SAN BENITO — After months of community pressure, city commissioners are streamlining a costly process requiring home buyers subdivide properties sitting on more than one lot while they also scrapped a clause giving the city rights to cut off violators’ utilities.
During a meeting Tuesday, commissioners voted to revise the 1995 ordinance, cutting down the extensive re-platting process while slashing its high costs.
As part of the city’s new requirements, commissioners are authorizing staff to approve plats involving subdivisions of four or fewer lots if new street construction or utility installations are not required, as long as the property has not changed boundaries since the ordinance’s passage on Feb. 14, 1995 and owners can show proof of property deeds.
Meanwhile, commissioners scrapped a utility code clause giving the city the right to cut utilities to properties in which owners have not complied with re-platting requirements.
Rallying around case
For months, a citizens’ group rallied around Kerri Valencia’s case, in which city officials stopped her from reconnecting her utilities until she re-platted her property at a cost she claimed reached $9,000.
“We’re making progress with the city — it’s a good start. It shows they’re listening,” she said before the meeting. “It solves my problem but it doesn’t solve the larger problem.”
By September, the group was demonstrating outside City Hall, waving signs calling on commissioners to fire City Manager Manuel De La Rosa, claiming he was misinterpreting the old ordinance they believe includes a grandfather clause waiving requirements for properties subdivided before the law’s passage.
“That larger problem is the city manager is difficult to work with,” Valencia said, adding the group has gathered about 9,000 signatures calling for De La Rosa’s firing. “I don’t want the people of my town to be afraid of the city manager or anyone else at City Hall. I want the power back in the people’s hands.”
Questions arise
Meanwhile, Tom Goodman, Valencia’s father who leads the citizens’ group, questioned whether De La Rosa and City Attorney Mark Sossi had been aware of the old ordinance’s grandfather clause before residents pointed it out weeks ago.
“It’s disappointing the city manager and city attorney didn’t offer solutions as are available in other communities,” he said before the meeting, noting Sossi also serves as Harlingen’s city attorney. “Obviously, people have spent thousands of dollars unnecessarily when this issue could have been solved a long time ago.”
For weeks, Commissioner Pete Galvan argued the old ordinance included a grandfather clause exempting properties subdivided before the law’s passage from the costly re-platting process.
“The city most definitely knew about the grandfather clause,” he said before the meeting. “It just depends how you want to read it. They were interpreting it one way and I and a lot of citizens were interpreting it another way. It didn’t have to take this long or go this route.”
Moratorium
In September, commissioners called an emergency moratorium on the city’s re-platting process as they waited Sossi’s proposed revisions to the old ordinance.
“I’ve put a hold on everything,” Valencia said, referring to the city’s request that she re-plat the property on which sits her newly purchased home.
