ustxtxb_obs_1973_06_29_50_00008-00000_000.pdf

planning director to comment, Davis told the city manager that the planners. were “overwhelmingly” negative to the idea. The city council unanimously backed up their planners at that point. Even though his job is in grave jeopardy, Davis gave no quarter as he told the judge why the planners had said no. The new town north, he said, conflicted with other goals. Competing for federal funds for the area, for example for model cities housing and a job-training center, it conflicted with revitalizing the inner city area. Increasing development northward, it would do nothing but increase undesirable migration, rather than reversing or reducing it as the federal legislation envisions. More expressways are required for the new town north, he said, yet already “basically we are … terribly underutilizing our investments in the south.” Eventual annexation of the ranch town is assumed, and “What if the city cannot afford to provide all of the services so remote from existing development within the required time? How many of these services such as fire and power would the developer of homeowners’ association be able to absorb?” Finally, he doubted the feasibility of preventing pollution of the aquifer from the new town, which he said would increase development on the aquifer’s “prime recharge area” in Bexar County from 2.5 percent to 18 percent or 20 percent. He alluded to one of the developers’ studies that spoke of “perhaps an additional 40,000 [people] in the surrounding area” around the new town, and he said there was nothing to prevent these 40,000 people from using septic tanks. The planners, Davis continued, came up with six or eight alternate sites, south or southeast and fairly close in. Referring to developments and acquisitions by developers such as Ellison and H. B. Zachry in the southerly sections, Davis testified about “the concern for low and moderate-income opportunities for families to be located in the new town either in a living situation or working situation. . . [T] his may not be as bright a pay-back to the developer in a short period of time. I think we need to respect that. Instead of ten years it may be 25 or 30 years; but you are talking about growth patterns of a metropolitan area over a 20or 30-year period, which should be of the maximum benefit to the total area.” The developers and the philosophically resigned answer all this with the assertion, stated as one delivers a fact that anyone with any real knowledge of life knows to 8 The Texas Observer be true, that nothing can stop development northward in San Antonio. Red McCombs, the car merchant who was central in the new town in-town attempt, says land is only $400 an acre to the south, and even at $25,00 an acre to the north, “people will still go north. It’s where the action is.” An astute San Antonio Light reporter, Arthur Moczygemba, believes people like to move to the heights near a city, “perhaps for a feeling of dominance,” and they move toward the status neighborhoods if they can in San Antonio, north. When HUD’s DeVito was on the stand he lauded the ranch-town program to integrate minorities into it and said “there are darn few poor people who don’t have some kind of wheels” to drive to and from the new town north. There would also be bus transportation. Minorities would be helped organize businesses’ out there; the developer was committed to recruit minorities for the housing, affirmatively emphasizing integration in their advertising. He spoke of poor people being able to “go out to a beautiful area and have a job.” Conceding to Hardberger that the 1970 law says federal programs affect the location of population and urban development and that the central city tends to deteriorate and become “a haven for poor people,” HUD’s man argued that “Growth decisions are not made by individuals on the basis of civic responsibility.” Did he not think the secretary of HUD “has some obligation to try to help things?” Hardberger asks. “No single new community manages to do everything,” DeVito said. Of poorer people and the new town, he said, “I think they will find an enormous relief that they are accepted and that they are able to participate in amenities” from which they are now excluded in the southern half of the metropolitan area. AT THE END of the trial the plaintiffs got in some hard blows in the testimony of Ms. Powell, who teaches all the courses leading to Trinity University’s MA degree in urban planning. She is a graduate of Radcliff and Harvard, formerly a planning consultant in Oklahoma City, other cities, and for institutions and industrial corporations.. Ms. Powell established that 52 percent of the San Antonio population is Spanish-speaking and 7.5 percent is black and that most of the chicanos live in the southern half of the city and most of the blacks in pockets on the east side. She cited studies showing that generally people move very short distances and then into similar incomeand socio-economic areas. She thought blacks and chicanos would be much more likely to participate in a new town on the south side than the one northwest of the city: “The question of distance is a major factor here.” With San Antonio having the lowest median family income of any city in the country, one cannot just say, ” ‘Well, you can’t turn the market around,’ ” she insisted. The land in the aquifer recharge zone “should not be developed,” all of it should be bought outright with open space programs and public grants and resold with development rights subtracted from it and zoning and other planning tools used to control its use, she said. She thought trends in the legislative and other public areas make such a pattern of events a possibility within five or ten years. If development of the ranch was not stopped, she said, it would be an invitation to build on the recharge zone, whereas if it is stopped, developers will “obviously think twice.” Wheatley, the developers’ lawyer, came back hard, contesting for the judge’s mind. He suggested that members of minorities already drive long distances to go to work. Did she have any objection, he asked Ms. Powell, to HUD trying to “see if these patterns can be broken up” as to work and residential conditions? She replied she had seen “no concern” for the human needs of the population in all the developers’ documents; and a little further on, she said, “People move where they know.” “Apparently,” Wheatley rejoined, “there’s just nothing that can be done.” Subsequently , Honts said during an interview that they would have put on a witness to answer Ms. Powell’s points if, in the courtroom situation, they had been able to. It is not reasonable, Honts said, to believe that people won’t continue to move into the scenic areas. “The hills are where people are going to move.” He pointed to the new presence out that way of UTSA, the UT medical branch, and the United States Automobile Association headquarters. The developer, Honts said, follows the marketplace. If the new town was on the south side, “the only clientele we could probably attract would be the blacks and the browns, mainly the browns. We could not attract the affluent Anglo.” Doesn’t it make better sense, he asked, to build north? Of the minorities, he said, “They want to move out there. They don’t want to be trapped into the poor areas. They want what you and I want, a good school, a safe neighborhood, an area in their eyes that means prestige.” In the south, he said, the new town “would go bankrupt,” because building northward is “the established trend. .I don’t think people are ready to legislate where people are going to have to live.” The development occur on the aquifer in any case, he said; the new town is not a generation of such development, but a funnel to put some of it under controls. “The immediate The developer, Honts said, follows the marketplace