November 25, 2024 - Public hearing for citizen input on the bonds and discussion on proposed bonds for Parks and Rec
December 9, 2024 -  2nd Public hearing and discussion on proposed bonds for facilities projects.
December 17, 2024 - Discussion on proposed bonds for street projects.
December 20, 2024- Due date for the Bonds Commission recommendations to City Council.
January 13, 2024 - 3rd public hearing on bonds and council discussion for proposed bond projects. 
January 27, 2024- City Council votes on list of bond propositions list for the bond election. 
February 10, 2024 - City Council calls the 2025 bond election.
For place and time go to the city website for agenda's https://www.plano.gov/1444/City-Council-Agendas
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Slides from 11-11-2024 council meeting about 2025 Bond Proposal  

Monday, September 9, 2024 is your last opportunity to voice your opposition to the 12% property tax bill increase. That is when the  Plano City Council votes on the increase.  
Esther and Ruth have talked about the tax increase on our podcast. If you have not had a chance to listen yet, click on the podcast tab and listen to the last two episodes.
If you would like to speak at the meeting at 7:00 pm at Davis Library you must register before 4:00 pm on Monday at the following link https://forms.plano.gov/Forms/Sign_Up_Citizen . You can also register your opinion, but choose not to speak at that same link. You can look up how much the increase will cost you at mytaxdollar.plano.gov .
The Council can lower our tax rate 1 cent by cutting the $8.5 million they plan to add to the economic development fund by $6 million and still have $2.5 million to hand out to multi million dollar companies. The fund currently has over $43 million in it. Residents should not have to go broke just to stay in their homes, so millionaires and billionaires can get tax dollars they don’t need.
This is Esther from Plano’s Policitcal Pit Bull Signing Off

The recording was taken by one of our contributors, so the public would know what was said during the meeting. 

​The Plano City Council is scheduled to vote on a $750,000 economic development grant on Monday, June 24, 2024 at 7:00 in the evening. This item is on the Consent Agenda. According to the City Council’s Agenda Memo, “ [In exchange for the money, Foundry Commercial Holdings, LP agrees to redevelop the property at 2700 W. Plano Parkway, Plano, Texas 75075 by demolishing the existing 275,000 square foot office building and constructing a minimum 300,000 square feet of manufacturing, industrial, office, and research and development space, and add real property improvements with a minimum value of $21,000,000.00 by December 21, 2026.” After the city gives the $750,000 to the company, the Economic Development Fund will have $54,643,763 left in it.
Foundry Commercial Holdings is a private commercial real estate company headquartered in Orlando, Florida. According to the company’s website, it provides corporate services, brokerage, leasing, building management, and project management services. Foundry Commercial Holdings’ revenue was $6.1 million in 2023, and it reports making $508,333 in one month.
Plano’s Political Pit Bull has written extensively about corporate welfare (Economic Fascism) in the past, and our opinion of it has not changed. Corporate welfare is still bad for the economy. It robs taxpayers to pay large companies that, in Eli Heckscher words, “Either are viable and don’t need government support, or are not viable, and then don’t deserve government support.” Corporate welfare also pins big business against small mom and pop shops, which forces people to pay for their competitors’ success.
Yet, if the city would talk to business owners, they would find out that corporate welfare is not the main reason they pick a city to move to. Businesses pick locations that have a good workforce, good laws, few regulations, and low taxes. In the Foundry case, the company makes more money in two months then the city is giving it. Money that the city took by force from the taxpayers, and money it would take individual Plano residents over fourteen years to make. We can infer from the amount that Foundry agreed to, that a grant is not the reason it picked Plano to build in.
Corporate welfare (Economic Fascism) distorts and interferes with the free market by propping up companies that should either be adapting or downsizing, and it pushes down other companies that could be opening or expanding. In the case of the property at 2700 W. Plano Parkway, the market is the best and only judge of what should go there. However, when government intervenes there are always unintended and bad consequences.
Unless City Council ends its love affair with Fascism before the vote on Monday, the Economic Development fund will have $54,643,763 left. Instead of giving it to companies that either don’t need it or don’t deserve it, what else could that money be used for?  One idea is to use it to fix our roads instead of taking out more loans. A few other ideas are public safety, water/sewer improvements, and other necessities that the city needs. Even better, they could use that money to lower the property tax rate for Plano residents in 2025. Residents who are seeing inflation eat away at their incomes, and reduce the amount of groceries they can buy. Residents who are having hard time paying for basic necessitates need a tax rate cut more than companies need taxpayer money.
This is Esther for Plano’s Political Pit Bull Signing Off

Monday, April 22, 2024, the Plano City Council passed a strict Short Term Rental Ordinance and Registration process. Residents have been waiting two long years for this day. The ordinance that passed bans all new Short Term Rentals in single family residential areas. Those existing before the temporary ban will be grandfathered in, so people dealing with a terrible Short Term Rental may have to continue to deal with it.
The new ordinance will allow Short Term Rentals in nonresidential and some multifamily areas. Short Term Rentals with a person living on the property full time will also be allowed on heritage properties.
The ordinance requires all Short Term Rental owners to register with the city. The registration will cost $300. If the property owner takes a training course, they can get a $100 discount on the registration fee. Also, if the police don't get any calls for service for the property within a certain time period, the owner can get another $100 off the fee. The owners must get liability insurance in the amount of $1 million. The property must have outside video cameras and a noise monitoring system. The owner or a designee must be able to respond to a problem within an hour of it being reported. The host rules and registration must be posted in the Short Term Rental. The owner must pay the hotel/motel taxes to the city, and the owner must rent it out for a minimum of two nights. A property owner can lose their registration if there are too many calls to the police, too many problems at the home, and other things listed in the ordinance.
The only area of contention that came up was when Councilwoman Holmer wanted a lower registration fee for the Short Term Rental owners who live in the home and only rent one bedroom out. The council decided to revisit this at a later time.
The majority of the speakers who came to comment on the ordinance and registration were in favor of the above rules, and they passed the council 7-0.
The other item that happened on Monday was the removal of Commissioner Bill Lisle from the Planning and Zoning Board. You will not find this section of the meeting on PlanoTV. The meeting was held before the Preliminary Council Meeting without cameras present. The reason for Commissioner Lisle’s removal goes back to his request at the September 5, 2023 Planning and Zoning Meeting of “A review of the application of Residential Adjacency Standards as applied in Zoning Case 2021-012 and the adoption of ordinance #2021-9-26. This request is an appeal under sec 1.1100 interpretations within our zoning ordinance.”  You can see him making his request at https://planotx.new.swagit.com/videos/270817 during Items for Future Agendas at the 16:51 time mark.
Zoning Case 2021-012 and the revised site plan 2021-024 was heard at the September 7, 2021 Planning and Zoning meeting. You can see that meeting and the case at https://planotx.new.swagit.com/videos/09082021-773
and click on Item 1A & 1B. The case had to do with the Home Depot located on 75 and 13th/14th connector. The store wanted to put a tool rental center and open storage within 30 feet of residential houses. At the time Councilman Horne was a commissioner on Planning and Zoning.
At the September 2023 Planning and Zoning meeting Commissioner Lisle simply asked for a review and appeal to be discussed at the next meeting. For that request he got a phone call from Councilman Rick Horne asking him to step down. On October 2nd, Commissioner Lisle spoke during the Comments of Public Interests part of the meeting. He brought to light that he was asked to step down and refused to. You can see his comments at https://planotx.new.swagit.com/videos/273062 under Comments of Public Interests. The City Council’s response to Commissioner Lisle’s simple request is very strange and fishy. Why remove someone just for asking to review Residential Adjacency Standards and a site plan? Well, it could be the fact that, according to Commissioner Lisle, the site plan for Home Depot is illegal.  
Commissioner Lisle talked with The Dallas Express about the Home Depot case. He told the paper, “We have adjacency standards in the City of Plano. When you add that use … to a site plan, residential adjacency standards apply to it because you don’t want to put this thing right next to a residential neighborhood. The Home Depot in question is on North Central Expressway near the Douglass community.” Lisle continued on by saying, “operating a tool center sometimes requires turning machines on and off, which would create noise pollution for residents in Douglass. It was one of the reasons Plano’s residential adjacency standards were created. [Planning and development] restrictions on that site said, you cannot expand the building and add open storage. Instead of applying [that] to the entire use like the zoning ordinance said you have to do, they drew a line out for the tool rental stored outside. But that’s literally 30 feet away from people’s homes.” 
Commissioner Lisle was appointed to the Planning and Zoning Board in 2022 and made it clear to council members, before his appointment, he was going to bring up the Home Depot site plan problems. Commissioner Lisle brought his concerns about  the site plan being “illegal” to City Manager Mark Israelson and his Deputy Jack Carr in August of 2022. According to the Dallas Express, “The following month, in a subsequent meeting with Director of Planning Christina Day and Lori Schwarz of the City’s Neighborhood Services Division, Day allegedly said, “Technically, you are correct, Bill.” However, nothing was done to fix the problem. Commissioner Lisle kept asking city staff about the issue.
Commissioner Lisle went on to tell the Dallas Express, “So, the City Council appointed me to a second full term, and a couple of weeks later, I bring this up [at the September Planning and Zoning Meeting]. Then, I was approached by a City Council member [who said] he had talked to six officials in the City of Plano asking me to [tender] my resignation two days later.” He also told the paper, “On October 11, I had a follow-up meeting with Horne. He said, ‘I’m going to come clean. I left a meeting with the mayor … and they were looking to remove you. The Home Depot situation is part of why they wanted you gone.” Commissioner Lisle commented that he has audio evidence of the conversations between himself and Councilman Horne.  You can read the full Dallas Express article at https://dallasexpress.com/metroplex/local-officials-ethics-complaint-falls-flat/
Commissioner Lisle decided to file an Ethics complaint against City Attorney Mims, City Manager Mark Israelson, Council Member Rick Horne, Mayor John B. Muns, Mayor Pro-Tem Kayci Prince, Deputy City Manager Jack Carr, Deputy City Manager Michelle D’Andrea, and Planning & Zoning Commission Chair David Downs for trying to force his resignation from the Planning and Zoning Board. The ethics claim was dismissed three days later. That may be the fastest ethics investigation I have ever seen.  
That brings us to April 22, 2024. In a meeting that was not televised, the City Council voted 6-2 to remove Commissioner Bill Lisle from the Planning and Zoning Board. Councilmen Ricciardelli and Williams were the minority votes.
To sum this whole thing up, A Commissioner thinks a sight plan was revised incorrectly. He tried going through staff to fix the problem, but was ignored. The Opening Meetings Act will not allow him to have private conversions with his fellow board members about the issue. The only thing he can do is bring it up at a Planning and Zoning meeting to put it on a future agenda. For that he is asked to step down. He files an ethics complainant and in only three days it is dismissed. He is removed from the board, in what looks like retaliation, for bringing problems to light and filing an ethics complaint. The message is clear: keep your month shut, do what we tell you to do, and don’t point out when the city does the wrong thing. This attitude reminds me of a famous quote. “Don’t go against the family.”
This is M. Lema for Plano’s Political Pit Bull

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On Monday, February 12, 2024 the Plano City Council passed three items that only help large businesses, not residents. It’s almost tiring having to report the same song and dance our council’s been performing lately, but hopefully we can change it in the future. As usual, I will report what was passed and discuss the potential consequences that will come with the decisions made.
First, the council passed corporate welfare to the tune of $2,403,975 in exchange for 152 jobs and a building renovation. The employees don’t have to reside in Plano or even Collin County. They can come from the seventeen surrounding counties. This will only increase traffic and wear on our roads. If council wants to give taxpayer dollars to companies, the least they could do is make sure the majority of the jobs go to Plano residents. This kind of government Fascistic intrusion into the free market only hurts the economy and is not fair to taxpayers and other businesses. That is because the government is helping some businesses by giving them an advantage over others. That creates an uneven playing field, which is not what good government does and is in opposition to a free market economic system.
The excuse some council members give for doing this is, “Other cities are doing it.” It’s the equivalent of, “But mom, all my friends are doing it!” Anyone who has children has likely heard this whine at one point or another. I would think adults could come up with a better reason for essentially bribing companies to come to Plano than, “Well they did it”, but here we are. This also means the companies are not picking our city for sound economic reasons, but for a payoff.
Other council members say the city will get more money in property taxes from that company after they redo the building. Tampering with the market in exchange for taxes hurts the economy and decreases tax revenues. That is because, as Chris Edwards and Tad DeHaven wrote, “Subsidies [corporate welfare] usually don’t work as intended, and they often distort markets rather than fixing them. Robert Novak once said that ‘the mind‐set underlying corporate welfare is that of the central planner’, and yet we know that central planning does not work.” They also wrote, “Perhaps more importantly, subsidies change the behavior of businesses. An economist recently quipped to me: ‘I don’t know whether the government is better at picking winners rather than losers, but I do know that losers are good at picking governments.’ When the government starts handing out money, businesses with weak ideas get in line because the businesses with the good ideas can get private funding. Enron, for example, was able to grab huge federal support for its disastrous foreign investment schemes.” (Corporate Welfare Spending vs. the Entrepreneurial Economy, JUNE 1, 2012. https://www.cato.org/testimony/corporate-welfare-spending-vs-entrepreneurial-economy )
The next item to get passed is also corporate welfare, but for owners of retail property. It is called the Retail Revitalization Program. This program is made up of nine grants for retail property owners to improve or update their property. This would increase the value of the property, which would increase the property tax bills of the owners and increase tax revenues for the city. DOES ANYONE SEE THE PROBLEM?! Clearly the council didn't think this through. You see, while the tax bills would go up for the property owners, they would not be the ones paying the larger bills. The property owners will just raise the rent on the small retail businesses leasing the spaces. This will cause the small business owners to do one of four things. Either they will raise their prices, lay off workers, close down, or move. All four are bad for Plano. Raising prices in a time of high inflation will cost more for the consumer, laying off workers will mean people on unemployment, closing down stores will bring hardships to the renters, workers, property owners, as well as lower sales tax revenues to the city of Plano, and moving to a location out of Plano will mean lost sales taxes and jobs. Closing stores also means empty retail spaces which brings blight. I realize the people on city council are not economists, but could they at least think about what higher tax bills do to the people of Plano? Could they stop only thinking about the city coffers, and start also thinking about the people?
The last item that passed was the Willow Bend Rezoning. This blog has already written about this zoning case in the article P&Z Passes Willow Bend Mall Zoning (https://www.planospoliticalpitbull.com/posts-about-council/pz-passes-willow-bend-mall-zoning-case), so feel free to read that to learn more about this case.
The developer will still need the approval from the FAA to build in the line of the private airfield. Whether they get the approval or not, the new zoning stays with the property.
This redevelopment, like Collin Creek Mall, will need major infrastructure improvements. That makes this redevelopment ripe for a TIF (Tax Increment Financing Zone) or something like it. Which means all those tax dollars would not go into the general fund. It would go in a separate fund, and the money could only be spent on that  Zone. TIFs or funds like them are just more corporate welfare. They don’t help the city or the residents, just big businesses. So, keep your eyes out for that on the council’s future agendas.
To learn more about corporate welfare and the problems with it go to the video at the bottom of this post.
This is Mary Lema for Plano’s Political Pit Bull signing off.
 
 

On January 16, 2024, against city staff’s recommendation, the Planning and Zoning Commission passed case 2023-005 to rezone the Willow Bend Mall. The new zoning will allow for a hotel, an office building, private clubs, and 965 apartments. Forty of those units will look like townhouses, but be apartments. The developer plans to demolish around 530,000 square feet of the shopping mall, with some of the mall remaining.
The first problem with this zoning change is the city doesn't have the infrastructure to support this development. According to City Staff, the city will need substantial additional offsite wastewater due to the increase sewer demand. We also don’t have enough water to support any growth because Texas is running out of it. The graph below shows the amount of water we have and the projected amount vs the population now and in the future. The red line is water, and the blue is people/demand. Do you see the problem? If you said too many people and not enough water, you would be right.
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(Chart From TX Water Development Board)
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​One area that has seen the most increase in demand is the DFW area. According to Glenn Hegar’s report, The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts Texas Water: Present and Future Needs 2023,
“[The] Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex – will see a projected 67 percent increase in water usage” from now until 2070. This is already having an impact on our economy.
 

On Monday, November 7, 2023, the City Council passed zoning case 2023-003 by 7-1. In-case you need to refresh your memory about this case, you can read about it on our site at https://www.planospoliticalpitbull.com/posts-about-council/another-zoning-case-that-fails-to-comply-with-the-comp-plan
This rezoning goes against the current comprehensive plan. The plan that required a special resident committee to work on it for a year. The plan that finally brought the residents together after a four plus year lawsuit over the previous plan. Council decided it would just ignore the comprehensive plan, and do what it wanted instead of what the residents wanted. The council also ignored the 41 residents that opposed the zoning change on the cities website, and all the residents who wrote to the members telling them to vote no.
The only council member to stick by the comprehensive plan and the residents was Shelby Williams. If you would like to watch the meeting you can go to https://planotx.new.swagit.com/videos/280434
The only thing this writer can compliment the council on is the fact that they changed the ordinance language to try and make sure a life science research center will get built on the property. Members asked the developer if he would do housing only for the workers, and the developer just said no. He never gave a reason why and they did not push for an answer. Council did not care about density or having buy-able housing. Councilwoman Maria Tu even recommended to have some kind of financial help for the lower income workers to live in the apartments. So, the taxpayers have to help people live in unwanted apartments.
This is not the first time the new comprehensive plan has been ignored. At this point, why even bother having one? The council clearly does not care about it or take it seriously. They trample on it any chance they get.
Most of the council members seem to have forgotten their place. They act like they work for the developers and not the residents. It is time the residents of Plano remind these elected officials who they work for, and who can fire them.
This is Mary Lema for Plano’s Political Pit Bull signing off. 

Zoning Case 2023-003 is scheduled for a City Council hearing on Tuesday, November 7, 2023 at 7:00 pm. This case has been tabled by Council three times. It is disfavored by staff and does not conform to the Comprehensive Plan.
The case was passed by Planning and Zone in July. The developer wants to rezone 99 acres from Commercial Employment to Planned Development at Parkwood and Legacy. The old EDS headquarters sits on the property now. The owner of the building wants to convert it into a life science facility where people will make pharmaceutical drugs, gene therapies and cell therapies. The developer also plans on building other nonresidential buildings, some as high as nine stories. Also a research hospital may be built in the future. This development has the potential of employing around 32,000 people. The one problem with it is the developer claims he needs 775 apartments on the property.
The developer claims they need the 775 apartments for the workers of the research building, and simply can’t build the project without them. His reason is that the workers wont have anywhere to live in Plano or near by Frisco. I find this to be hog wash. We have multiple apartments being built as I write this. We also have apartments available for rent in Legacy West, Shops at Legacy, Frisco, and greater Plano. However, lets say the developer is correct, and the future employees will have no where to live. Why would he tell the Planning and Zoning board that the apartments, he so desperately needs, will be available to the public at large? If these apartments are truly needed for the future employees, he should only rent them to the people who will be working there. Also, if the future workers have no where to live now, where will the other 31,225 people go? Another question is how are 31,225 people suppose to get to work? If they all drive, that will be 31,225 more cars on the road at least twice a day.
Lastly, why not build housing for workers to buy? Companies across the USA are building buy-able housing for their workers. According to an NPR article. A growing number of employers around the country have decided to build their own housing for workers. Disney, Meta, the meat-packer JBS,  Cook Medical, and health care providers are just some. Elon Musk is planning a new neighborhood in Texas for his employees.
Cook Medical's company head does not even want to build apartments, as he said, "You don't build communities with apartments and rentals, and people don't build wealth living in apartments. I want to build houses where people can raise their kids and live there their entire life.” When the employee wants to sell the home, the company and its staff get first choice to buy. Clearly this man cares about his staff and their families.
Another problem with apartments is they create more stress for the renter. According to a study published in The British Medical Journal's Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, renting is so stressful that it leads to faster biological aging than home ownership. It’s so stressful, that its impact on biological age was almost double that of unemployment, and 50% greater than living as a former smoker.
There is another problem with the development as drafted, wastewater. The city staff report mentions this development will bring challenges to our wastewater treatment plants. In other words, we don’t have the infrastructure to support the additional wastewater generated by this development.
No matter how you slice it, this development plan for apartments reaps no benefits to the workers or city. At worst, it’s an underhanded excuse for more apartments, using supposed workers as a defense behind it.
If you don’t want this development as drafted, let the city council know.
This is Mary Lema for Plano’s Political Pit Bull.

The following comes from the President of Plano Citizens Coalition. This was published in their newsletter. 
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Change is difficult for some of us to manage, though some seem to thrive on it.  For those of us in opposition to the development of high density apartments in the City of Plano, we don’t regard these additions as a plus for the City of Excellence.  Working hard to obtain the Comprehensive Plan over two years didn’t draw a line in the sand to slow high density apartment growth, as evidenced by approvals of the Fry’s redevelopment and the complete re-zoning of the Haggard Farm area of the city, etc.  Another large area of land in East Plano spotlighted by the city several years ago, Lavon Farms, now appears to soon be on the re-zoning list.  Recently, the owner of the farm, Mr. Todd Moore, teamed up with Trammel Crow to present early plans to neighbors in that community.  The following comments were received recently from an East Plano neighbor attending the second community meeting. She never heard about the first meeting but lives in the area.
 
LAVON FARMS
 
There were eleven neighbors attending the meeting from three neighborhoods.  Only five attended the first meeting on September 6.  Todd Moore has asked Trammel Crow to help him develop a plan for his property.  They are partnering with him in the multi family trust. 

• The plan calls for a mixed-use area of homes of three different sizes, apartments and an area called Rural Reserve.
• There is no commercial area, which was in the original Envision Oak Point plan.
• There would be 810 apartments, four, three and two stories -- sad to say the picture they chose to use to show a sample of the apartments was of the apartments at Legacy & Custer.  If you haven't seen those, you need to drive by.
• Rural Reserve is an area Mr. Moore would keep as his with a green space, possible farmers market, creamery, bike trails, etc.
• Mr. Moore and Trammel Crow have been working with the city planning staff, so at this point P&Z is not involved but that is not far off no doubt..
• Concerns were voiced regarding the overcrowding of the area, specifically traffic, the affect on home values and the overall impact to our suburban neighborhoods.
• We have given our HOA contact information to Mr. Moore so we can be notified of any future meetings.
• The next step is to finalize the plans.  
• At this point the presentation we saw is not posted anywhere, but we did take photos, which are attached.
• For further information, it was said to contact Kevin Hickman with Trammel Crow at 214-863-4277. 
• I would also suggest contacting the city planning department.

It was difficult to tell how set in stone this plan is.  Mr. Moore really desires to keep a part of the property agrarian in culture.  Hopefully, that will happen, but along with that will come the homes and apartments.
 
 

​On Monday, August 28, 2023 the City Council passed zoning case 2022-009 by a vote of 5-3. Councilmen Williams, Ricciardelli, and Smith were the nay votes.
The only change the developer made from the last time they were in front of Council was to upgrade the air filtration system. On the city’s zoning website https://planogis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/CrowdsourcePolling/index.html?appid=440f9aa7eae44ff0b53aadeb72ea4ff0
thirty five Plano residents opposed the change, twelve were in favor, and two were neutral.  Four Plano residents spoke against the zoning change. Only the developer spoke in favor of it.
Councilman Smith tried to get the developer to agree to build the office space or hotel at the same time as the apartments. The developer said no, which probably means we are not going to get the office at all. Therefore, Councilman Smith could not get on board with the plan.
Councilman Williams said the property is very special due to where it sits, and developing it will have consequences for years to come. We only have a few properties that are entrances to Plano like this one. He thinks the right opportunity will come, and this project is not right.
Councilwoman Prince had a completely opposite view. She thinks they can’t let the property just sit there. So, I guess she would rather have the wrong thing on the property instead of waiting for the right development.
Councilman Horne and the Mayor were all for this development and no matter what anyone said they were not changing their minds.
Councilwoman Tu said she always supports the Planning and Zoning Board, and they passed it so she was for it. Except the first time this development came before council, the Councilwoman did not support the Planning and Zoning Board’s decision to deny the project. Instead, she sent it back to them for reevaluation. So, I guess she doesn't always support the Planning and Zoning Board. Perhaps she needs to re-watch the meeting to refresh her memory.
Councilman Ricciardelli still had problems with the project and could not vote for it. Holmer, instead, liked the project. She suggested the developer add Pickle Ball courts to the project. The woman is Pickle Ball crazy. Some residents made a suggestion that a regular priced grocery store was needed in that area; however, to those residents Holmer said there was not enough people in the area to warrant one. I guess she forgot that when the Collin Creek development is finished there will be thousands of people in that area, and they will need a reasonable place to food shop. Oh well, too bad for them. I guess they will just have to get in their cars and drive, or pay more at the Whole Foods across the highway in Richardson. Maybe if the residents had suggested the Fry’s building should be converted to an indoor Pickle Ball Club with multiple courts, she would have voted no. Too bad no one thought of that.
Once again, we are stuck with a majority of elected people on City Council who do not listen to the residents. If Mrs. Colleen Aguliar-Epstein had defeated Mr. Horne in May, this zoning would have failed the first time. Colleen would have never gone against the comprehensive plan or staffs recommendation to deny the change. If more voters don’t wake up and get involved in local government, we will have a Plano that will be unrecognizable in the future.  
 
This is Mary Lema for Plano’s Political Pit Bull signing off. 

On Monday, August 28, 2023 the City Council voted on a future economic development policy. In this new policy they gave their power of the purse to the unelected City Manager.
You could also call economic development Corporate welfare, but it is really the textbook definition of Economic Fascism. We here at PPPB have discussed what Economic Fascism is and does in past articles, so I am not going to repeat it. You can go to
 https://www.planospoliticalpitbull.com/posts-about-council/plano-city-council-passes-more-economic-fascism 
and https://www.planospoliticalpitbull.com/posts-about-council/july-20th-2018 to read what PPPB has said about it.
Under this Policy, the City Manager or designee has been authorized to increase or decrease the initial offer voted on by council up to 10% or $200,000, whichever is less, without council approval. “The City Manager [also] has the authorization to approve any economic development agreement with an incentive value of $100,000 or less, as long as the agreement meets the requirements of this Policy Statement... All items approved under
the City Manager’s administrative authority must be net revenue positive based on the Economic Impact Report.” You can find a link to the policy at https://plano.novusagenda.com/agendapublic/CoverSheet.aspx?ItemID=8631&MeetingID=3436.
The resident who removed the policy from the consent agenda had a problem with an unelected person having the power of the purse, and we at PPPB agree. The power to appropriate money is a power strictly for an elected legislative body. They are the most accountable and the closest to the people. The City Manager (no matter how wonderful he is) is not elected, therefore he is not accountable to the voters.
The City Council should at least have the City Manger report to them in executive session on economic development contracts he is negotiating, and at least get the Mayor’s approval to hand out Corporate Welfare.
 
This is J. Romano for Plano’s Political Pit Bull signing off.

 Plano City Council Passes More Economic Fascism
 
On July 24, 2023, the Plano City Council passed a tax rebate for a New Jersey company that is worth $2 billion. Yes, that is billion with a B. The rebate was originally on the consent agenda as item A.B. The wording was as follows, “To approve the terms and conditions of an Economic Development Incentive Agreement for Tax Rebate for calendar years 2024-2031 by and between the City of Plano, Texas, a home-rule municipal corporation, and CoreWeave, Inc., a New Jersey corporation; and authorizing its execution by the City Manager or his authorized designee.” You can get the agreement at the following link. https://plano.novusagenda.com/agendapublic/CoverSheet.aspx?ItemID=8487&MeetingID=3420 If it was not taken off the consent agenda, because Councilman Anthony Ricciardelli had to abstain from the vote, we here at PPPB would have missed it. Councilman Ricciardelli did not mention why he had to abstain. Some people call this kind of  tax rebate Corporate Welfare or Crony Capitalism. It is neither; this is Economic Fascism.
Before I continue, let me define my economic words. Capitalism is the private ownership of property, capital, or means of production. A Free Market is where people can voluntarily exchange things of value without government interference. In a Free Market, prices are set by supply and demand. Also, a company succeeds or fails on its own. Economic Fascism is when the government controls economic activity, the incentives of investment, or economic planning. With Economic Fascism the government can restrict any action or promote any action.
Now that we have defined the economic terms, you may be asking, what is CoreWeave? According to it’s website, “CoreWeave is a specialized cloud provider, delivering a massive scale of graphics processing units (GPUs).”
The Economic Development Incentive Agreement that City Council passed said, “[The] company agrees to occupy at least 454,421 square feet of space at 1000 Coit Road, Plano, Texas 75075.” It also agrees, “…to add at least $1,600,000,000.00 of business personal property [in the space] and use [it] as a data center during the term of this Agreement.” In exchange, the city will give “a tax rebate equal to fifty percent (50%) of the Business Personal Property Taxes…paid by the Company to the City for the 2024 tax year.”  In 2026 the City will return 25% of the Business Personal Property taxes paid in 2025. The agreement does not say how many employees CoreWeaves has to hire, or if any have to be current Plano or DFW residents. From what I can tell, CoreWeave will store the cloud servers at 1000 Coit Rd. That is the business personal property that is worth $1.6 billion.
This economic development agreement payoff is not the only one Plano has ever done. Plano is also not the only city to give away money to entice industry to move within its boarders. Cities, States, Republicans, and Democrats do this everyday. It interferes with Capitalism, the Free Market, and is Economic Fascism.
This kind of interference with the economy has consequences. The obvious first consequence is reduced tax revenue. That fact alone should anger any homeowner struggling to pay their property tax bills. To add insult to injury, the city council may vote to raise property taxes in September for the 2024 fiscal year. That is right, a New Jersey company gets a tax rebate and Plano residents may get higher tax bills.
The next consequence of deals like the one with CoreWeave is the government picking winners and losers. The government is propping large companies up while others suffer. Large companies worth billions of dollars that can afford their tax bills get help, while small businesses trying to start out get nothing. For example, a person who wants to open a small restaurant would not get a deal like CoreWeave. Yet, I would bet a restaurant owner does more for Plano’s economy and people. The owner of the restaurant would hire contractors to make improvements to the space, buy tables, chairs, and equipment. This personal business property would be taxed by the city. The owner has to also buy the food on a regular basis. The personal business property and food can be bought in Plano or other parts of Texas. The owner has to also hire staff who would, most likely, come from the area. The people who eat at the new restaurant would pay a sales tax to the state and city. All of this directly helps the people and economy of our city and state. CoreWeave’s servers are probably not made or bought in Texas. Since the cloud is not a tangible good, people will not pay a sales tax. Yet, CoreWeave gets a tax rebate that it does not need, and the small restaurant owner, whose profit margins are razor thin, gets a tax bill. If Plano raises tax rates, small business owners may not be able to afford it. That may cause them to never open, close down, or raise their prices.
Another problem with this kind of Economic Fascism is it tampers with the economy. Companies are no longer just picking cities or states to go to based on natural market forces. Instead, they are picking a location based on how much money they can get from a local or state government. We saw this with Amazon’s HQ2. Originally Amazon planned to build a second headquarters in Queens, NY in return for $3 billion in financial incentives from the city and state governments. When the incentives got pulled, due to outrage by some politicians and residents, Amazon decided to go to Arlington, Virginia. If Queens was the perfect place for Amazon’s HQ2, the company would not have needed $3 billion to put it there.
In a true Free Market and Capitalist economy companies would go to cities based on what is best for their customers, employees, and profit margins. They would not need a monetary incentive from a government entity to move. However, as long as we have government central planners, who think they know what is best for everyone, and politicians willing to give hand outs to rich companies we will have an economy that Mussolini wanted instead of Adam Smith.
 
This is J. Romano for Plano’s Political Pit Bull signing off. 

On August 21, 2023, at 7:00 pm Planning and Zoning case 2023-013 will be presented to the Planning and Zoning Board. The request is to rezone 7.8 acres on the southeast corner of Municipal Avenue and 13th Street from Light Industrial-1 to Planned Development-Downtown Business/Government-1. This has to be one of the worst zoning changes we have ever seen at Plano’s Political Pit Bull.
This property is currently being used for industrial purposes. Its neighbors are a towing storage yard, an auto repair shop, and construction companies. The property is also next to railroad tracks. Clearly this is not a residential area.                   
The zoning change request wants to take this property and put 390 apartments, a five story parking garage, outdoor commercial amusement, indoor commercial amusement center, and a restaurant. If you are asking, what the hell is the developer thinking, you are not alone.
Lets talk about the obvious problem with this request first, the apartments. This is clearly not a property for people to live on. I would not put a jail here for fear of being accused of torture by noise. If you never lived by train tracks, you have no idea the amount of noise trains can make. I don’t live near train tracks, yet every once in awhile I can hear a train horn go off while I am in my house. My husband lived near train tracks when he was child. He still remembers the first time the train passed he thought it was an earthquake.
In the last zoning case (the Fry’s redevelopment) that came before the city council, councilman Rick Horne was doing research for it, and residents who live near route 190 complained more about the noise from the trains that pass by them than the noise from the highway. The future residents of the property in case 2023-013 will also have the added noise from the outdoor commercial amusement the developer wants to build. Unfortunately, I don’t know what kind of amusement the developer wants to create. I do know that there won’t be any motorized vehicles or activities; however, amusement of any kind will create noise.
Imagine living in an apartment on this property. You are sitting in your living-room reading a book or working on a report for your job. While you are trying to concentrate you hear kids yelling and trains zoom by. You go to look out your window and you have a view of a tow yard or other industrial properties. None of this makes for a tranquil home-life.
The next problem, there is not a lot within walking distance that the residents would want go to. The residents will probably not have a need to go to the roofing company, the A-1 Grass Sand & Stone, or Concrete Contractor near by. If the developers did not want to go far to buy construction materials, they picked the right property.
As for the rest of the project, the indoor amusement center and restaurant might work here. There are some residential homes about an eight minute walk or two minute drive from the property, so the center and restaurant would have a customer base near by. The restaurant will want to invest in sound proofing, as noise from the trains will make for poor ambiance. The outside amusement part of the project will depend on what the developer wants to create. Since the draft does not give any details on the matter, I really cannot comment on it.
The last comment I have about this zoning change is where is the government part? If you are going to change the zoning to Planned Development-Downtown Business/Government-1, I would think there would be some government buildings/offices as part of the project. I don’t see any in the draft.
In-conclusion, this zoning change is not right for the area. The only people who could tolerate living on this property would have to have a severe hearing impairment.
If you agree with my assessment of this zoning case please go to Current Land-based Zoning Cases on Plano's website (button for website is below) and oppose the request. Also, you can go to the Planning and Zoning meeting to comment on the case in person. The meeting is Monday August 21, 2023, Plano Municipal Center, 1520 K Ave, Senator Florence Shapiro Council Chambers. 
This is Mary Lema for Plano’s Political Pit Bull signing off. 

​On Monday, June 26, 2023 the Plano City Council failed to reach a super majority to overturn the denial of the Planning and Zoning Board for case 2022-008 and 2022-009. Both cases have to do with the old Fry’s property in East Plano on Executive Drive, East Plano Parkway,  Central Expressway, and 190. The developer wanted to change the current commercial zoning to another mixed use development.
The developer, Onalp Property Owner, LLC, wants to put 501 apartments and 33 townhouses in the first phase of construction. In the second phase Onalp would add a hotel, office building, and retail. Of course, if the office and retail real-estate market does not change they won’t get built. So, like other plans for multi-use developments, we will just be left with more multi-family housing. 
City staff did not recommend approval for this project. One reason was it did not conform to the Comprehensive Plan, which took blood, sweat, and a year to pass. This property is also on the corner of two major highways, so it will be too noisy for residential units.
A majority of the Planning and Zoning Board agreed with staff and voted to deny the zoning change on May 1st. Commissioners Brounoff, Bronsky, and Cary had concerns with the fact that it did not conform with the comprehensive plan. Commissioner Cary had concerns with city sewer and water capacity, which is at its maximum now. More multi-family will only put an additional strain on our systems. “This project, right now, is just another multi-family project, and how many multi-family units do we want in Plano?” he said. He instead thought this spot would be good for a business headquarters.
Commissioner Bronsky thought it would be too noisy for residents, and worried about the pollution from the highways. Likewise, he thinks the commercial market will come back to Plano. Commissioner Bronsky also felt adding more multi-family will not benefit Plano economically.
Commissioner Olley did not think this project was right for this spot either. The other members of the board, however, thought this project was just fine. When the project went in front of City Council to be heard, City staff were still against it for the reasons given before. Since the zoning cases were denied by Planning and Zoning, the City Council had to pass it by a super majority for the project to be approved.
Council member Prince asked staff what they thought would be a good fit at this site. Their answer was a technology company or manufacturing. Member Prince went on to ignore that answer, and the fact that the project does not conform to the comprehensive plan. Her reason for this was, “It pains me to see a building sitting empty.”
The newest member to the council, Rick Horne, thought it was unfair to not approve this project, because we changed our comprehensive plan while this developer was working on plans for this property. He also said, “The comprehensive plan is just a guide.” Apparently, it is only a guide when it is inconvenient to follow it. I wonder if the residents who sat on the comprehensive plan committee for a year, trying to come to a compromise to get it passed, felt they were working on “just a guide”? I wonder if they would be fine with the council ignoring the plan whenever they wanted? I know I would not be happy if I had spent my time fixing something just for it to be ignored.  
Council member Holmer seemed concerned about the highway noise levels at first. She got over it quickly though, because she thought residential made the most sense for the site.  Plus, she also does not like to see empty buildings, and is sensitive to other business owners. I guess she is not sensitive to residents breathing in large amounts of Carbon Monoxide, and being disturbed by traffic noise.
Council member Tu was torn over the project. She also thought there was a misunderstanding at Planning and Zoning. I am not sure what the misunderstanding was, though, since staff did not recommend approval for the project in the first place.
Mayor Muns does not like to see empty buildings either, or blighted areas. Muns also thought the project was a wonderful opportunity to have employment housing with great access to the dart rail. Apparently, the noise from the trains did not concern him. He also has no interest in seeing another office building, and thinks this is the kind of development we need.
Councilman Smith has some trepidation about the project, but thinks it could be fixed. He wanted to see the project go back to Planning and Zoning.
Councilman Ricciardelli was also torn about the project. He thought it had some pluses, but the commercial was too light. He thought light manufacturing or tech. would do well in this spot. Member Ricciardelli also pointed out that we have a lot of these kinds of multi-family developments already. He feels we should have a variety of  developments, so when one kind of market is down the other can still bring in revenue. This was the best idea I heard from any of the members.
Councilman Williams also does not like seeing empty lots, but if we approve a development and it turns out to be a mistake, the mistake is literally in concrete.  Williams said, “The comprehensive plan is not “just a plan”, [and]because of what went into getting that plan we need to take it seriously. With two major highways on this corner, he does not think residential is appropriate for this lot.  Member Williams also doesn't think the dust has settled for office space from the pandemic.
When the council finally voted on the zoning cases, the vote was five for the project and three against. Member Smith then made a motion to send the cases back to Planning and Zoning. That motion passed seven - one with Williams voting against.  
So, back to Planning and Zoning the project goes. I looked at the area in question and I noticed something that was not there; the area does not have an average price large grocery store. There are apartments around, and more will be added when the Collin Creek development is finished. A Whole Foods is across 190, but it is technically in Richardson and is very expensive. There are small specialty stores in the area, but if you don’t eat Middle Eastern or Asian food where are you to go?  The nearest Plano Tom Thumb is a 39 minute walk away. The closest Plano Super Target is a 32 minute walk. Walmart is also too far, and Kroger is not in this area at all.
In this writer’s humble opinion, a large average price grocery store is needed in this area. If the city wants walk-able neighborhoods they must have grocery stores. However, like most of City Council and Planning and Zoning, I don’t live in this area or East Plano. The only people who really know what would go well in this area, and what is needed are the people who live there. What are you missing? What do need? Is it a large grocery store, or a certain retail store that would be useful to the residents? Instead of an out of state company or a government board telling you what needs to go in your section of town, you tell them what kind of business the area needs. Therefore, please contact the members of the city council and let them know what you need on this property. Their government emails are listed below. You can also leave your opinion for the Planning and Zoning on the Current Land Based Zoning Case Map. https://planogis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/CrowdsourcePolling/index.html?appid=440f9aa7eae44ff0b53aadeb72ea4ff0
At the end of the day, the owner of the property wants to make money. Right now the company is losing money on an empty retail building, and the city is losing sales tax revenue. Both entities want something to be put there, and residents need to let their government know what they need in that area. For, it is the residents that will be affected the most by what is developed, not the government or the developer.
This is Mary Lema for Plano’s Political Pit Bull signing off.
 
Maria Tu [email protected]
Anthony Ricciardelli [email protected]
Rick Horne [email protected]
Kayci Prince [email protected]
Shelby Williams [email protected]
Mayor Muns [email protected]
Julie Holmer [email protected]
Rick Smith [email protected]
 
 
 
 
 
 

​
By R. Lema
America is losing its agricultural land to foreign buyers and development at an alarming rate, and
the zoning approval of a massive development on Haggard Farms in West Plano is another loss of Agricultural land for our city, state, and nation. If we don’t protect agricultural land in the future, we will see food shortages, economic losses, and environmental problems.
That is not hyperbole. According to a report from American Farmland Trust, “From 2001 to 2016, 11 million acres of agricultural land were paved over, fragmented, or converted to other uses, (mostly urban and residential development). That’s equal to all the U.S. farmland devoted to fruit, nut, and vegetable production in 2017.”(1) “That means, farmers and ranchers, on average, have 2,000 less acres every day on which to work to feed our communities, to sequester carbon, to make a living and support their families,”(2) says John Piotti (president of American Farmland Trust).
Texas ranks number one on a list of states that are threatened for Agricultural Land Conversion. According to American Farmland Trust’s State of the State report, “In total, 1,373,300 acres of Texas' agricultural lands were converted to urban highly development (UHD) and low-density residential (LDR) land use.”(3) A part of that land that was paved over is right here in Plano. Haggard Farms on Windhaven, Spring Creek, and Parkwood, where they grew crops, giving us valuable oxygen, and other environmental benefits, is the most resent agricultural land rezoned for development. This continues a trend in resent years of West Plano losing a large part of its agricultural land. The most recent built development in the area is Legacy West which was ranch land for cattle. That, “range-land provide[d] valuable forage for livestock, supporting meat and fiber production. It also act[ed] as a unique reservoir of native plant species and provide[d] critical habitat for a wide range of wildlife. With regenerative management systems, [the] livestock grazing on [what was] range-lands lessened the impact of climate change by increasing carbon in the soil, which offered a valuable resource to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.” (4) Those cows are now on a much smaller patch of land next to Legacy West, and if we care about the future of our food supply, our economy and our environment that land and our last bit of open land must be used for agriculture.
  First, lets talk about our food supply. We saw first hand at the beginning of Covid that our food and our supply chain can come to a sudden halt. “With the world population projected to reach 10 billion by 2050, and new market demands, we need farmers and ranchers to grow food…” (5) One of those new market demands is a “trend toward “local” food, and direct-to-consumer sales, a sector expanding so quickly it is catching up to decades of strong growth in demand for organics.” (6) The loss of our Plano farms puts more pressure on other farmers to produce. 
  Agriculture is a huge contributor to our economy. Agriculture and its related industries contribute more than $1 trillion to the U.S. gross domestic product and 11% of U.S. employment.” (7) If you find that statistic hard to believe, let me give you a small look into just how many people are affected by agriculture.
As you know, the flour you buy at the store does not magically appear on the shelf. Before it gets to your local store it goes through many businesses. Flour first starts with a farmer, who plants wheat seeds. This is usually done by workers and machines called a grain drill. If all goes well the wheat grows. When the wheat is ready a machine called a Combine harvests the crop. Then it is sold to a local grain elevator (Co-op). The elevator sells the wheat to, “terminal elevators, which clean, separate and maintain the value of the grain. The grain is then sold to flour millers for domestic consumption, or it is loaded into ships bound for overseas markets.” (8) Next, the millers ground the wheat and it becomes flour. It is bagged and shipped to bakeries, stores, and companies that use it to make their products like bread, cookies, and crackers. You can watch a video of the process here: https://eatwheat.org/stories/wheat-from-field-to-table .
All along this process we have workers at every stage. Workers on the farms, in shipping, at the elevators, at the mills, in the stores, at the bakeries, and at the factories. Not directly a part of this process, but still important to it, are all the people and materials that make and maintain the equipment, buildings, trucks, ships, ports, planes, energy, and gas. All of this comprises the $165.69 billion dollar flour industry.
Flour is only from one crop. Multiply that by every crop, and agriculture touches our lives everyday multiple times a day. Our Texas Agricultural Secretary said it best when he exclaimed, “Without Agriculture we would be hungry, homeless, naked, and sober.” Also our economy would lose one trillion dollars.
Lastly, agriculture helps the environment. If you believe climate change is an existential threat, saving our agricultural land should be a top priority for you. We know that plants give us oxygen and we give them carbon dioxide, so at a very simplistic level the less plants, the less oxygen, and the more carbon dioxide. At a higher scientific level, “developing agricultural land exacerbates climate change in three dramatic ways:
1. Higher Emissions. Agricultural land produces far fewer Green House Gas emissions than land converted to housing or commercial use. A study conducted by AFT with the University of California Davis—and later replicated by AFT in New York state—demonstrated that due to multiple negative impacts, farmland that is converted to other uses emits greenhouse gases at a level 58-70 times greater than if it had remained in farming.

• Lost Opportunities. When farmland is converted to developed uses, we lose the ability to steward it using regenerative practices. Further, additional pressure is put on remaining acres to be farmed more intensively. This limits opportunities to farm in ways that provide environmental co-benefits. Thus, losing farmland is a double hit which thwarts our essential need to sequester more carbon in farmland soils.
• Risk of Backsliding. The benefits of regenerative agriculture are temporary unless the farmland on which the practices are undertaken continues to be managed wisely. If the land is ultimately lost to development, much of the carbon that had been stored in the soil will be released back into the atmosphere.” (9)
• Development increases the heat. According to NASA, the concrete jungle creates urban heat islands. This makes cities hotter than their rural neighbors. “In the summer, New York City is about 7°F (4°C) hotter than its surrounding areas. That doesn’t seem like much, but these higher temperatures can cause people to become dehydrated or suffer from heat exhaustion. The hot temps also require more energy to operate fans and air conditioners. This can lead to power outages and a serious danger to public health.”(10) 

One reason the rural areas are cooler  is  transpiration.  “Plants take up water from the ground through their roots. Then, they store the water in their stems and leaves. The water eventually travels to small holes on the underside of leaves. There, the liquid water turns into water vapor and is released into the air.”(11) Transpiration is nature’s air conditioner. This is why on a hot summer day the grass is cooler than the sidewalk.
Urban Cities don’t have a lot of plants, but they have a lot of “cement, asphalt, brick, glass, steel and dark roofs”.(12) These things are typically dark in color. “A dark object absorbs all wavelengths of light energy and converts them into heat, so the object gets warm.”(13) The other reason urban cities get hotter is the closeness of the buildings. Buildings trap the hot heat between them and it has no where to go. So, because of all these things, the area of Legacy West is now hotter than it was when the area was grazing land for cows.
The case for farmland protection has never been stronger, “We need farmland to grow our food and other crops and to provide essential environmental services, including carbon sequestration”(14) and we need it right here in Plano.
AFT gives some solutions to protecting agricultural land. The one thing that Plano can do to help is stop rezoning agricultural land for other uses. If it does not, the federal government will do it for us and we will loss local control.
President Biden has already started by signing an Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad on January 27, 2021. One of the items listed in this order is to conserve land. Now, how do you think the federal government will go about doing that? If Biden truly believes that climate change is a threat to mankind, do you think he will not force local governments and residents to conserve land?Right now Plano still has control, but if the city does not make saving agricultural land a top priority it will lose its autonomy to the federal government.  
 
This is R. Lema for Plano’s Political Pit Bull signing off.
 
 
Foot Notes
1 & 2.  Surface Pressure: U.S. Losing Farmland at Alarming Rate By SARA SCHAFER July 29, 2022https://www.agweb.com/news/business/farmland/surface-pressure-us-losing-farmland-alarming-rate#:~:text=July%2029%2C%202022-,From%202001%20to%202016%2C%20the%20U.S.%20lost%20or%20compromised%202%2C000,research%20by%20American%20Farmland%20Trust.
 
3-7, 9, 14 American Farmland Trust
https://farmlandinfo.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/09/AFT_FUT_StateoftheStates_rev.pdf

• (Your Foods Journey From Farm to Table, https://eatwheat.org/ 

10 - 13  https://climatekids.nasa.gov/heat-islands/ 
 
 

“Smothering the Baby in the Crib”.
The new (2021) Comprehensive Plan is under attack!
by Allan Samara, First published in PCC newsletter
 
On September 19th the Planning and Zoning Commission entertained a detailed proposal from the Planning Dept. listed as Agenda Item #8, (last) and presented by a brand new hire to the dept, Senior Planner Jordan Rockerbie. You may view his presentation here: https://planotx.swagit.com/play/09202022-566.

The three screens and 12 suggestions, included in Mr. Rockerbie’s presentation suggested a benign cleanup and adjustments to the Comprehensive Plan and even suggested a concession of sorts, that Senior and Assisted living housing be treated as multifamily apartments, an idea we endorse. The rest of his suggestions represent pure poison to the ideas newly incorporated into the Comprehensive Plan that took 5 years of court hearings and $650,000 in outside legal expenses the city wasted fighting their own citizens to deny a referendum vote of its own taxpayers.
When the city recognized their loss at the Texas Supreme Court level and remanding back to the district court with a 3-0 adverse ruling the city compromised the issue of “urbanization” by setting up a balanced Commission of 16 citizens appointed by all 8 of the City Council which is known as the Comprehensive Plan Review Committee. After 16 months of work and $900,000 in consultant fee guidance the document and all its extensively rewritten planning chapters was edited by the Planning and Zoning Commission. It was approved by all three city entities and made an ordinance to guide the city’s future toward a less dense land use and neighborhood-school-safety and security friendly document.

The new recommendations of the Planning staff underscore an insidious and unfortunately all too common reaction of a bureaucracy intent on dishonestly playing a shell game of deception, of sneaking insidious ideas under the table, and assuming that the general public is simply no longer watching. It takes some skill reading between the lines, but as a former P&Z Commissioner (2020-2021), I can tell all this is not what we voted for in adopting the new Comprehensive Plan.  

Reading between the lines, this is a call for more multifamily transitional citizen-renters in our city, to add to the 42 percent of our already built and rezoned, under construction developer projects (including 346 units at Legacy Square, 1145 units at Beacon Square. and 2300 units coming to Collin Creek Mall. 
While it is complicated and vaguely confusing to the uninitiated citizenry, the Planning Department’s new recommendations call for a re-envisioning of “residential” densities, an overlay allowing new residential zoning for Central Expressway and even a suggested map showing every neighborhood shopping center in the city available for bulldozing and “residential” (read apartments) development. It was revealing that Comprehensive Plan Senior Planner Mike Bell, adviser to the new 2021 Comprehensive plan sat mutely 15 feet away while the new hire presented their rebuild ideas of our new Comprehensive Plan.

Commission Chair Downs, a dissenting voice when the old plan was vacated on a joint Zoom conference of P&Z and Council, swiftly moved to have a vote on setting a “public hearing” for P&Z on a vaguely undetermined future date, and it passed unanimously, with Commissioners Bronsky and Carey absent.

Stay tuned, a public hearing is coming, the baby hasn’t smothered yet.
Allan Samara, V.P. Communications Plano Citizens Coalition

Short Term Rentals currently in Plano

The Battle Over Short Term Rentals
 
“You shall own nothing and be happy.” This quote comes from the World Economic Forum. In Plano that quote is getting closer to becoming true. Plano is getting closer to more people renting their domiciles instead of owning them. One kind of rental that is causing problems for residents is the Short Term Rental.
You may have heard of some of the companies that do Short Term Rentals. Airbnb, VRBO, Homeaway, and Homestay are just a few of the platforms where people can rent a home for a short stay or vacation. Renting a home for a vacation is not new. People have rented beach or ski homes for vacations for decades. What is new is the internet platforms that make the renting process easier, and bring vacation rentals to cities that are not typical vacation destinations such as Plano. Unlike Aspen and Galveston, Plano is not a city that people would go to for a vacation. The majority of our residential units are occupied by full time residents. Also, unlike destination cities, Plano does not have the resources, organization, or regulations that a destination city has. Since Plano is not designed for vacation homes, residents are having problems with short term rentals in their neighborhoods. Some reported problems are, loud parties at all hours of the night, trash, parking problems, and illicit activities. In one short term rental the police broke up a sex trafficking ring. The rental in question is in a family neighborhood. You can read more about the arrest and problems with STRs at https://www.tncplano.org/post/sex-trafficking-ring-at-str-in-plano.
Personally, I have nothing against vacation rentals in general. I have rented one through Airbnb to go on a trip with one of my oldest friends. However, there is a time and place for vacation rentals. Plano’s residential neighborhoods is not one of those places, and our current zoning regulations agree. 
Plano residents cannot do anything they want with their property. A person whose property is zoned for a single family home cannot use the property for a restaurant, bar, retail store, strip club, or hotel.  According to Plano's own website,https://www.plano.gov/453/Hotel-Occupancy-Taxes
“A Hotel is any building or buildings in which the public may obtain sleeping accommodations for a cost of $2 or more each day for a consecutive duration of 30 days or less. This includes, without limitation:

• Bed and breakfasts
• Hostels
• Hotels
• Houses or courts
• Inns
• Lodging houses
• Motels
• Rooming houses
• Short-term vacation rentals
• Tourist homes
• Vacation rentals by owner
• Other buildings where rooms are furnished for consideration

 
The City of Plano's Hotel Occupancy Tax rate is 7%. The City's tax is in addition to the 6% rate imposed by the State of Texas, which must be remitted separately to the State. Airbnb started collecting hotel occupancy tax for Plano effective May 1, 2019. Homeaway, including VRBO and all other Expedia group platforms, started collecting hotel occupancy tax for Plano effective February 1, 2020. Hosts in the City of Plano not utilizing these platforms will need to charge their guests a 7% occupancy tax and remit payment to the City of Plano following the same instructions for hotels mentioned above.”
​So, according to the city of Plano, Short Term Rentals are hotels, and the only residential districts that allow hotels are Urban Residential and Residential Community Design with a specific use permit. If a short term rental is anywhere else it is operating illegally and the city has an obligation to stop it. We have nearly 600 Short Term Rentals all over the city of Plano. Some are in the correct zoning and other are unlawful.
For over five months residents have been going to city council meetings asking the city to enforce the law. Yet the only thing the city has done is tell the residents to call the police if they have a noise problem from a loud party or other nuisances from a Short Term Rental.
Why is the city not enforcing the law? Well the answer, in my opinion, is simple… MONEY! If the city gets rid of the unlawful Short Term Rentals, they lose the hotel taxes.
What can you do to get the city to enforce the law? My first recommendation is to go to the TX Neighborhood Coalition Plano Chapter website and join them. https://www.tncplano.org/ . Next, contact all the city council members and demand they order the city staff to enforce the law. No one or thing is above the law, not even the City of Plano.
This is Plano’s Political Pit Bull signing off.

The yellow areas with the red dots are Urban Residential zoning. This is where Short Term Rentals are legally allowed in Plano out right.

 
On April 11, 2022 the Plano City Council had a discussion on it’s Comments of Public Interest Policy. This was placed on the agenda by Council-members Tu and Grady due to a few people’s unorthodox comments and presentations. The first of these presentations, a few weeks before, went viral and was even featured on Fox News. While some residents are laughing at the man’s unique way he redressed the government of his grievances, as well as his copycats, some council-members’ response to this is to limit our first amendment rights.
Before we go over the discussion the city council had to limit our rights, let’s go over a few important facts. The First Amendment of our Bill of Rights lists five freedoms the government cannot stop people from doing.

• Practicing their religion.
• The freedom of speech.
• The freedom of the press.
• The right of the people to peaceably assemble.
• The right of the people from petitioning the Government for a redress of grievances.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The US Bill of Rights
Now, notice what the First Amendment does not list; it doesn't list any limitations or exceptions to those five rights other than to peacefully assemble. These five rights are not just in the Bill of Rights, they are also in each states’ Constitution.  
The right to speak and petition our government for a redress of grievances was not something our framers invented. One of the earliest documents to list these two rights is the Magna Carta.
Following the Magna Carta, American colonists used their local assemblies as surrogates for the King to make complaints. Also, in 1641, the Massachusetts Colony created the very first code of laws in New England called, Body of Liberties. It recognized the right to address Massachusetts government bodies.
 Moving on in history, in 1689 the English Declaration of Rights proclaimed, 
“it is the right of the subjects to petition the king, and all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning is illegal.” 
Moving forward in time to 1776, “[a] group of petitioners sought relief from England for a series of intolerable acts…and numerous other limits on self-government. Denied redress, the petitioners became revolutionaries, [and some went on to become leaders of a new nation]” 
(Adam Newton) 
 https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/first-amendment-center/topics/freedom-of-petition/freedom-of-petition-overview/
Our founders and framers knew history, and had first hand experiences dealing with a King that tried to limit and even take away their liberties. So, when it came to writing the first amendment, Madison purposefully only put the limitation of peaceful assembly in it. He knew that a free republic and self-government depends upon the free exchange of ideas, opinions, and complaints without the threat of limits, retaliation, harm or punishments from governments. However, this is not something that a few people on Plano City Council know or seem to understand. Even those members that hold law degrees lack this understanding.
Our first example of a person who lacks the understanding of our first amendment and its history, came from the person who wanted to talk about limiting the public's right to redress in the first place, Council-member and lawyer Maria Tu. She started her comments by saying, “I find it, that when we allow public comments it’s a great exercise of our constructional rights.” So far she is off to a bad start. Notice she used the words, “when we allow”. In others words, she is under the assumption that the council gives permission for people to address Plano’s government body; Plano City Council is not where the people get the authority to address their elected officials. Mrs. Tu continues to show us what she truly believes in her next statement.“ However, I think Plano has been known for many years as a city of inclusiveness, rather than exclusiveness, and when comments are meant to harm the city’s image as well as some of our residents, that’s where we need to draw the line and we need to actually do something about it.” No Mrs. Tu, you don’t need to and can’t do anything about it. You are not a queen, and the council is not a tribunal or group of tyrannical Nobles, that can trample on the people’s God given constitutional right to speak and petition their government. Even Justice Scalia, in talking about a case dealing with the first amendment, said, “If it were up to me, I would put in jail every sandal-wearing, scruffy-breaded weirdo who burns the American flag. But I am not king.”
The only Constitutional way to combat any speech you don’t like is with speech you do like. What Council-member Tu should be doing is adhering to the oath she swore to when she took office, that being to defend the Constitution. That means doing what Oscar Wilde said, “I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.” Trying to enact any limits on speech and petition, reveals, as James Madison believed, that Council-member Tu is an opponent of limited self government.
Moving on to our next council-member who thinks he is a king, Rick Grady. He agrees with Tu, and also suggests Comments be moved to a different part of the meeting. I wonder where he would like to move them to? Perhaps the end of the meeting so, when the council has a meeting that goes late, those that want to speak have to wait until midnight? That is just another way to limit speech. Nice try Mr. Grady, but the people are not going to fall for that old trick. Councilman Grady also stated that Comments need to be relevant to the city. Now, who is supposed to make that determination? What overlord will decided what is relevant to the city? Mayor Muns may think something is relevant, but Councilman Williams or a resident may disagree. For example, Councilman Williams wants to talk about Ukraine at a future meeting. Now at first glance one might think that the problems of Ukraine are not relevant to the city of Plano, and the city can’t do anything to help. However, if we dive deeper we could see that there are residents in Plano that are affected by the war. If Mr. Williams is prevented from bringing it up, we won’t know if there is anything the city can do to help these families.
Speaking of Councilman Williams, a self proclaimed First Amendment supporter, he is also for limiting content to anything the Plano city government can actually do. Again, though, who will be the judge? Councilman Williams went on to further say, “Any restrictions beyond that might be a declaration of, game on.” So far that has been the smartest thing anyone on the council has said.
Next, Councilman Anthony Riccirdelli, the other lawyer on the council, spoke. He too thought it made logical sense to limit comments to city business. Where in the Constitution he got that from he did not say. In case you were wondering, that is not in the Constitution.
Councilwomen Julie Homer and Prince agreed with their fellow council-members for the most part. Mrs. Homer did mention that she is accessible by email, so if the lords and ladies infringe on your rights, you can email them. 
The only council member to say anything truly profound and constitutional was Rick Smith: 
“I don’t think we should allow the city and this body to be high-jacked by the juvenile actions of someone. … If we react, change the process that we’ve done for years because of something like this, what’s the next step? … I just think we let it play its course. This is not representative of us as a body or as a city. It’s purely when someone comes and puts an act on, it’s on them. It [is] nothing - it’s not a reflection on our city, on the professionalism of our city, or the good things that we do.” Smith also made the very important point that by reacting they are showing that these antics are affecting the council. “I would say let them come. They want to come waste their time, hey I’m here. I’ll give them the three minutes and I’ll listen to them. ”Bravo Councilman Smith! After hearing Smith’s wise remarks, Councilman Williams stated he wanted to try the idea. Councilman Smith is clearly an elected official who knows his place and who believes in the first amendment. He is also someone who knows that by reacting you only feed the trolls. So, the best course of action is to ignore them. What you don’t do is punish the majority for the acts of a minority. As Jay Cost said in his article titled, James Madison’s Lesson on Free Speech     
https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/09/james-madison-free-speech-rights-must-be-absolute-nearly/ :
“Give us the right to think what we like and say what we please. And if we the people are to govern ourselves, we must have these rights, even if they are misused by a minority. As we confront those who use their right to free speech to abuse the norms of decency and civility, we should calmly recall Jefferson’s admonition from his first inaugural address. ‘If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it’.”
This is Plano’s Political Pit bull Signing Off
Here are some more quotes on the subject of the First Amendment.

• “The First Amendment was intended to secure something more than an exercise in futility.” Justice John Paul Stevens 
• “United Mine Workers of America v. Illinois State Bar Association (1967), the U.S. Supreme Court exalted the [freedom to petition] right as “among the most precious liberties safeguarded by the Bill of Rights” and implicit in “the very idea of government.” The Court had earlier affirmed the right to engage in such activity; it thus deemed it a fundamental liberty, protected against encroachment by federal, state and local governments.” Adam Newton and the US Supreme Court,
• “The people shall not be restrained from peacefully assembling and consulting for their common good, nor from applying to the legislature by petitions, or remonstrances for redress of their grievances.” James Madison
• “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” George Orwell
• “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” George Washington
• “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech. ”Benjamin Franklin,
• “This is slavery, not to speak one's thought.” Euripides
• “It was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say. But no one has the right to live without being shocked” Philip Pullman
• “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• “Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear. "Harry S. Truman

 

 

 
At the July 26, 2021 City Council Preliminary meeting, the cities legislative body discussed changing their Code of Conduct rules; specifically, the campaign finance reform rule that former member Lily Bao and current member Rick Smith crafted and got passed in December of 2020. They also talked about the endorsement policy for council members. .First, lets talk about the endorsement discussion. Council members Grady and Prince think that current members need to stay neutral in council races. Councilwoman Tu first suggested using the word ‘support’ instead of ‘endorsement’ when current Council members want to help people who are running for city office. Tu thinks that endorsements create a “tear that would make a working relationship difficult and it takes years to heal.”
My response to all of this is, give me a break. First, politics is a blood sport, and those in it need to have thick skin. If you can’t handle a current council member endorsing and working for your opponent, then you need to find another line of work. Second, Tu, Prince, and Grady need to remember the line in the first amendment of the US Constitution that prevents government from making any law, “abridging the freedom of speech”, a fact that Councilman Ricciardelli mentioned at the meeting. Also, just because you got elected does not mean you gave up your right to engage in political speech. Current council members need to be able to help get the person elected they would prefer to work with. The grown up thing to do, when someone helps in your opponent’s campaign, is after the race is over you wish the winner congratulations and get back to work; you don’t hold a grudge or refuse to work with those who helped your opponent. You are an adult running for city office, not a teen running for High School President.
Sadly, a vote to see if the council wanted to move forward with having staff bring back a change passed 6 - 2 with Williams and Ricciardelli in the minority.
Now lets talk about the campaign finance reform. In December of 2020, the council passed an ordinance requiring council members to recuse themselves from votes if the applicant gave $1000 or more to a council member’s campaign. An exemption was made and is as follows:
“In the event a quorum cannot be obtained because of recusals pursuant to this section, abstention is not required and the impacted members of City Council may vote as long as the nature of the conflict of interest is fully disclosed on the record.” You can read the full ordinance at the following link https://texasscorecard.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Plano-Code_of_Conduct_Ordinance-2020-12-08.pdf
Council passed this ordinance because big developers were contributing to the campaigns of those running for city council. It is suspected that these developers were donating large sums of money to make sure their big projects get approval by city council. This is not something that should shock anyone who follows politics. Owners of companies often donate to campaigns for leverage, or just to stop elected officials from creating regulations that would harm the companies. Some companies donate to all the candidates in a race, because that way they are sure to have donated to the winner. While this is not illegal, it is slimy, and leaves most residents at a disadvantage. You see, most residents cannot donate large amounts of money to campaigns. Former Councilwoman Bao and Councilman Smith were looking out for the average resident when they made this ordinance. Now that Councilwoman Bao is gone, the first chance the losers of the December vote got, they brought the ordinance back for “discussion”. More likely it was to get a feel for how the new members will vote on changing it.
Council members Tu, Prince, and Grady all don’t like having limits on them. They want the cash to keep flowing in from high paying donors. Both Tu and Grady also did not like the amount of money PACs gave this past election, and also thought more PACs were made to hide developer donor money. Of course they did not bring any evidence to support that statement. If the members are so worried about PAC money in their elections, they could refuse the PAC money and help, both of which none of them did during their elections.
Council members Smith, Williams, and Ricciardelli don’t mind improving the ordinance, but would vote against its repeal. Unlike Tu, Grady, and Prince, they really care about a conflict of interest and the appearance of impropriety. Smith also worries that the cost of running for office is too high, and only the rich or well connected will be able to run for office if they repeal this ordinance. Unfortunately, I think that ship has already sailed.
New members, Holmer and Mayor Muns, did not comment on whether they want to keep, change, or repeal the ordinance. However, when it came time to vote on a motion to have staff bring back a change to council, they both voted in favor with Tu, Prince, and Grady. Councilmen Smith, Williams, and Ricciardelli voted against the motion.  
I wish I could say I am surprised by all of this. I knew with the new make up of City Council, the good work that Lily Bao did was at risk of being repealed. Of course like most politicians, the first thing this new group did was work to ease restrictions on lining their coffers.
 
This is Plano’s Political Pit Bull signing off.        
 
 

The following is a press release form Allan Samara, V.P. Communications Plano Citizens Coalition.
4/28/2021 
Comprehensive Plan Select Committee Reaches(CPRC) agreement on A New Comprehensive Plan for Plano with a 15-0 vote.
The CPRC Comprehensive Plan Review Committee reached agreement tonight on a new plan for Plano’s growth and passed it by a 15-0 vote and
sent it on for review by Plano’s Planning and Zoning Commission.
The CPRC, a select committee of 16 citizens was appointed by the City Council in August to create a new plan to replace the controversial Plano
Tomorrow Plan of 2015 which voided by the City Council following a successful court ruling by a citizen’s referendum petition suit that dragged on
for more than 4 years and at one point reached the Texas Supreme Court.
The CPRC needed a 12 vote supermajority to adopt the draft document and received a 15-0 vote affirmation, after over 3000 hours invested in
planning meetings over the last 15 months. The committee of 16 was appointed by the City Council and began work in January 2020.

City Council candidate Justin Adcock who ran on a platform of keeping Plano suburban, hailed the decisive vote as a “potential Win-Win victory for
Plano Homeowners and developers, as an essential element of his campaign to win a Council seat.
“We’ll have to assess the plan in detail as it comes through the process of approval through public hearings and then to our new council by early fall
but we’re all hopeful that the new plan will bring a new sense of cooperation and support for Plano’s suburban character.”

Lily Bao, running for Mayor on a platform promise to “Limit Density to Protect the Suburban Character of Plano” remarked that the new plan “Will
give us all hope that a new fresh breath of air to continue Plano’s growth and excellence for decades to come.”
The Plan goes forward to the Planning and Zoning Commission which may pass it by a simple majority or amend the plan and which will trigger
public hearings where the citizens of Plano will have a chance to weigh in on Plano’s future Comprehensive Plan.

BY STANLEY KURTZ of National Review
​APRIL 7, 2021

With the introduction of his massive, $2.3 trillion “infrastructure” bill, President Biden’s campaign to end suburban single-family zoning has begun. If you think this issue was debated and resolved during the 2020 presidential campaign, you are mistaken. It’s true that Biden’s campaign platform openly and unmistakably pledged to abolish single-family zoning. As soon as President Trump made an issue of that pledge, however, Biden went virtually silent on the issue and the Democrat-supporting press falsely denied that Biden had any designs on single-family zoning at all. Now that he’s president, Biden’s infrastructure bill openly includes programs designed to “eliminate” single-family zoning (which Biden calls “exclusionary zoning”). 
How, exactly, does Biden plan to end single-family zoning? According to the fact sheet released by the White House, “Biden is calling on Congress to enact an innovative new competitive grant program that awards flexible and attractive funding to jurisdictions that take concrete steps to eliminate [‘exclusionary zoning’].” In other words, Biden wants to use a big pot of federal grant money as bait. If a county or municipality agrees to weaken or eliminate its single-family zoning, it gets the federal bucks.
The wildly overreaching Obama-Biden era Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation — which Biden has pledged to revive — works in a similar fashion. The difference is that by adding another gigantic pot of federal money to the Community Development Block Grants that are the lure of AFFH, Biden makes it that much harder for suburbs to resist applying — and that much more punishing to jurisdictions that forgo a share of the federal taxes they’ve already paid so as to protect their right to self-rule.


Are federal carrots enough, however? Prosperous suburbs may forgo the grants in an effort to secure their independence. The success of Biden’s initiative depends in part on exactly how much money gets allocated to grants tied to zoning reform. The details of that ask haven’t yet been released, but the $213 billion allocated to Biden’s total affordable housing initiative leave room for an awfully big pot for the anti-zoning portion.
If there aren’t enough carrots, however, how about sticks? During the campaign, Biden backed a draconian plan to withhold federal transportation grants for road repair from suburbs that refuse to kill off single-family zoning. That hasn’t been proposed by Biden, and the reason is fairly obvious. Democrats don’t yet have the votes to pass such a law. The only way they can get around the filibuster is to squeak spending bills through Congress under the rules on “reconciliation.” So, for now, it’s carrots all the way down. If Senate Dems expand their majority and kill the filibuster in 2022, however, out come the sticks and down goes suburban zoning.


There’s more danger in store for America’s suburbs in Biden’s current proposal than meets the eye, however. If I were administering Biden’s various federal housing programs, I would sucker well-off suburbs into accepting grants on lenient terms. The trick is that once a jurisdiction accepts a HUD grant, it has to sign a statement promising to “affirmatively further fair housing.” Now that Biden is going to revive the old Obama-Biden AFFH rule, that pledge can be used by activist non-profits or the administration itself to sue localities for failing to meet the outrageously expanded definition of that term set forth in Obama’s AFFH. It was suits like this that dragged Westchester County, New York through years of federal control and torment. Just the threat of such suits intimidated Democratic officials in Dubuque, Iowa into surrendering their city’s self-rule to the Obama administration.


Here’s the bottom line: Biden’s campaign to abolish suburban single-family zoning has well and truly begun. As during the Obama era, it will likely escalate in intensity with each passing year. At this point, any jurisdiction in the country that wants to keep control of its zoning and development should decline to apply for federal housing grants. No matter how good the money looks, sign that promise to “affirmatively further fair housing” — as the Biden administration will define it — and you are signing away your birthright.


There’s a pattern here. Biden and the Democrats are working overtime to undermine the federalist system in which zoning and education are local concerns. In each case — housing and education — the plan is the same: use federal grants to hook states and localities into conditions that will effectively override their authority. Kill suburban zoning and force leftist action civics and critical race theory on red-state schools. Siphon off taxes and return the money to taxpayers with conditions that effectively gut the foundational layer of our federalist system — the layer closest to the people.


If Republicans have the good sense to make an issue of Biden’s attack on single-family zoning, it will split the Democrats down the middle. The media will keep trying to cover for Biden. But once the administration begins enforcing AFFH, the reality of his policies will emerge. College-educated suburban Democrats won’t like that. Republicans are split on this issue as well, however, although the split is more politicians from the base than a split within the base. Under Obama, House Republicans overwhelmingly voted to defund AFFH, but Senate Republicans divided. This time, the GOP ought to get smart and expose Biden’s “infrastructure” bill as the anti-suburban zoning bill it in fact is. That would change the “infrastructure” narrative from a Christmas tree studded with goodies to a hammer to smash your way of life.
Naturally, this will all be called code for racial discrimination, but Democrats now lay that charge on pretty much every measure favored by Republicans. Curiously, earlier this week, the New York Times featured a story on opposition to an affordable housing initiative that would rezone New York City’s SoHo neighborhood. Residents worry that the rezoning proposal will bring more massive high-rises, tourists, and traffic into a neighborhood famous for low-rise, nineteenth-century architecture and narrow cobblestone streets. Many say the rezoning proposal is more about pleasing developers than affordable housing. It’s unlikely that many, or any, of these residents voted for Donald Trump in 2020. And the Times story prominently features an opponent of the rezoning initiative who is black. Nor is that an outlier case.


Last summer, when California floated a measure to kill single-family zoning, there was powerful opposition from residents who objected to a law that would make their neighborhoods denser, noisier, and more filled with traffic. Predominantly minority residents in South Los Angeles saw the bill as an “affront to how hard Black Americans fought to join single-family neighborhoods, battling redlining, racist covenants and even targeted violence. And they worried that suddenly relaxing zoning rules would not only ruin the low density they enjoyed, but also unleash an investment flood that would accelerate displacement of the Black community as developers scooped up old homes and built new ones unaffordable to most in the community.”
The zoning issue is tough and complex. It balances principled libertarian objections to zoning and the interests of developers, on the one hand, against core principles of federalism and local control, on the other. Massive spending and taxation are fundamental to the federal effort to override local zoning laws. Neighborhood preservation vies with “creative destruction.” There are plenty of complex, conflicting, and legitimate considerations in the balance. But reducing the zoning issue to bogus charges of “racism” is the way Democrats play the game nowadays.


If Republicans find the courage to stand up to the usual nonsense and oppose this big-government attempt to kill off the federalist system itself, they will find not only the vast majority of Republicans, but a great many independents and Democrats in their corner.


STANLEY KURTZ is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

We just got the following from Councilwoman Lily Bao’s Communications Director.
(Plano’s Political Pit Bull’s analysis is at the bottom.)
“Plano City Council to take up the issue of the conversion of taxable multifamily properties into tax-free lifetime entities through the legal loophole of adopting a tax-free agency as a fractional development partner. Councilwoman Lily Bao places the issue on the council agenda for their March 16th meeting to support House Bill 1604 tightening the loophole, which threatens the tax base of City and School district funding for Plano, Collin County and statewide taxing entities.
Councilwoman Lily Bao attended a meeting of the non-profit Plano Housing Authority on Friday September 4th on an afternoon at the start of  Labor Day weekend, at it she learned that Plano Housing Authority planned to participate in a new state housing initiative that would allow an apartment developer to convert his project to a totally property tax-free asset by drawing in the local affordable housing authority with  a microscopic ownership share and allow it to be free of City, County, School District and College District taxes for its entire useful life. It’s an apparent loophole that “affordable” housing advocates are utilizing to enhance developer’s property values by millions, for for-Profit-majority owners, while escaping property taxes wholly for the entire lifetime of the property.
A giveaway that is built into State law Sec. 303.042(f) penalizing school districts and especially high-value property communities like Plano and PISD. To aggravate matters thoroughly, in high-land value suburbs, the apartments don’t even provide the advantage of affordability.
As an example, in Plano the eligibility for assisted housing would be placed at 80% of the average family income or approximately ($83,000 x.80) $66,400 and the apartment rent would have to fit into 30% of gross income. At a peak this would mean (66,400 x .30= $19,920 annually) or a limit of $1660. per month rent. Hardly “affordable” but very lucrative for the for-profit out-of-town development partners trafficking in this questionable conversion, and leaving millions in added value to be distributed in the form of service fees and maintenance set asides, all because no property taxes are owed.
 
[Councilwoman] Lily Bao views this loophole as a fraud on the taxpayers, the schools, the county and as a councilwoman a fraud on the city treasury. As a person whose name Bao means “protect”, she was rightfully offended, but offended for the people of Plano.
To bring matters home, an aging apartment complex at 7301 Alma Rd. called  “The Alexan” had its sale fall through prior to closing to one developer, only to re-emerge with a new name as a quick sale to another known for affordable housing conversions and it joins three other projects being similarly converted to delete these properties as contributors to the city services and schools they will utilize.”                                
                                                                    
· Link to House Bill 1604….....https://legiscan.com/TX/text/HB1604/id/2275850
 
· The following are projects as of December 3rd for Plano Public Facility Corporation resolutions:
         1.Enclave at Legacy
         2.Fountains at Steeplechase
         3.Fairfield Legacy
         4.Alexan at Plano Central(renamed JAIDA)
https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3Ad16057a9-c8e8-4425-9fd6-8401bc696e68#pageNum=1
· The Following is a study by the University of Texas School of Law
“Public Facilities Corporation and the Sec.303.042(f)Tax break for apartment developments, a boon for affordable housing or windfall for apartment developers?”
2020-ECDC-PFC-Report.pdf (utexas.edu)
From the Executive summary of the study….”To receive the exemption, a private apartment developer transfers land to a public facility corporation (PFC) set up by a local government entity---such as a public housing authority, county, or city ---which then leases the land and any buildings on the land(including those built in the future) back to a limited partnership controlled by the developer. The local government entity gets paid to participate in the venture.
Other local government—such as school districts—have no say over these tax breaks to for-profit apartment developers even though the tax breaks directly impact these other entities property tax base and bottom line.”
Also from the study:

• “Since 2016, at least 30 apartment complexes in Texas have been acquired, developed, or are in active development under this tax-exempt leasehold interest structure, with 17 of these deals approved in 2019. At least six additional deals with this structure have received preliminary approval by a public facility corporation board. Eight of the approved deals involved the acquisition of an existing apartment complex versus new construction. Housing authorities, cities, and counties report an on-going onslaught of proposals by apartments developers to convert existing apartment complexes as well as develop new apartment complexes under this structure in order to obtain the Section 303.042(f) exemption. The 100% property tax exemption on all 30 of these properties, once they are completely developed in a few years, will remove an estimated $1.2 billion in property values from the tax rolls. The fiscal impact is significant, with local taxing jurisdictions, including counties, cities, school districts, as well as the state’s public education fund, seeing a loss of over $32 million in annual tax revenue from these 30 apartment complexes alone once they are completed. With the recent rapid growth in these exemption deals and the deluge of apartment developers seeking to benefit from this exemption, the exemption could remove more than $12 billion in property values off the tax rolls by 2026 with a cumulative property tax exemption of $326 million a year.

 

• At the same time these tax-exempt projects are being approved, Texas faces an on-going affordable rental housing crisis for Texas’s 1.4 million renter households who make less than 50% of the Area Median Income, with a severe shortage of rental units that are affordable to these households. Thirty-three percent of renters who make less than 50% of the Area Median Income are extremely cost burdened. In contrast, only six percent of renters making 65 to 80% of the Area Median Income are extremely cost burdened, and only one percent of renters making over the Area Median Income are extremely cost burdened.
• Texas actually has a surplus of units that are available and affordable to households making up to 80% and 100% of the Area Median Income.”
• Property owned by a public facility corporation is eligible for a 100% tax exemption. Tex. Local Govt Code, § 303.042(c).
• If recent trends continue, the Section 303.042(f) exemption could remove more than $12 billion in property values off the tax rolls by 2026, resulting in a loss of approximately $326 million a year in revenue to local taxing districts and the state public education budget.
• Texas’ middle-income renters do not need deeply subsidized rental housing.
• PFC projects discriminate against tenants with vouchers. Very few properties with a Section 303.042(f) exemption accept tenants with rental vouchers from their local housing authority. For example, none of the PFC-sponsored properties in San Antonio with a Section 303.042(f) exemption accept tenants with vouchers. In contrast, other major affordable housing subsidy programs—such as the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program—prohibit apartment complexes from discriminating against voucher holders. The failure to accept voucher holders is troubling, especially given that housing authorities are sponsoring most of these projects. Housing authorities’ largest group of clients are voucher holders, who are predominantly African-American and Hispanic. Many of these renters face enormous challenges securing a unit with their vouchers, especially in high opportunity neighborhoods with access to strong schools, transit, and jobs.”

 
PPPB’s analysis: Just in case you are confused by what you have read, please allow your lovable Pit Bull to simplify things for you. The owner of an apartment, condo, or townhouse development can sell less then 1% of their property to Plano Housing Authority. After the sale is final, that entire property becomes property tax exempt forever. In other words their property tax bill is now zero, nothing, zilch. However, the people living in these places will still require city resources, which they will not have to pay for. If children live in these developments, those children will get to go to school for free. Now, who do you think gets the wonderful task of paying for all of this free stuff? The property tax paying homeowners, that is who. Who is the big winner in this scheme? Big wealthy developers of course. They make out like bandits while taxpayers get screwed.  The Housing Authority also does well in this gimmick. This is why economic fascism (public-private partnership) is evil. The wealthy and “public entity” succeeds, while the common person suffers the exuberant tax burden.
PPPB does not think this is what the TX Legislature originally intended when it passed this amendment in 2015. However, every new law always has unintended consequences, and those consequences always cause suffering. House Bill 1604 attempts to fix the tax free windfall. Please read it and let your state representative know how you feel about the bill. Also, let the Plano City Council know if you want them to support HB1604 by Tuesday, March 16, 2021. If you would like to speak at the March 16th meeting go to https://plano.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_KQGiTb4JRgmLm6oZ82vEUw
Thank you Councilwoman Bao for bringing this issue to our attention.
This is Plano’s Political Pit Bull Signing Off

The election to select Council Members for Places 2, 4, 6 (Mayor), 7 and 8 will be conducted on May 1, 2021.  Early voting starts April 19-17. All places are elected at large. Candidates for Places 2 and 4 must live in the districts they are running for. Place 7 is a special election, because Council member Bao is stepping down to run for Mayor. 
 
The following is a list of all the candidates running in each race. The names are in alphabetical order. City council races are nonpartisan. If the candidate has a primary voting record, we wrote it down under their name.
We strongly recommend everyone to do their homework on all the candidates. Question everything they say, and don’t take anything they tell you at face value. Remember these are politicians, so you must read between the lines. If they have a voting record on a board or council, look it up.
 
PPPB does not and is not endorsing any candidate.
 
City Council, Place 2
 
Steve Lavine
www.Steve4Plano.com
[email protected]
214-466-1199
( Sits on the Library Advisory Board. Has voted in the Democrat Primaries.)
 
Anthony Ricciardelli 
www.AnthonyforPlano.com
[email protected]
(Is the current Place 2 Councilman. Was on the Heritage Commission before being elected to council. Has voted in the GOP Primaries)
 
City Council, Place 4
 
Justin Adcock
www.JustinforPlano.com
[email protected]
972-836-7656
(Voted in the GOP Primaries.)
 
Nassat Parveen
[email protected]
(Has voted in Democrat primaries.)
 
Kayci Prince 
www.PrinceforPlano.com
[email protected]
(Is the current Place 4 Councilwoman. Was on the Planning and Zoning Board before being elected to council. Has voted in the GOP Primaries.)
 
Vidal Quintanilla
www.VidalforPlano.com
[email protected]
(Has not voted in any primary, because he registered to vote in Aug 2020.)
 
 
City Council, Place 6—Mayor
 
Lily Bao
www.lilyforplano.com
[email protected]
214-517-7071
(Current Councilwoman for place 7. Was on the Housing Board before being elected to council. Has voted in the GOP primaries.)
 
John Muns
www.johnmuns.com
[email protected]
972-403-7676
(Was on the Planning and Zoning Board. Has voted in the GOP primaries.)
 
Lydia Ortega
www.lydiaortega4plano.com
[email protected]
214-414-2010
(Has voted in the GOP primaries.)
 
City Council, Place 7
 
Julie Holmer
[email protected]
469-634-2771
(Has voted in Democrat primaries.)
 
Bill Lisle III
[email protected]
214-475-4203
(Has voted in the GOP primaries.)
 
Chris Robertson
[email protected]
757-560-3453
(Has voted in the GOP primaries.)
 
Sandeep Srivastava
[email protected]
972-655-4382
(Has voted in the GOP primaries.)

David M. Smith
www.davidforallplano.com
[email protected]
​972-516-3849
(Former city council member  from 1993 through 1999. Votes in the Democrat primaries.)​
 
City Council, Place 8 
 
Elisa Klein
www.elisaforplano.com
[email protected]
469-585-6444
(Voted in the Democrat primary.)
 
Rick Smith
www.rickforplano.org
[email protected]
214-707-4575
(Current Councilman for Place 8. Has voted in the GOP primaries.)