Austinites can voice their opinions about a controversial rezoning issue before having to speak at any board, commission or City Council meeting, but the public input process is inconsistent throughout the city.

As the city of Austin evolves, so, too, could the way residential input is received at City Hall during development rezoning cases.

Residents can come to the City Hall podium during a public comment period to address any board, commission or City Council meeting. Although that may be the most visible way to submit opinions to elected and appointed officials, it is also the last resort for Austinites.

“There’s already been several months of work up until that point, so my advice is to get involved as soon as possible,” said Jerry Rusthoven, the city’s planning and zoning department manager.

Multiple city efforts are underway to evaluate existing communication processes and potentially create new methods for collecting Austinites’ opinions. An ongoing city audit, expected to be complete by mid-2016, is evaluating Austin’s neighborhood-planning process, which dictates how development occurs within those defined areas. There are also alternative groups emerging that seek to challenge traditional neighborhood associations, which were once the only channel for residents to collectively chime in on controversial rezoning issues. [polldaddy poll=9287374]

Meanwhile, a multiyear process called CodeNEXT is likely to result in a rewrite of Austin’s land development code, which could incorporate elements of existing neighborhood plans crafted by residents.

“A lot of work—blood, sweat and tears—went into those [neighborhood plans], and it’s certainly not the desire from council or staff to forget about those,” Rusthoven said.

Contacting residents

While the CodeNEXT process progresses, a recent City Council directive calls on overhauling contact teams, or residential stakeholder groups who vote on proposed neighborhood plans amendments.

A Community Impact Newspaper review of proposed neighborhood plan amendments the past two years shows only two instances out of 47 total cases, one each in 2014 and 2015, in which City Council voted against contact team recommendations. Both failed recommendations occurred in the Montopolis neighborhood in East Austin.

However, the vast majority of Austin rezoning cases in the past two years (see map) have not required contact team input because the rezoning requests fall outside a neighborhood planning area or do not require a change to a neighborhood’s future land-use map, or FLUM.

But residents in areas without city-approved neighborhood plans still can provide input despite not having contact teams or FLUMs, Rusthoven said. All residents surrounding a proposed rezoning case are notified by mail, as are associated neighborhood groups. Oftentimes, those groups request that city staffers and the developer come speak during neighborhood meetings.

“City code doesn’t mandate such a meeting like it does within neighborhood planning areas, but those meetings sometimes naturally occur anyway,” Rusthoven said. “We just do it on an as-needed basis.”

The code-rewrite process could result in a citywide FLUM to make the residential input process more consistent throughout Austin.

“My concern is … creating a citywide FLUM would take a lot of effort,” Rusthoven said. “It’d be a rather lengthy process.”

Neighborhood associations 2.0

Friends of Austin Neighborhoods was created nine months ago and includes newer entities, such as Friends of Hyde Park, as well as more established neighborhood groups, including the Downtown Austin Neighborhood Association, which includes FAN President Roger Cauvin as a board member. There are also about 225 individual FAN members unassociated with any neighborhood group.

“We felt it was important to be more inclusive for residents whose neighborhood association might’ve chosen not to join [FAN],” he said.

FAN takes no official position on a given issue unless a supermajority of its members vote—online—in support of a specific stance. Cauvin said his group seeks to take back from “a vocal minority” the word “neighborhood,” which he claims has become code for maintaining the status quo in Austin.

“We’re for neighborhood improvement over neighborhood protection,” he said.

Before the advent of FAN and other alternative groups, the neighborhood associations and contact teams were the only way for City Council to receive meaningful residential input, said Pete Gilcrease, Friends of Hyde Park president.

Neighborhood associations tend to also be made up of older and wealthier individuals—who are often white and retired—compared with the rest of the neighborhood, Gilcrease said. He suggests allowing online voting so all voices can be heard on a given zoning case or other city controversy. For example, the Hyde Park Neighborhood Association voted overwhelmingly against reduced regulations for accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, but the majority of Friends of Hyde Park members voiced support for the changes, which were eventually passed by City Council late last year.

“I think we’re gaining more of a voice,” Gilcrease said.

However, not all alternative neighborhood groups represent the majority will of residents, said Sara Speights, president of the Bull Creek Road Coalition, an alliance of seven Central Austin neighborhood groups that surround a 75-acre property sold to MileStone Community Builders. Her group pitched neighborhood-friendly commercial and residential development for the site but has instead been asked to endorse a major mixed-use project called The Grove at Shoal Creek that she said would drastically increase traffic.

“It’s like trying to put 6 pounds of potatoes in a 3-pound bag,” Speights said.

Alternatively, BCRC would prefer more affordable, market-rate housing that allows those who work in the area to also live there, Speights said.

“Has our voice been heard? No, not yet,” she said. “But we’re working on it.”

The Friends of The Grove, an alternative group formed in opposition of BCRC, has far fewer members than the neighborhood coalition, Speights said, and should thus should have less of a voice in the process.

“A lot of their members do not live in this neighborhood, but we’re the ones who have to live with [the project],” Speights said. “We have a lot of wisdom about this neighborhood and what works and what doesn’t.”

Should The Grove at Shoal Creek receive approval, Speights said that would fly in the face of the input received by the city to craft Imagine Austin, the city’s comprehensive plan, which called for residential development on the site.

“That would just blow Imagine Austin to smithereens, and then we don’t have anything we’re operating by,” she said. “It’s just whatever a developer wants.”

Reaching consensus

Both newer and more established neighborhood groups have expressed frustration with the contact team recommendation process as it stands now, but they differ on preferred alternatives.

Although alternative “Friends of” groups insist on online voting, members of the Austin Neighborhoods Council instead suggest residential input should filter through its coalition of neighborhood associations.

Daniel Llanes, Govalle/Johnston Terrace Neighborhood Contact Team chairman and ANC member, said Austin stopped producing city-approved neighborhood plans when staffers could no longer control the process.

“This is why we now have contact teams,” Llanes said. “What has happened has been a not-so-subtle but very steady attempt by city staff to dismantle and discredit the neighborhood associations.”

Neighborhood plans have become nothing more than infill tools, ANC President Mary Ingle said.

“So that just means pro-development and more density only,” Ingle said. “I don’t know anybody that wanted a neighborhood plan, frankly.”

But because the neighborhood plans—and subsequent contact teams—are required for submitting residential input, Ingle said ANC embraces the process despite “really doing the work of the city.”

“People either participate, or they don’t. That’s the same with democracy—you have one vote, and if you don’t choose to use it then I’m sorry, but you don’t get to play,” Ingle said. “If you can’t play with the group that’s there, you shouldn’t go out and create your own club because you don’t like other peoples’ point of view. That’s not how you get along.”