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, 10th Floor City Hall
City Plan Commission
Thursday, February 23, 2012, 1:30
p.m., 2nd Floor City Hall
Legislative Review Committee
Thursday, March 1, 2012, 1:30 p.m.,
2nd Floor City Hall
City Council
Tuesday, March 6, 2012, 8:30 a.m.,
2nd 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.
One more meeting is critical. The PSB is apparently having a special meeting on March 5 at 5 or 5:30
on the 4th 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.
