Better Know a Candidate: Lee Leffingwell

2. Has the McMansion ordinance been successful? What do you think of City Council's recent decision to reject OCEAN's request to further restrict home sizes on small lots in East Austin?

I supported the decision to reject OCEAN'S request to restrict home sizes. In my view, any change to the McMansion ordinance should affect the entire city, rather than a particular neighborhood. The relatively recent passage of the McMansion ordinance makes its success or failure hard to measure. I do support ongoing review of the McMansion ordinance to ascertain its effectiveness, particularly to ensure that we do not inadvertently penalize property owners trying to recoup some of their investment by converting part of their home into a rental property (duplex, etc.).

3. Some neighborhood groups have attempted to opt-out of the vertical-mixed-use program for most or all eligible properties in their neighborhood. Would you vote to approve or reject those decisions?

I have generally supported neighborhood groups' efforts to opt-out of VMU. While I strongly support targeting density to our core transit corridors, I also respect a neighborhood's ability to judge what will best fit the character of the surrounding homes and businesses. I also place particular priority on ensuring that VMU zoning does not jeopardize any historic structures.

4. What should the city government do to promote or discourage suburban development? What about condo/apartment development downtown? What about condo/apartment development in other parts of the city?

I strongly support the vision advanced by CAMPO, Envision Central Texas, and other planning groups to increase density downtown and to create "activity centers" built around transit hubs. That vision allows for the preservation of more open space, the reduction of traffic, and the minimization of additional suburban sprawl. One example of how city government can help is the recent effort I led to enact a new zoning overlay to the City’s land development code which enables old commercial development to modernize at no more than existing impervious cover levels so long as on-site water quality controls are provided and funds are paid by developers to purchase and dedicate open space in the Barton Springs Zone sufficient to maintain SOS impervious cover levels on a composite basis. That new policy will act as a deterrent to sprawl by encouraging modernization of existing development - as well as modernization of water quality controls - instead of forcing new development outside of the city's jurisdiction. Moving forward, I think the city can continue to use its zoning authority, its other environmental and land use ordinances, and a forthcoming "density bonus" program to encourage density downtown and around transit nodes and to discourage sprawl.

5. Homes near downtown are generally more expensive than homes in the suburbs. Should the city do anything to change that? What?

The primary way to promote affordable housing in the Central Business District is with subsidies. This would be primarily bond money, since Texas state law does not allow inclusionary zoning. The City currently supports affordable housing with its SMART program, in TODs, and with voluntary developer initiatives. I will continue to support allocation on affordable housing bond money to buy down affordability in the central part of town. The City can and should also support appropriate fee waivers to help facilitate affordable housing whenever possible.

6. Austinites love cars (80% of us drive to work by ourselves), but hate traffic. What would you do to get Austinites to commute differently and/or reduce traffic? How often do you get to work by some method other than driving? What is your alternative method?

Great point about our love / hate relationship with cars and traffic. My job as a Council Member requires frequent trips during the day to various events on City business, and this makes it difficult for me to utilize mass transit or other alternative transportation on a regular basis. I do whenever I can. In terms of addressing our traffic problems, I support increasing the frequency and coverage of bus service provided by Capital Metro, and support commuter rail and a downtown circulator. I support a rail system funded by general obligation bonds and administered by Capital Metro, and hope that we are able to have a rail election in November of this year. As a Council member, I sponsored the "car-share" program, which is small now, but shows great promise. As a member of the “Street Smarts Task Force,” I will also continue to push for improvements to pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, including increasing the number of protected bike routes to provide safety and convenience and allowing more residents to walk and commute on bikes.

7. Austin has the potential to be a great biking city and a lot of people bike recreationally, but it is difficult for most people to bike to work. What should the city do to improve the opportunity to bike-commute? Do you own a bike? How often do you ride it to work?

As noted above, I serve as a member of the “Street Smarts Task Force” whose expansive slate of recommendations will improve opportunities for Austinites to bike-commute. Specifically, the creation of numerous new bike lanes protected from car traffic, along with new facilities cyclists can use to get ready at work after their commute, will all help more Austinites view cycling as a reasonable alternative for getting to work. I do own a bike and have occasionally ridden it to work. We have employee showers at City Hall, thank goodness.

8. Are you happy with the apparent resolution of the Las Manitas/Marriott controversy? If not, how do you think it should have been handled differently?

I was one of only two Council Members to vote against the forgivable loan for Las Manitas last year. I do appreciate the attempts by the City and citizens to help preserve locally owned businesses in the downtown area, especially in the face of all the growth and change we've seen in recent years. I have also been ready and willing to do something to try to help save Las Manitas specifically, because I do think it is an iconic business that helps make Austin, and downtown Austin in particular, a unique and special place. But the forgivable aspect of the loan itself dramatically overextends the program that I supported to try to help preserve local businesses downtown. My first big concern was that the loan would have spent almost all of the money that we have in this fund on a single project. More money is likely to flow into this fund sometime in the future when new downtown development projects come online, but in the meantime, approving this loan would have left the fund essentially empty. Under those conditions, our program would not have done anyone but Las Manitas any good. Secondly, I don't think this program is well served by giving so-called forgivable loans, which I think we would do better to simply call grants. If we want this program to work, I think we need to find a way to keep money flowing into this fund on a regular basis over the long term, which I think we could do if we used it primarily as revolving loan fund. With all of that said, I am encouraged that Las Manitas will apparently remain downtown and that the city will see a significant boost to its tax base and its downtown options for tourists with the arrival of the Marriott.

9. Do you think Austin is better now than it was 10 years ago? Do you think it will be better 10 years from now than it is now?

It's hard to say whether Austin is "better" now than before or whether it will be "better" still, because obviously everyone has different standards by which they define “better.” I only know that the city has changed significantly in ten years and will again in the next ten, if for no other reason than our significant population growth, which is expected to continue unabated. I believe we are well positioned to harness that growth in such a way that Austin will become an even more pre-eminent city internationally than it is today. Our growth will, hopefully, help create a model for how a large metropolis can blend environmental protection, visionary land use patterns, accessible and efficient transportation, and dependable health and human services into an exceedingly desirable home for more and more residents. I am optimistic that if these are the standards, we can indeed make Austin “better” in the future.

Additional thoughts:
Thanks for your interest in my campaign for re-election to the Austin City Council. To learn more about my background, I would invite you to please visit my website, www.voteleffingwell.com. My primary focus on the City Council has been on environmental protection, social services, public safety, transportation, and on ensuring transparent, accountable local government. Some of the environmental accomplishments of which I am most proud include creating an aggressive new water conservation plan for Austin, and leading the effort to ban the use of coal-tar based concrete sealants in Austin, which had been polluting our cherished urban watersheds for many years. I also led the effort to dramatically reduce the number of petroleum-based plastic bags we use here in Austin. On the social services front, I worked to expand mental health services in our community, and to create a new program for assisting returning U.S. veterans in Austin, who in my view have been treated disgracefully by our current federal administration. An accomplishment I’m proud of in the area of public safety is leading the way on police consolidation: combining four distinct forces into one in order to achieve unified standards, training, and chain of command, which I believe will help make Austin safer. During my term I also served as a Board Member of Capital Metro. My work there focused on trying to resolve ongoing labor conflicts in order to allow the agency and its employees do the important job of helping solve our community’s worsening traffic crisis. Finally, it’s been my priority to try to make local government more transparent and accountable. I proposed amendments to the City Charter to expand the oversight role of the City Auditor, and to make the City Attorney a direct report to the City Council. I also sponsored legislation to reform lobbying practices, have led the effort to make the City’s website a better source of information for citizen activists, and have advocated for a change to single-member district representation. I’m proud of my accomplishments and my record in office, but there is always more to do to protect Austin’s quality of life, and that’s really why I am running for re-election. With your support for a second term on the City Council, I will continue to work on issues that we all agree are critical. Specifically, I will work to significantly expand the city’s recycling programs and move us forward toward our important long-term goal of zero waste. I will also work to execute on the ambitious Austin Climate Protection Plan, which I was proud to co-sponsor with Mayor Will Wynn. I will work to ensure that we are protecting our neighborhoods and our community’s fundamental character by holding the line on Capitol view corridors and the Lady Bird Lake overlay, and preventing the demolition of historic homes and structures in our neighborhoods and citywide. I will also continue to focus on our big transportation challenges by prioritizing funding for road and sidewalk construction and maintenance, and by promoting mass transit solutions including improved bus service and a passenger rail system, which I believe we desperately need. Finally, I want to make sure in a second term that we are growing our local economy in a sustainable fashion by attracting the right kinds of employers - especially renewable energy, health sciences and digital entertainment companies - and that we are helping our local entrepreneurs and their businesses succeed by delivering reliable city services and a stable regulatory environment. Of course, effective leadership isn’t only about policy priorities; it’s also about character. I know that people in Austin want leaders at City Hall who they can trust to be well informed, straightforward, hard working, responsive, and accountable. Austinites want leaders who say what they’ll do, and then do what they say. I’ve done my best to live up to those standards over the past three years, and to help our community make real progress on the issues that matter most to our future. I hope your judgment will be that my best was good enough to earn your support for re-election. Thanks for taking the time to read this, and thanks to the Austinist for allowing the candidates this forum to share our views.

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