City Hall

City Plan Commission

Thursday, February 23, 2012, 1:30 p.m., 2^nd Floor City Hall

Legislative Review Committee

Thursday, March 1, 2012, 1:30 p.m., 2^nd Floor City Hall

City Council

Tuesday, March 6, 2012, 8:30 a.m., 2^nd Floor City Hall

The Plan El Paso Comprehensive Plan Rewrite is steeped in the values of smart growth, walkable and sustainable communities and placemaking – making livable neighborhoods, communities and cities. We all know the existential angst we all experience: alienation from each other and our natural world, vast separations of our homes from where we work and where we shop, expansive streets and highways that are congested, our finances drained as a result of driving these distances to work and shop, our air polluted by long waits bumper to bumper, red light to red light, and our canopy of native trees and shrubs is quickly disappearing. The current designs of our communities have drained our wallets, robbed us of joy, shut us off from each other, and plagued us with a plethora of maladies – obesity, diabetes and heart disease being the leaders.

Our communities can be designed better so that we are closer to where we shop, more apt to interact with our neighbors, able to walk or drive easily, connected with our natural open spaces, and have a sense of place.

Do some homework. Read Plan El Paso. Check out the smart growth FAQs.  Read more about placemaking from Project for Public Spaces.  Google smart growth economic advantages and surf and read.

Send your comments to Carlos Gallinar, Comprehensive Plan Manager  and go to one or some or all of the meetings above and let them know that you want Plan El Paso.

One more meeting is critical. The PSB is apparently having a special meeting on March 5 at 5 or 5:30 on the 4^th floor of their building at 1154 Hawkins Blvd. (Map) Mark your calendars now because you won’t find this meeting published on their web site until the last possible moment for you to know. They will discuss the Comprehensive Plan and the NW Master Plan. They really need to hear from their public. (Weren’t we talking about firing our trustee?)

This brings us to the next issue: the Transmountain Road (Scenic Corridor) and Northwest Master Plan. My understanding is that dates for discussing this item are under discussion by the City and the PSB currently. I don’t know the next step  but I do know that the charrette work in progress presentation is now available online. An elpasonaturally post reported that the no-build option was the unanimous favorite of participants at the charrette. Still, when further meetings are set, plan to go – that’s when the bigwigs, backroom movers and shakers attend. These are the meetings that count just as the meetings listed above are the ones that count.

Some of the confusion between the Comprehensive Plan and the Northwest/Westside/Scenic Corridor plan stems from the fact that Dover Kohl has been the consultant in each. Information about the NW Plan are at Plan El Paso also.

The impetus for re-doing the Northwest Master Plan was the success of a petition guide asking that land in the Scenic Corridor be preserved and no major roads built through that land. I can tell you that all petitioners are adamant that the land be preserved and arroyos and habitats be preserved from the devastation of bulldozing and asphalting to make more of those wide and congested roads. The petition is still quite alive if preservation isn’t guaranteed. Simply put, the City Charter allows for petitioners to seek a referendum on a ballot should City Council fail to pass the ordinance prescribed by the first petition or pass an ordinance different from the first one. There is no deadline to start a second petition. At this time, both the City and petitioners have agreed to the process now facilitated by Dover Kohl. Nevertheless, a decision must be reached by the City and the PSB. If no preservation, if destruction of natural habitat and animal corridors, then expect round two of the petition to begin. All hope for agreement on the preservation of the Scenic Corridor which can come as part of a new plan developed with the help of Dover Kohl.

Thirdly, there is the TxDOT Transmountain West Project and the Sierra Club Lawsuit.  Expansion of Transmountain Road on the west side has always had some strong proponents even among those who want to preserve natural open space around it. The trouble comes from the fact that the project grew from a simple $15 million improvement to an $85 million super-freeway with an extra unneeded overpass (Plexxar) and without any practical animal corridor and any safe provision for entry and exit to the State Park. (Safe entry into the Park is yet another permutation of this issue which we will discuss later.) The El Paso Times already reported that “TxDOT officials worked closely with developers as they planned a strip of big-box stores on Trans Mountain near I-10. And when public meetings were held in February [2011], ‘plans for Transmountain had long been completed,’ according to an email Texas Transportation Commissioner Ted Houghton sent to a City Council member.” Who cares what you want.

If you want to contribute to the Sierra Club’s lawsuit, then make your check payable to “El Paso Regional Sierra Club Group” with a memo that reads “Franklin Mountain Legal Defense Fund”. Mail your check to the El Paso Regional Sierra Club Group, P.O. Box 9191, El Paso, TX 79995.

Finally, I’ve published before the benefits of trees in the urban setting. Unfortunately, U.S. Cities are losing 4 million trees each year. I’ve sat in enough City Council and Parks and Recreation Advisory Board meetings now to know that the leadership of El Paso is much more concerned about the image of being a Tree City USA than actually valuing trees – native trees. It’s just window dressing. A ribbon to hang on a wall and not the substance of a soul.