Agenda for Thursday 1/25/07

The agenda for Thursday's council meeting has been posted. After a long meeting at the beginning of the month, there is little business on this agenda.

There will be presentations from Planning and Zoning and the Board of Adjustments. These boards have been pushing for a regular audience with the council since David Lanman tried to abolish both boards and reorganize them under his buddy Betsy Burns. For some reason, Administrator Sauceda has been unwilling to put them on the agenda until now. Hmmm, David does not like these boards because they don't do his political bidding. If they are unwilling to follow his orders, he wants to neutralize them. Sauceda wants to make Lanman happy because Lanman has illegally authorized Sauceda's 25 percent raise and both his year-end bonuses. So agenda-maker Sauceda has kept them off the agenda for the better part of the year.

Well here they are at the first of the year. This is supposed to be the first in a standing monthly report to council during the second monthly meeting. Let's see if Sauceda stands them up next month.

Perhaps the biggest issue of the Planning and Zoning Board is that they may or may not have a valid zoning map. This issue is one or two years old. There is no reason that council, mayor, administrator and P&Z cannot take care of this major problem immediately. I learned about this problem two years ago. It goes like this. In 2001 or so, council accepted a hand-colored map of Marfa as the official zoning map. Individual lots and blocks are colored in to indicate the appropriate zone. The law required the administrator and/or mayor to sign the map to make it official. This never happened. Years go by with complacency and then confusion about the status of the map. Monte Akers is asked for an opinion. He declares the map good enough, acceptable to use for city business, and says it just lacks a signature. Nobody signs it and another year slips by.

Meanwhile, P&Z has been working on an updated version of the map. I do not know if they finished their coloring yet. Rudy Garcia, former council member and current BoA alternate, has complained frequently that we do not have an official map and therefore we can take no zoning or permitting actions at all. Rudy insists that legal descriptions of the boundaries of the zones also need to be written. These have been written but not formally adopted. At the most recent BoA meeting, Sauceda was informed that all he and Lanman needed to do was sign the map and it would be official. They have refused this opportunity to clear up the matter. Who knows why? One can only guess that Sauceda is following Lanman's desire to have as little structure or organization as possible to help create the mythical "frontier" town of Lanman's dreams. Perhaps he read too many westerns while growing up on the East Coast where he learned his construction trades.

Now I will let you in on a little secret! The only semi-official map of Marfa Zoning hangs in the Casner room. There are no copies. Despite a recent history of losing all records in a city hall fire, a copy of this only map has never been made. Furthermore, it is in an open room with nobody watching it. Do you want to rezone your own property? Easy! Just head on down to the Casner room with an eraser and your crayons and you too can convert your home into a B&B or auto paint shop or shopping mall! So the race is on. Who will get to the map first? Responsible officials or prankster citizens!

Seriously, this is an administrative fiasco. Council took action years ago. The attorney gave his opinion. The mayor has interfered. The administrator has done nothing. This is a paperwork issue. This is a clerical issue. This is an administrative issue. If you read the Zoning Ordinance you will find that all enforcement of zoning is the responsibility of the administrator. Sauceda needs this map to enforce the ordinance. For two years, he has neglected to sign it. He has been informed by BoA, P&Z, citizens, and the attorney. Nada. We got nada from him. While the administrator has failed to do his job, so has council. They have neglected their job of managing their employee, Florencio Sauceda. Sauceda has not acted on the map. He has not placed this on agenda for discussion. Council should demand that Sauceda sign the map, make copies of the map, and keep it in a safe place. When P&Z finishes their new zoning map, it can be adopted to replace this old map.

The BoA presentation should be interesting also. One of the issues that this board is working on has to do with the permit approval process. This is one of those things that falls in one of the many cracks at city hall. Again, Sauceda enforces all zoning issues. Our meager and ignored permits are part of that ordinance. Ultimately, the process for reviewing permit applications and issuing permits is a boring administrative issue. It gets more interesting when you have an administrator that has been bought off by the mayor and a mayor that likes to do illegal construction work, dislikes rules related to construction, and likes to reward his buddies with illegal building permits.

Serious accusations. Here is how the permit process works now. People drop off applications with a $25 fee. They go in a stack in city hall. The mayor peruses the stack. Then he instructs the front office to issue permits that he approves. If he does not approve, he will delay the permit for months. His approval has much to do with people and little to do with law. If he likes the person, they get approved even if they ignore the zoning law. If he dislikes the person, they get stalled even if they follow the zoning law.

The permit application form has a place for the city to fill in "Verified by:" to indicate who reviewed the application. At first, Lanman signed these with his "DL" signature or simply left that line blank. After making many errors on permits, he instructed the front office to start signing his name for him. After more errors, he instructed the office to sign the forms "City of Marfa Administration" or "Marfa City Hall." This is really funny because he is neither the administrator nor the building. Two construction projects in the last month have been done in violation of the zoning ordinance setback rules. The permits were approved by Lanman even though the applications showed setback violations.

The Board of Adjustments is recommending a resolution to council that will formally eliminate the mayor from the permit approval process. The resolution calls for council to create a citizen advisory committee that reports to the administrator. The purpose of the committee is to review the permits with respect to the zoning ordinance and then recommend action to the administrator. The administrator would formally act on the permit by approving, rejecting, or sending back for changes.

Council should strongly endorse this idea of removing a partisan politician from an administrative task to eliminate future permit errors caused by ignorance of the laws or political favoritism.

There are two other agenda items. One involves a $15,000 reimbursement with the Texas DPS. As usual, the administrator has written the most convoluted and confusing agenda description:

DISCUSS, CONSIDER AND TAKE APPROPRIATE ACTION-RATIFY/APPROVE INTER-LOCAL COOPERATION CONTRACT OPERATION WRANGLER- DIVISION OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT/OFFICE OF GOVERNOR-TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY-REIMBURSEMENT (01-22-07-JULY 2007) $15,000

What does this mean? I cannot even figure out if we are the reimburser or reimbursee. I am so tired of this gobbledygook from the administrator. Why does he write unintelligible agenda item descriptions?

The final issue is an agreement to conduct an election with MISD on May 12, 2007. Hallelujah! The first formal mention of the election in May.

Strangely missing is the contract for Sauceda. He got 3.5 votes of confidence at the last meeting. That begs the question: Is a half vote of confidence also a half vote of no confidence? Is the glass half-empty or half-full? Martinez said they would move quickly to give Sauceda another contract. What is going on? Stay tuned!