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HomeMy WebLinkAboutRichard Woodward Transcription City of College Station Heritage Program Oral History Interviewee: Dr. Richard Woodward Interviewer: Tiffany Gonzalez Date: May 14, 2019 Place: Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas Project: The City of College Station Oral History Collection Transcriber: Ian Seavey Abstract: Dr. Richard Woodward discusses his involvement with College Station’s Association of Neighborhoods (CSAN). He explains the housing and zoning issues that prompted CSAN’s creation. Woodward also highlights the impact CSAN has had on the City of College Station’s politics. In concluding, he identifies the future goals CSAN wants to achieve and what ways the organization can continue to spread its influence. 00:00 Tiffany Gonzalez (TG): My name is Tiffany Gonzalez, I am College Station’s Historic Records Archivist and the interviewer. It is 1:14 PM on May 14, 2019. We are conducting the interview at Texas A&M University. Today I am speaking with Dr. Richard Woodward due to his knowledge and work with (CSAN) College Station’s Association of Neighborhoods. To start this interview, could you tell me a little bit about yourself and the context of your involvement with College Station? 00:39 Dr. Richard Woodward (RW): Uh, yeah so I have lived in College Station since 1997. I work at Texas A&M. I am a professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and bought a house quite near campus a little bit north of Holleman, very close to the intersection of Holleman and Glade. And I have been interested in city government, the way that the city’s policies affect my neighborhood for a long time. 01:30: TG: Thank you. So today’s interview is focused on College Station’s Association of Neighborhoods and your involvement with it. So how so how did the idea come about for this association? What was happening in College Station at this time? Because I know it was founded in September of 2017. 01:47: RW: That’s right. So there were a number of us who, some people I didn’t even know were founding members of the CSAN but we all shared a common concern that very frequently that interests of neighborhoods were not being protected by our city’s government. Um, and we felt like there was a need for a group that would become active in the political process and specifically would fight for the interests of neighborhoods. And specifically for the interests of people who would serve on the City Council and other committees that would be sympathetic to our concerns and the constituents concerns regarding their neighborhoods. So it came out of some frustration that we had experience. All of us had experienced over the years where you would be at a City Council meeting hearing neighbor, after neighbor, after neighbor stand up complaining about a zoning change or something along those lines. Or try to implement a policy to protect a neighborhood and it just seemed like we were losing a lot more of those battles then we were losing despite the fact that we would have 30 or more people stand up and talk in favor of protecting for the neighbors. So we felt like we needed to organize. We felt like we needed to create an organization that would bring together neighborhoods from across the city. That it wouldn’t be one neighborhood just fighting for one issue and then that issue goes away and then we get to the next neighborhood fighting for their issue. We needed instead one organization that would fight for neighborhood issues consistently year in and year out across the city. 04:39: TG: Excellent. So you started speaking about the historical roots of this organization and the issues being brought up at City Hall during City Council meetings, what neighborhoods exactly make up this organization? 04:56: RW: So, despite our name we are really not an association of neighborhoods [laugh]. So the name is what I like to call aspirational. So what we really are is an association of neighbors. Um and so we have people that are active in the organization from all parts of the city but there is certainly a concentration of the core leadership that live Southside, nearer to campus in the older parts of town where we have had more frustration with a lot of issues. But we have active participants from Castle Gate, Pebble Creek, from Sandstone, Emerald Forest, all over the city. So it’s not just two or three neighborhoods. At one point we created a map and it really was all over the city. 06:27: TG: That’s really fascinating. Getting a whole group of neighbors, residents from across the city. Can you talk a little bit about the organizing efforts the strategies of conversations? How did this network come to fruition? 06:41: RW: Well, so we started in fall 2017 06:48: TG: Mhm. 06:48: RW: With a clear focus that was to advocate for members, two people that were trying to get elected to City Council. And we were going to endorse candidates that were sympathetic to our interests and we were going to fight for them. So we printed up a whole bunch of cards, and mail, and we knocked on doors and we got a lot of people involved in that way. So it was very much a grassroots go out and knock on doors type of thing. Around the same time we established a website to promote our candidates. After the election in 2017, we had to keep going so we held a series of meetings, I think four or five meetings around town in different neighborhoods to which we invited people who identified as possible leaders and supporters. And that was helpful in bringing people into the organization and bringing in some people we didn’t know about who wanted to get involved. So that grew the leadership and it grew the scope of the organization. Then the election cycle came around again and it feels like you’re in an election cycle for six months and then you’re off for six months. It’s always on top of you. And so in 2018 we had a stronger base of support. We have over 300 people on a listserv that we can send out messages to. We have 700 or 800 people have liked our Facebook page. And so we were reaching out to those people and bringing them in. And we went through a process, a very rigorous process of endorsing candidates in 2018 and once we made our decision on who to endorse we raised money for those candidates. We helped them raise money for their own candidates by having meet and greats. We also raised money for the organization and we spent that money on promotion flyers and things like that and we involved lots of our supports in knocking on doors, and hanging out door hangers, and talking to people. So, I don’t even remember what the question was but I know. 09:55: TG: [Interrupted] no, yeah. 09:56: Both: [Laughing] 09:57: TG: It was about the grassroots efforts. 09:59: RW: [Interrupted] Okay. 10:00: TG: Who at the time were the two Council members that you were supporting? Or did y’all select anybody? 10:06: RW: So in 2017 we endorsed Linda Harvell and Bob Brick. We also worked closely with the Association of Former Mayors and the College Station Citizen Advisory Council. So we coordinated with them somewhat. So that was 2017, so in 2018 we endorsed, it was really quite clear Bob and Linda were the candidates we knew quite well so endorsed them and supported them. In 2018 there were a number of good candidates so we invited all the candidates to sit down and talk with us. All but one of the candidates did so it was not an easy decision to make about who to endorse but we ended up endorsing Dennis Maloney and Joe Guerra for City Council last fall. And after a runoff, Dennis Maloney was elected and Joe Guerra lost by a pretty slim margin but then was appointed to city funding and zoning commission. 11:26: TG: Still worked out in some way? 11:28: RW: We’ve still got his voice, his voice is still there in city government which is important for us. 11:35: TG: So you spoke about having an interview process with potential candidates. What kind of those questions were taking place in those conversations? 11:45: RW: So first the process, so we had a small committee, three or four people who carried out the interviews but we videotaped and recorded all the interviews so members of the leadership could listen in to the whole interview and make decisions. The interviews lasted around 90 minutes each so they were very extensive. We asked questions related to neighborhoods, questions about their ability to serve effectively on City Council, background, experience, what they would bring to the table, things like that. And questions about electability. What are you going to do to get elected? Even if somebody was a really good candidate because of their stance on the issues, if that was a person who would not fight, do what it takes to get elected we weren’t going to put our weight behind them because we clearly can’t carry it by ourselves. So those were the nature of the questions. 13:13: TG: Absolutely. That’s a pretty thorough process. 13:15: RW: It was, I was a bit skeptical because I thought we wanted to have a more free flowing conversation and the committee pushed for quite structured process and it was great because everybody was answering the same questions. So we could make a very objective, well obviously it’s not objective decision but it’s a decision based on the best information we could possibly pull together. 13:51: TG: Very informed. 13:51: RW: And yeah, very informed decision and I think also the candidates themselves were impressed with how serious we were taking it. There was no sense at all that we were going to rubber stamp somebody or that we were wasting their time. 14:11: TG: And doing my research, I really understand why this is a serious issue. And so I would like to talk about that. You have spoken about the roots of the organization, the efforts, but what are these issues that the association was fighting for that they needed someone who represents them and was fighting for them at City Hall? What’s going on in the neighborhoods? 14:34: RW: So, um, every city is dealing with growth, every good city that’s doing well is growing and is dealing with growth. And growth is always a challenge. How do you manage the growth? And how do you serve the people who have been here for a long time? How do you preserve the character of the city, while also growing? In specifically near campus there is a great deal of pressure for housing from all these students that pay my salary and they are great students. Nobody would live in College Station if they didn’t like living in a college community where they have a lot of students around them. But we felt that the city was not doing enough to protect the integrity of older neighborhoods. And basically it was a Wild Wild West approach to housing. So there was that as sort of a driving issue. The other issues are what we see as [pause] a blind [pause] belief that whatever the market presses for is going to be the right thing. And so if the market values that property for a three story [pause] basically dorm in a residential neighborhood then there are members of City Council who would basically say, “that’s highest and best use because that’s the way the market is determining that’s highest and best use.” But a lot of times there are protections in zoning and in the comprehensive plan. And that’s probably the issue where we feel the City Council has the biggest role and where perhaps we are most frustrated in that the City Council was not necessarily, they were in our opinion too willing to a zoning variance to somebody who wanted to encroach upon a neighborhood. And one of the issues that sort of came to head and created a great deal of frustration with the City Council was a rezoning on Fairview. Where they basically allowed a commercial business to expand their footprint by a lot, I think it’s just one lot, I was not actively involved in that. But basically creating a parking lot in an area that was zoned as a single family residence. What do they call it? It described as single family but it’s called [pause] I can’t remember. Anyway it’s got the zoning name. So the idea that somehow a businessman or businesswoman can say, “I have a great plan that I’m going to make my business grow and I have a great business, uh I’d like a variance.” And all the neighbors or neighborhoods and saying, “No! We don’t want that commercial activity in our neighborhood.” The City Council was willing to just let them have it. Um and so that’s frustrating for us. So zoning variances, we believe, should be few and far between and they should be allowed when the nearby uses are not affected and the neighbors are, if they neighbors are standing up saying, “we don’t want this.” And in my mind that means the neighbors are being affected. It probably should not be approved. Furthermore the city has a comprehensive plan. The idea of the comprehensive plan is guide, give growth clear vision on what is and is not allowed over the next ten years. And we felt like the City Council was not giving much respect to the comprehensive plan. They were just saying, “Well the comprehensive sentence says this but a variance here and a variance there.” So that was frustrating and so we wanted people who were placing more weight on neighborhood concerns and less weight on commercial concerns whether that be businesses or commercial housing. 20:44: TG: Yeah, and in the association are there any developers involved? Are there any members? Is there a cross communication happening between developers and neighborhoods? Or? 20:58: RW: So we have people that are involved, certainly there are no developers that are active members. We have members of the association that are investors in the sense that they have rental property. Um we have people who are involved in the building industry. I don’t think we have any members or supporters that are what I would call a developer that are actively going out seeking to develop neighborhoods. But they certainly would be welcome and we would probably work very productively together. 21:51: TG: Thank you. So I have been reading on your website, there are articles about the stealth dorms and the traffic and how traffic is affecting the quality of life. 22:02: RW: Right. 22:03: TG: And with our conversation about growth in the city, can you talk a little bit about the stealth dorms? And how it’s impacting the neighborhoods and homes, the value of the homes? 22:14: RW: So, um, the [pause] when [pause] in an older neighborhood where you’ve got a consistent architectural style that actually gives the character to the neighborhood alright. To tear down that house and basically create a two or three story dormitory type facility changes the character of the neighborhood. Obviously it brings in lots of vehicle traffic and um it certainly doesn’t always happen as you get more and more, as a street gets more and more dominated by student rentals and I particularly highlight on student rentals not because I don’t like students but because when I was a student I was not necessarily the most well-behaved individual on the planet. And if you have a strong student presence in house, after house, it takes on the character more of fraternity row than the neighborhood I grew up on right. It changes the character in the sense that when a family is looking to buy a house where they are going to raise their children, they are not going to buy a house on that street if you have two or three stealth dorms and the rest of the houses are being rented out to students. So it can actually shift things fairly quickly in terms of the character of the neighborhood because the people that remain are those that don’t want to move, maybe they’re retirement age or beyond. And basically as those people, and some people move away and are like no I’ve had enough of this. I’m not going to be surrounded by all of these rental properties and so the real families that were the anchors of those neighborhoods tend to leave or die off literally die off right. And so you have this transition and so I think the stealth dorm is the most obvious and permanent part of that transition. So if you have a neighborhood, let’s say you have a street that’s got three bedroom houses, nice three bedroom houses all consistently built in the 1960s or 1970s and if those went to rentals eventually they would come back. If it became dominated by student rentals eventually you know a family could start buying in and you could rotate back again right. If you tear down those houses and put in stealth dorms then that’s permanent. Secondly, and this is really important. As you put in houses specifically designed to rent four or five bedrooms. That’s being built by, that four or five bedroom house is taking in $2,000. Let’s just say a four bedroom house $2,000-$2,400 a month in income alright. That all of a sudden becomes a very attractive business opportunity. The value of that real estate starts skyrocketing. All you need is one or two of those stealth dorms and all of a sudden the value of the property, the land value starts shooting up. Now not only is that neighborhood unattractive for families it’s unaffordable right. The areas right near campus have higher property values per square foot than do the areas in Pebble Creek. Alright, and nobody would claim the areas near campus are extravagant homes like a lot of the ones out in Pebble Creek and yet you are seeing an imbalance and that’s being driven by the commercial interests. So that creates an imbalance, an economic imbalance that can be problematic. Now we need to find, we have a lot of demand for rental properties in College Station, we have to find a way to manage that. But allowing investors to come in and build high density residential housing in a single family is not the right approach. It's not the right approach because it degrades one neighborhood, it’s a zero sum type of development, and it doesn’t meet very much of the problem. High density housing that can put a lot more people in a smaller area, that’s what we need to be finding ways to make that happen. And in some extent that has happened in recent years, we’ve seen a lot of development happen. But we need to be aware, we’ve got to find ways to house all the students that come here while at the same time doing that without destroying neighborhoods and imposing costs on people who have lived there for generations. 29:09: TG: Absolutely. I do believe the dorms, the houses that are for students have changed the culture of neighborhoods and I agree with that. I was just recollecting when I was in college I would think that was a home. It was not a home, it was more liberty to do whatever I wanted and not take care of it because the house is not under my name. 29:36: RW: Right. Right. Right. 29:37: TG: The responsibilities that come with home ownership are not there with a certain demographic. So it does change the culture of the neighborhood. 29:44: RW: And I think it’s great. My neighborhood, we have students on the street we have people that are nearing 100 years old on the street. And that’s a fun dynamic and it makes for a really interesting neighborhood that I’m really excited to live in. But we just recently passed a deed restriction that limits it to two unrelated. And since doing that two families have moved back into our neighborhood. Alright, we haven’t had a family buy a house in our neighborhood in over a decade. I can’t remember the last family that purchased a house on our street. And since we passed the deed restriction we’ve had one family that’s renting a house and one family that purchased a house on our street. 30:51: TG: So is the deed restriction also creating affordability? Like maintaining and stabilizing affordability? What is the purpose of the deed restriction aside from the two? 31:02: RW: So we actually, we really don’t want it to bring our property values down. We do think it’s going to help avoid a spike or a crash in our property values. I mean I think the deed restriction will preserve the value of our houses rather than push them down but it also won’t allow them to go up. So if we had a couple of Aggie Shacks come onto our street and all of a sudden this became seen as a street where you could put high density housing our property values would go way up but that would not be a good thing for those of us who want to continue to live there. Because we just pay taxes on higher property values. 31:58: TG: It just keeps going up. 32:00: RW: But obviously it’s a good thing when we want to sell the house. But the people who are living in our neighborhood are not looking at it as a short term investment. They are looking at it as a place they are living. We’ve had [counting] one, two, three, four, people, five, in last two years. We’ve had five residents all of them over 90 years old die which is tragic. But they were people who signed the deed restriction. And why did they sign it, because they didn’t know if they were going to live for one year or five years but they knew this is where they wanted to live and they were interesting in preserving the quality of their lives in those places. So a deed restriction can be a nice tool but it’s not something that CSAN is directly involved in but it’s an interesting response to the pressures we are feeling. 33:09: TG: Thank you. What progress has been made now that the organization has been put in place and you have backed certain politicians in City Hall? What progress has been made in respect to the mission and goals of the association? 33:25: RW: Um, well there was a certain request to authorize a certain overlay in the Southside area that sailed through before the last election that was presented to the planning and zoning commission and they basically gutted it since the election with the new people appointed to the planning and zoning. They approved it as submitted, it was approved unanimously I think by City Council. I think we are seeing a stronger, a greater concern for neighborhoods, a greater recognition that the people who live here want respect, want respect for the quality of their lives. So I think that has changed, I can’t point to too many votes and say we won this one but didn’t or wouldn’t have won it on the previous Council. I can say that there is greater respect for our concerns today and I think we have shifted the political landscape a little bit. I don’t know if it’s a lot or a little bit but I get feedback from people who suggest its being felt. 35:14: TG: Absolutely. Yeah, I mean the organization itself is almost two years old. 35:19: RW: Right. 35:20: TG: And so I believe the association has created some kind of consciousness awareness and building consciousness in the city and within the neighborhoods that are specifically not just Texas A&M University that constituency but the neighborhoods and the residents there wanting long term connection to the city and that’s important. 35:42: RW: I mean we even have people from the extraterritorial jurisdiction that are supporting us because basically it’s not just near campus issues. Is there somebody who is willing to fight for neighborhood issues? And those are all over the place. 36:07: TG: Yeah, and the city keeps growing south [laugh]. Going into Wellborn. 36:11: RW: Right. 36:11: TG: It won’t stop, it is important. Um, can you talk a little bit about, what are the future plans now for the association? 36:23: RW: So we will um, we’ve recently sort of formalized our organizational structure so we now have official member who pay an annual $20 membership fee. We have a process for electing boards. So we are attempting to become more formal in our organizational structure with an eye towards the sustainability of the organization. So that is something we have already accomplished I think during this year. We are paying very close attention to the comprehensive plan revisions that are getting underway and we will be watching that like a hawk to make sure neighborhood concerns are protected in that. We have an active outreach we have to communicate who we are to HOAs around the city because we would like, as I said before the name College Station Association of Neighborhoods is aspirational because we don’t have any neighborhoods as members but it would be great to say we have neighborhoods or HOAs throughout the city that are meeting with us and we are getting feedback from them and work with them to advance their agendas and that’s another part. We have people who are working on trying to see if there is any way to improve communications from the city back to neighborhoods. And finally we have a group of people that are thinking about the commercial housing problem. How do we make sure that we have a way to house all the people that need to work here, live here? Whether that’s students who need affordable housing or families that need affordable housing, how do we make that happen? That’s a really tough nut to crack but we are paying some attention to that and at least come up with information on what’s the status of the rental market in College Station and what are other cities doing to deal with these issues. So those are I think our main action items for 2019. 39:35: TG: Thank you. 39:36: RW: And then the election circuit comes around very fast. 39:37: TG: Again. 39:38: Both: [Laughing] 39:39: TG: I have a question, has this association worked with other associations similar to this one in other cities? 39:47: RW: No. 39:47: TG: I’m thinking of other college towns? 39:49: RW: No. 39:49: TG: To see what the issues. 39:50: RW: [Interrupted] there is a website you might have heard of called strong towns. 39:56: TG: Yeah. 39:56: RW: That everybody subscribes to. And they put out great information, great ideas and things like that. But we have not worked with anybody else directly. We haven’t had time [laugh]. 40:12: TG: Yeah, absolutely I understand. To backtrack I have a question, who were the founding members of CSAN? If you can recall. 40:21: RW: So, um [pause]. 40:27: TG: Or who was involved conversationally? 40:28: RW: Let me uh [stammering] I don’t know that I want to put anybody out there that who I mention there name and they go, “I don’t want to be openly affiliated with it.” Our officers, the founding officers were myself as President, Shirley Dupriest as Secretary, I think you know Shirley, right? 40:57: TG: Mhm. 40:58: RW: And Hays Glover was the founding Treasurer. Um, and then we had an array of other people who came and left and sometimes came and stayed. So it was fairly fluid for the year and a half it was quite fluid. And we had no official leadership, it was just who was on the listserv and who showed up at the meetings [laughs]. But then just last month or I guess April it was, we elected formally a board. And now we have nine people on the board and that’s official. 41:51: TG: That’s excellent. 41:52: RW: Is that okay? 41:53: TG: Yeah, absolutely. As we end our interview is there anything else you would like to add before we conclude? 42:01: RW: No, I don’t think so. Um, I hope the CSAN can continue to be a part of making College Station a wonderful place to live and a place where the students and people who have been living here since they were four years old and are now past retirement are still happy to live and call home. 42:32: TG: Well thank you, Dr. Woodward. 42:33: RW: Alright. 42:34: TG: So on behalf of the City of College Station, I want to thank you for your time and efforts in making College Station a beautiful place to live. So this concludes our oral interview.