Bastrop, Tx–This year the city council has launched a laudable long range planning exercise aimed at envisioning what Bastrop can and should be like in the next few decades while imagining some strategies which can help the city get from now to then. They’ve even engaged some (free) consulting services from the Lower Colorado River Authority focusing on community development issues and choices.
The undertaking is especially important at this juncture, perhaps, because our most senior council members have not yet been in office two years, the others less than a year. So, yes, they might profitably spend some time together thinking through what they most need to focus on and why.
Yet keeping the council’s collective eye on a unifying and distant dream of the future is proving problematic, for two reasons at least. One is temperament. Council members Ken Kesselus and Kay McAnally seem most comfortable with forming overarching visions to help shape near-term goals, activities and plans. Perhaps the sharpest contrast is with Mayor Terry Orr and Council member Joe Beal, both engineers by training. Just looking around town, they see lots of issues which need addressing sooner rather than later. Council member Julie Hart seems temperamentally more aligned with Orr and Beal.
Sharpening this divide, perhaps, is that Orr, Beal and Hart are all facing re-election in less than three months, and at least in some cases they’ve clearly been hearing from likely voters who have causes to plead. The last day to file for a place on the May city ballot to challenge any one of them is March 8.
And to be fair, every Bastrop council since at least 1985 has been pushed and pulled by the competing demands of thinking and planning for the long term vitality of the community versus handling the press of more mundane tasks like fixing the potholes, draining the swamp, cleaning up the trash, deciding on construction plans and permits, etc., etc. For proof, just look at any regular council business meeting agenda.
The city manager and all his department directors face the same problem because each day has only 24 hours and all of them must stop to eat and sleep at least occasionally. So it’s small wonder that a few vital planning and visioning issues so far seem to have slipped under the council’s long range radar horizon.
I’ll touch on only two such topics briefly here with a promise to return to both later. A controversial tree protection law for the city and its extra-territorial jurisdiction was recently scuttled by the council without so much as a public hearing. As the council in recent weeks has discussed planning issues of import, I think I have yet to hear the phrase “tree protection.” This from a city which proclaims itself “Heart of the Lost Pines” and whose character, appearance and attractiveness are significantly defined by the natural landscape? Hello! Anybody home?
And I can’t see how to divorce the tree issue from the broader topic of how the city needs to manage its giant and crucial ETJ for future generations. Now that Bastrop has been named a destination of distinction by the National Truse for Historic Preservation, can any council reasonably ignore the opportunity afforded by its (limited) control over areas between the city and Austin to enhance Bastrop’s allure?
Anyone not concerned about future unpleasant possibilities should take a fresh look at the four corners of the Texas 95 intersection with Texas 71 in Bastrop. How many more acres of trees should the city allow to be cleared away to be decorated by additional billboards and flashing advertising signs along Texas 71 between Bastrop and Garfield? That landscape and prime development corridor is already heavily degraded, in case anyone didn’t notice.
How the city handles such issues will help define Bastrop for decades. Hello! Anyone home?