City is Voting Tomorrow to ANNEX 2,614 Acres, and let developer's dictate total design and development of Dog's Head for the next 45 years.
How is this not the biggest news story right now? This development of Dog’s Head represents an unprecedented expansion of the city as we know it. This is an unbelievably important chapter for the development of Austin. This is the long awaited opportunity for Austin to grow its close-to-downtown footprint by almost a third! This could be the next Mueller, but 10x times as large!
Tucked into agenda item 38, tomorrow the city council will vote to annex the land, and hand complete creative control and direction of the entire development over to a group of developers.
Item 38 of the agenda:
Full contract: https://services.austintexas.gov/edims/document.cfm?id=473682
45 Year agreement:
New Special taxing zone that takes a portion of property taxes and reinvests it in the area.
And the developers get to choose half the seats that decide where it’s spent:
No height restrictions, no impervious cover restrictions:
The city is completely giving away its right to have any say in the development of this area FOR 45 YEARS.
I'm seeing almost no coverage of this. Community impact has an article from yesterday,
Chito Vela is quoted saying "I know this has moved very quickly, but it does seem to be well-thought out,". Yeah, no shit, because it gives the developers everything they're asking for and excuses the City from having any input into this monumental expansion of the city footprint.
This contract is like them creating a character with cheat codes on and setting all their stats to maximum. But in this case, no restrictions at all:
Shouldn't we be demanding that we get a say in this? It seems like they're trying to just slide this by without the public noticing.