Council Watch

"It's show time, Willie." Hearing City Manager Jesus Garza utter these words to kick off an Austin City Council meeting, one hopes against hope that a certain red-headed stranger will enter the council chambers and take the microphone. Instead, we had to make do with Solid Waste Services Director Willie Rhodes, who nonetheless gave a presentation that was, initially at least, entertaining in its own right for access TV audiences. Over his spiel about automating the city's fleet of garbage trucks, Channel 6 was playing static, along with some weird, deconstructed, dissonant classical music. Add to that Rhodes' Power-Point presentation, which featured a white background decorated with vaguely Mondrian-esque color blocks, and for a while the trash collection discussion was downright mind-expanding.

Then the presentation abruptly stopped. Someone had realized that the meeting had begun without a quorum. Quorum achieved, council members heard the rest of Rhodes' presentation and discussed the merits of the proposed automation of the Solid Waste Services garbage and recycling collection fleet.

Maybe the early-morning eeriness had something to do with the date -- 9/9/99 -- which is palindromic, millennial-looking, and easy on the eyes. But later in the day things calmed down, and a relatively normal Austin City Council meeting ensued.

---

Airport Noise

Residents of the Richland Estates subdivision, which lies directly across Hwy. 71 from Austin Bergstrom International Airport, got some unexpected respect from the council Thursday night, in the form of a promise to better compensate them for being the new airport's brand-new next-door neighbors.

Well, not exactly next-door. Richland Estates is in the position of having to bargain with the city because they're outside the official "noise contour" established for Bergstrom by the Federal Aviation Administration. The noise contour tracks the area around the airport where residents experience average noise levels of 65 decibels -- described as somewhere between a dishwasher in the next room and a vacuum cleaner 10 feet away -- and those lucky homeowners inside it will receive a cushy buy-out deal, including relocation assistance and moving expenses, and a Replacement Housing Payment of up to $22,500 to make up the difference between the value of their house and the price of a comparable one elsewhere in Austin. Those houses will be torn down, and the properties converted to more suitable land uses, such as industrial and/or commercial.

All of that is required -- and will be paid for -- by the FAA. But for anyone outside the designated zone, it's up to the city to decide upon and fund reparations. After a year's worth of work and negotiation with neighbors, city staff has issued the Bergstrom Noise Study, which includes recommendations on how to compensate nearby residents.

The tab for the overall noise abatement program will be $14.8 million -- over $8 million of which will be picked up by the FAA. The remaining $6 million will come out of the city's pocket over a period of about five years.

The study recommends three choices for those outside the noise contour: a) Have their homes bought out at current appraised value; b) have their homes soundproofed by the city; or c) sell the city an "avigation easement," which basically means the city pays the homeowner $2,500 for the right to fly over, pollute, and generally disturb their residence. The waiver would be attached to the property in perpetuity, so future owners would not be able to petition the city for airport-noise-and-pollution-related redress.

From the start, it seems that aviation people have an easier job at Bergstrom than they did at the old airport. At Mueller, more than 30,000 people lived inside the noise impact area; at Bergstrom, the number is less than a thousand. They've fielded 160 noise complaints since opening. Some measures the airport team has taken to reduce noise impact within the "noise contour" include changing the flight tracks, which they say has reduced the number of people bothered by airport noise by 16%. The airport has also committed to avoiding flying over the First United Pentecostal Church on Sunday mornings until soundproofing insulation is installed. Also, in compliance with federal regulations, all aircraft flying out of Bergstrom will be Stage 3 compliant, meaning they meet higher standards of quietness. Currently, about 80% of aircraft at Bergstrom are Stage 3.

---

Residents Speak Up

At first the noise proposal looked like an open-and-shut case, with a staff recommendation for noise-nuisance reparations from the city, a council united in support of the recommendation, and a group of 40 or so citizens standing by. The convergence of interests being what it was, Mayor Kirk Watson suggested that although the public hearing would still take place, the neighbors "may not have as much need to speak, for fear that you may talk us out of the position we've already taken."

It turned out, however, that the position the council had already taken wasn't enough for a majority of Richland Estates' 57 households, who packed the council chambers in support of their cause. Their major complaint regarded the terms of the optional buyout offer: They took issue at being offered the current value -- instead of replacement value -- of their homes. The city chose to move the airport, which devalued their property, the reasoning goes, and the city shouldn't use that fact to appraise the homes at less than they were worth before.

And those who plan to stay in their homes say that free soundproofing, or $2,500 for an avigation easement, is not enough, as the noise and fumes from the airport make outdoor use of their property all but impossible. Plus, they want the city to assume liability for any hearing loss suffered by residents as a result of a life lived deep in the flight path.

Furthermore, airport neighbors say things may get worse yet for them, thanks to a planned third runway slated to accommodate future growth at Bergstrom. Though the third runway is included in the airport plan, the Aviation Department's Holland Young says the city is "nowhere near" ready for it, and he doesn't anticipate its construction for another 20 or 40 years.

Frank Ashmore, who has lived at the corner of Burleson Road and FM 973 for 19 years, put his plaintive plea for the council like this: "Y'all left me sitting in a bad place. Y'all left me sitting right under the runway. I think y'all need to do something about it and do it pretty quick." Ashmore said that though he's done thousands of dollars worth of improvements to his property over the years, he's now unable to get a real estate agent to even list his property.

Council Member Willie Lewis responded to resident complaints with an I-told-you-so lecture about how the airport never should have gone to Bergstrom in the first place. When the city contemplated the Bergstrom move, he said, the city asked the locals, ""Are you sure this is what you want? They said, "Oh, yes.' And as soon as we get out there they want $65 million to relocate the schools." (The city has already purchased four Del Valle schools.) "The first thing was," he said, "we never should have moved the airport out there. If we'd moved it to Manor, no Austin citizen would be subjected to the noise." Lewis nevertheless came around and made the motion to approve the item. Which prompted Council Member Daryl Slusher to retort, "I just wanted to make sure that, since this is Council Member Lewis' motion, we're not voting to move the airport to Manor."

Watson then added to the motion that he "would like the staff to look at doing better" than what the current proposal offers Richland Estates in terms of the optional buyout package for their homes. After the meeting, Mayor Pro Tem Jackie Goodman said she supported the deal-sweetening, and believed the money could be found to fund it. Goodman said she'd heard from airport officials that some kind of "contingency fund" in the airport budget could fund the proposal. Or "airport revenues, maybe," Goodman said.

Why didn't the city staff see fit to incorporate these possible extra funding sources as part of the original proposal? "Our position was, we've already gone beyond what we were required to do by federal rules," said Holland Young. "Maybe the mayor wants to make it a little better." Exactly so, said Watson, who further explained that "the airport has been a big success -- [but] some people have been affected negatively. If we can do well by them, we want to explore all the possibilities."

This Week in Council: In the aftermath of the 1999-2000 budget adoption (see "Naked City," p. 20, for full budget coverage), the council will meet neither this week nor next. They'll have a big pile of work to tear into when they return to the dais on Sept. 30, with a proposed condominium project on Town Lake's south shore, and the Lower Colorado River Authority deal at the top of the heap.