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View from the Council Table

In the heated rhetoric of an election year, it is easy to think we share nothing with those who don’t vote as we vote. This is simply not true. I know our community and our ability to unite in common cause to protect this town we love – its natural beauty, its welcoming people, and its authentic hill country culture. We share a sense of belonging and a desire to protect this wonderful place.

Recently, we demonstrated our ability to work together to preserve our night sky by achieving an International Dark Sky City designation – only the twentieth in the country. That’s the Wimberley I know we can be! And, while that’s a great feat, as one of the fastest growing areas in the nation - with a population that could double by 2050 - we need to do more. We have development protections in place to help manage growth, but we need to strengthen them if we don’t want to become Anytown USA – with miles and miles of pavement, increased run-off and pollution.

One of the next changes I would like to see is a way to preserve our trees. Think about it. The stately cypress and rustling sycamores on the banks of the creek, the majestic live oaks, the colorful flame leaf sumac, cedar elms, red oaks and hackberries – think about how much they add to the beauty, ecologic health, and peaceful ambiance of our town. And we have no ordinance protecting them.

When it comes to developers’ greed, our trees don’t stand a chance. Numerous times on council I have “asked” developers to protect and preserve heritage trees in their developments through the Wimberley Planned Development District (WPDD) process. WPDDs are development agreements that apply to site developments 1 acre and up. Each time, citizens and I have been grossly disappointed in how that request was interpreted. Trees on smaller commercial lots in city limits (9 square miles) and in our Extraterritorial Jurisdiction (ETJ) (24.5 square miles) are not protected either.

We should not have to plead with developers to save the trees they can. The city council can add a Heritage Tree Preservation section to our site development and subdivision ordinances that would let developers know in advance of their planning that we expect them to protect, replace, or pay the city for destruction of larger trees. This would exclude single-family residential development. The trees we protect can be a certain diameter and above and even be tailored by species for those trees that are naturally smaller. To accommodate situations where trees cannot be saved, developers/property owners could have options such as tree replacement or a cash-in-lieu system where the money collected can be used for treescaping elsewhere in the city.

Wimberley citizens love our beautiful small town. As a council member, I have been tasked by citizens to work towards realizing the vision of community expressed in our Comprehensive Plan – our democratic roadmap. This document articulates, for me, a special balance of the rugged individualism I celebrate as a small-townby-choice Texan, and the collective action I know is necessary to protect the natural resources synonymous with a Texan way of life – land, water, wildlife, trees, stars – amidst tremendous growth pressures.

Statewide politicians have politicized tree ordinances, and their hyper-partisanship seems to have trickled down to Wimberley, to our detriment. But common-sense heritage tree preservation for commercial development is not a right or left issue. Trees are not red or blue.

As I said when I brought the tree ordinance issue back to council in September 2017, picking up where then Councilmember Sally Trapp left off in February 2017, our Comprehensive Plan mentions trees preservation and clean air no less than 9 times (page 17, specifically). This community values trees. We should have an ordinance that reflects this value – a shared value.

Wimberley View

P.O. Box 49
Wimberley, TX 78676
Phone: 512-847-2202
Fax: 512-847-9054