Last December, clearly rattled by an Austin American-Statesman story dedicated to its myriad problems, tensions bubbled over for the City of Austin’s Historic Landmark Commission. As usual, at the nexus of the trouble was Commissioner Arif Panju, an appointee of contrarian former Council Member Don Zimmerman, who had become acquainted with Panju through his work systematically derailing a proposed historic district in Travis Heights.

This time Panju was exasperated about a proposal to preserve a midcentury modern home against the wishes of its owner. “This is completely rotten,” he declared, implying the commission’s deserved reputation for dysfunction was a direct result of actions just like this.

Commission chair Mary Jo Galindo found his statement ironic. “Our dysfunction is you, sir,” she said, seething. “You’re an obstructionist.”

Things didn’t get much better after that, and though the rush to get Panju off the commission following Zimmerman’s defeat last fall was as fast as I’ve seen local government move, the “business of the Historic Landmark Commission”—preservation—remains a huge, complicated problem.

As much as some like to complain that the city’s protections of its past impede the promise of a new urbanist future, it’s hard to stop someone from tearing down anything they own in Austin, Texas—the seat of a land where property rights reign supreme. A drive through areas near the urban core makes this crystal clear. It’s not hard to stumble upon a lot where an old house has been razed in favor of new construction. The city isn’t doing a good job of preserving the existing character of neighborhoods. Not even the cute ones.

What the city is doing, however, is making those inevitable demolitions as costly and emotionally wrought as possible.

Austin only has three neighborhoods where preventing the removal of anything other than a landmark of well-documented historical significance is an uphill battle seldom won or even fought. In those three neighborhoods—Hyde Park, Castle Hill, and Harthan Street—the city has some say over what’s torn down and what’s built. Everywhere else an individual case must be made for each building’s significance. That case must be approved by the Historic Landmark Commission and, ultimately, the City Council.

Kate Singleton, executive director of Preservation Austin (which is hosting its annual Historic Homes Tour on April 29), came here from Dallas. She tells me she was surprised that our city had never focused on the creation of districts. Though Austin has 18 neighborhoods recognized as National Register Historic Districts, up until 2004 the city hadn’t transformed any of those into local historic districts, which would establish enforceable regulations for development. Compare this situation to San Antonio, which has 27 local historic districts, while Dallas has 21, and Houston—well known as a veritable zoning Wild West—has 19. Regulating districts, Singleton notes, is much easier than playing “preservation whack-a-mole” house by house.

In cases where the owner doesn’t want a historic designation (for example, when they are hoping to tear their home down), two-thirds of City Council members have to agree the building demands preservation and its associated tax breaks. That’s happened roughly once, when a lame-duck council voted in 2014 to preserve Red River Street’s red and white “boat house” as one of its last acts.

Each preservation battle has to be fought on its own merits. Last year one Pemberton Heights case became a debate over how racist a home’s original owner has to be before nullifying his legacy as a historic figure. Another time, after a lack of a quorum at a landmark commission meeting to consider the preservation of a Bouldin Creek stone cottage, a neighbor frustrated by the failed process was arrested for his futile and illegal attempt to stop the bulldozer. And sometimes there are debates about whether brand-new homes can be considered historic landmarks. Often it means homeowners eager to get on with the demolition of a house that they were assured could be torn down are stuck in expensive limbo for months on end before they’re able to move forward with demolitions that were always going to move forward anyway.

Because of the labor involved in finding compelling histories for about 850 homes a year that come before the commission, and the high bar needed to meet standards for individual historic designation, attractive but not necessarily regal neighborhoods are unlikely to look the same years from now. Development pressures mean the commission’s agenda is, in actuality, most useful for figuring out where new construction will soon be built. And that’s bumming out everybody, no matter where on the preservation-versus-redevelopment spectrum they fall.

The commission’s dysfunction is certainly real, and there have been audits and resolutions to prove it (including the commissioners themselves rating their own effectiveness at 5.4 on a 10-point scale), but laying the problems on the now-departed Panju as the roadblock seems unfair under the circumstances. Local democracy should have room for dissent within its ranks. It’s just as unfair to blame the commission as a whole, considering that body was born and bred in a system where all battles are uphill.

If that system remains halfhearted, preserving the past on a case-by-case basis rather than at the neighborhood level, then the redevelopment pressures of a booming city are bound to win out. They’re going to keep right on Dallas-ing up your Austin.

Elizabeth Pagano is editor of the Austin Monitor. Read the Monitor’s continuous coverage of local government at austinmonitor.com.