Planning tool criticized

Imagine Austin vs. Environmentalists: Make water a priority

Despite almost two and half years of discussion, there are those who say Austin’s newest guideline for the future is all wet.

Imagine Austin (IA) kicked off in October 2009 defined as a "Comprehensive Plan connecting the community vision to tangible actions and realizable priorities." The group had monthly task force meetings with claims of taking "18,000 inputs" from Austinites. The Plan is now in its last months of government approval.

IA uses five guiding principles to build a plan for leading Austin into the future. Those principles are:

How to grow as a compact, connected city
Integrate nature into the city
Provide paths for prosperity for all
Develop as an affordable, healthy city
Sustainably manage water and other environmental resources

But that doesn’t mean it has everyone's buy-in.

“Imagine Austin is a feeble wish list of concepts that has no funding stream identified, no implementation parameters and no discernible community buy-in,” says Robin Rather, a long-time activist in Austin and board member of the grassroots Liveable City organization. “In my view, it has been a complete waste of time and money and will not, as it currently stands, make any difference on the ground.”

“It needed to focus on estimating our ‘carrying capacity’ and setting some realistic, measurable goals," she continues. "After that, IA should have spent nearly all the time focusing on implementable, detailed steps that connect that vision with our already existing economic development plans, sustainability indicators, neighborhood plans, cultural and equity plans and linked them together into a truly comprehensive strategic ‘business’ plan than could be executed and funded for how Austin should grow into its future."

Bill Bunch is executive director of the Save Our Springs Alliance. The SOS movement is strongly reflected in Imagine Austin, as the effort to put water quality into the law through the 1990s also brought about more emphasis on the new urbanism of less sprawl, more compact development especially in downtown and a recognition of nature in an urban area’s quality of life.

But Bunch isn’t impressed with the likely impact of Imagine Austin.

“Cities have lost a lot of their ability to control their own futures,” Bunch says. He says state legislation which allows development under plans filed decades earlier when science might have been different, and the creation of municipal utility districts beyond city control, have emasculated municipalities’ ability to control their tomorrows.

“A dramatic shift is happening that isn’t being recognized yet,” Bunch says.

Another ground level SOS player was Daryl Slusher. Slusher was elected to the Austin City Council in 1995, he is now an executive with the city’s water utility. That position makes him hesitant to speak directly to Imagine Austin. But he too questions if an individual city can have enough impact on its own future. He says the impact of everything from transportation to environmental preservation has become regional, running in this area from north Williamson County into the hills of Hays County to the south.

One of the realities which may be driving much of the environmental community’s reluctance is water and how it was handled in Imagine Austin. Water is essentially looked upon as a city service.

That is a particularly hot issue now. Austin is building a water treatment plant in North Austin which environmentalists argue isn’t necessary. They vehemently insist that water needs can be met with conservation instead of a plant costing tens of millions of dollars and built in a sensitive natural area.

When the City Council approved the plant over their objections, a series of private meetings were held in the environmental community to look at overall water policy. Emphasized in those meetings was the claim that Imagine Austin left water as “an afterthought,” as one participant said. Some city council members promised to urge staff to change that priority.

“If Imagine Austin fails to include a meaningful strategy for energy and for water — if those two issues aren't nailed in our so called comprehensive plan — then it is completely worthless," Rather says. “Energy and water are to this decade and century what transportation and land use were to the last. We should not be solving 1990s problems now. We should be solving the problems of today and tomorrow.”

Bunch points to a specific when questioning the today vs. tomorrow. State Highway 45 South has long been a sticking point for Bunch and his ilk. They call the proposed road, essentially hooking up MoPac Boulevard and I-35 in South Austin, unneeded and deadly to the environment there. Proponents say it is necessary to relieve an already existing traffic logjam in the area.

Bunch says community input keeps asking to take the specific road out of Imagine Austin and staff keeps returning it.

“People are driving less,” Bunch says. “We can take some of the credit, but there are several factors, the price of gasoline, boomers aging, people telecommuting. There is a new generation that doesn’t want to be adults in the places they grew up in.”

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San Antonio leads Texas on ending horse-drawn carriage rides by 2030

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Horses will no longer pull carriages on the streets of downtown San Antonio.

San Antonio has pulled off something that the rest of Texas has yet to do, but it didn't come without some contentious conversations. City Council has unanimously voted (with one abstention) to phase out the use of horse-drawn carriages over the next five years. That means by January 1, 2030, there will be none on the streets at all; instead, there will be electric carriages.

These plans have been in the making since 2022 — if not always at the same level of intensity — when District 2 Councilmember Jalen McKee-Rodriguez and District 3 Councilmember Phyllis Viagran wrote up some concerns about the horses' wellbeing. A special session at the end of October 2024 hinted to San Antonians that the end for this practice was neigh — sorry, nigh — and the final vote was made on December 12. In addition to accepting the plan, it extended its timeframe by two years.

The initial proposal included worries about the horses' exposure to traffic and pollution, as well how their presence might exacerbate those issues for the environment at large by slowing traffic. It also raised concerns about the effects of standing or walking on hard surfaces for too long, or spending time in extreme weather.

At the December 12 meeting, San Antonians gave impassioned speeches about animal welfare — both to call attention to the need for better conditions and to defend the reputations and jobs of current horse drivers — but it wasn't the first time the council heard from the public about the issue.

In a prior city survey, 50,476 respondents weighed in. Of those respondents, 51.98 percent said they liked the idea to "Transition horse-drawn carriages to electric carriages and pedicabs and ban horse drawn carriages completely." There were alternative solutions listed, but respondents were less drawn to them.

A cultural divide emerged in the data and continued in the December meeting: some people avoided the carriages because they worried about the treatment of the horses, while others enjoyed them because of their historical echoes and living legacy. Many speakers in favor of the plan used this to form their argument, raising questions about history versus progress.

More tangible objections to the plan hinged on the businesses — specifically five companies — and jobs that would be lost, which was the main factor behind extending the adjustment period.

Discussions about the particulars of the electric vehicles are still to come, as confirmed in the discussion near the end of the meeting. Councilmember Jalen McKee-Rodriguez addressed concerns about what would happen to the horses, mentioning the Brady Hunter Foundation as a future partner in finding them rescue homes.

Some council members also brought up rhetorical questions about animal exploitation by groups like Sea World, the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo, military and police forces, and even various groups in the Fiesta parade, although these did not come with a formal motion to pick the issues up.

This decision could have a ripple effect on other Texas cities. Dallas has recently considered a similar ban, but it appears to have stalled; Austin's attempts at a ban have been unsuccessful, but according to the Austin-American Statesman, only one operator is permitted to bring horses downtown. She declines to do so because the long hours are unfair to her and the horses. Houston does have horse-drawn carriages, and there seems to be little conversation about banning them.

Cities like Chicago and Salt Lake City have led the charge in the United States with some of the most prominent successful bans. Other cities around the world with bans include Brussels and Guadalajara, which both switched to electric models. Bans that have been around for years, like Guadalajara's and Prague's, still aren't out of the woods — people are still pushing back on the decision, so it sounds like San Antonio still has much work cut out for it.

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