Council delays action on mobile home park again

The only item people wanted to talk about at Hallettsville City Hall Monday evening, or so it seemed, at the very least, was a proposed residential park that could well land on the city’s northern edge.

To some, like former mayor pro-tem Cindy Renken who following a vote of city residents last Saturday, lost her seat at the table of city leaders when she challenged Mayor Alice Jo Summers for her post, the roughly 18-acre tract was just the sort of place the city needed to pave the way for tomorrow’s growth, across all social classes, though the lambasts of it and family members tied to the project on social media were a mite hard to stomach.

“We 100 percent need more housing in this community, and that’s precisely what this project provides,” she said. “These are affordable places that more people might be able to make use of, but that’s no reason to defame someone’s good name over it.”

Besides, she added, “with no city zoning ordinances on the books, there’s not much to stand in its way.”

Speaking of belly aches For the much larger group that gathered for the city council meeting Monday, it was using words like “development” or even “project” that they found hardest to stomach.

Local attorney James Reeves purchased just shy of two acres a few years back, from what was then part of the 20-acre tract that made up the Lover’s Lane complex. There he and his wife built themselves a rather nice home, with ample trees to shield them from most of their neighbors, both at the old RV park and along County Road 200

Incidentally, that’s the two-laned county-owned thoroughfare on which the lone driveway to the proposed housing edition, which if developer David Dye had his way once they did some needed land clearing at the site, would soon be home to more than 100 new Hallettsville families

Dye brought the project before the council last month, seeking several variances to the city’s building ordinances (mostly in setbacks, when it comes to where he’d like houses to go in relation the current property boundaries. He proposed building a neighborhood that still caters to a few RVs at its heart but expands to include various modular and prefab house designs as well.

“They’re trailers, plain and simple, no matter what you call them. Not only will they bring the value of my home and about 25-30 others in the vicinity, but we’ll also be right in the middle of them,” Reeves said. “Those some of the nicer homes here in Hallettsville, I might add.”

Plus, as Hallettsville ISD superintendent JoAnn Bludau pointed out in comments made just before the city broke into an unanticipated executive session to confer with the city’s attorney over the matters related to Dye’s proposed development, the local school system isn’t equipped to suddenly absorb some 400 new school children.

That’s what she said her number crunchers predict could soon arrive from the more than 100-home complex, and “that’s not something that anyone wants” for the city’s schools.

“It’s no secret that we’re dealing with a teacher shortage as well,” she said. “While we don’t really have an opinion one way or another in terms of where a project like this might wind up, our current schools are not equipped to handle that kind of growth all at once, which this project has the potential to create. We only ask that council members consider every aspect of what they do next very carefully.”

Beyond the growing pains City leaders then ushered the standing-room-only crowd out of their chambers so they could place a call to their attorney, to whom they posed several questions, not least of which was one raised by Reeves

While the city may lack the needed zoning laws now, they have several matters covered in other parts of their city ordinances. “It’s just a matter of applying the thing at the right time.

Chief among those, nothing in current law says that the city MUST grant the new owners of the property any variance whatsoever. Just because a place might be allowed to house RVs now, does not mean the city also has to allow in mobile homes and everything else,” he said

In fact, them conferring with city leaders on said variances may well be a case of putting the horse before the cart, he said. “Our own codes make clear and absolute distinctions between mobile homes, modular housing and RVs. Just because they have one of those now does not mean you have to allow all the rest just because they added them to the name of the project.”

Also, there are some very distinct rules on the books for each of those housing types. One of them requires that the developer first acquire a needed city license for such projects, and that public notices/listening sessions be held to determine the project’s community support.

Short of all those variances, however, Reeves noted that there’s scarcely a way possible they could even fit half as many homes there.

Besides, without the required licenses in hand and absent the public polling for the project, dealing with variances may well be a moot point, anyhow, he added.

It was on that point—licensing—that the city’s attorney drew a blank, not certain if the city even could forego those requested variances without adhering to those other rules first. While they search out case law to better support their arguments, council’s hands are pretty tied

City leaders voted unanimously to table the issue at their May 15 meeting to bring it back for a third shot at passing those variances next month, at which time city leaders hope to have a better read on some of the items Reeves raised this week.