ABC-7 Xtra: City Rejects Grant

here on abc >>> live where news comes first, this is “abc-7 xtra. >>> good evening, i’m maria garcia. welcome to “abc-7 xtra. tonight, we’re talking about something that appeared to upset a lot of people this week, the city of el paso rejected a more than $50,000 grant by the state to conduct a historic survey of downtown. the survey would have determined which buildings downtown were historic and started the path for a national historic district. the city council said downtown property owners, many of them, did not support the survey. this issue came down to trust. the city says the property owners were concerned the survey would be a precursor to regulations and restrictions. supporters of the survey, even some other property owners, pointed out the grant came with absolutely no restrictions, and instead, could unleash millions of dollars to state and federal tax credits to improve downtown buildings. supporters believed the city council made a decision that favored a small group of property owners based on unfounded fears. others say preservationists have been abrasive and have quote demonized property owners and property owners simply don’t trust their efforts. joing us tonight, city representative, the historical commission, and the central business association. you can e-mail us your comments and questions now to abc7xtra@kvia.com, call us at 915-496-1775, or you can tweet me at @mariagabc7. we’re trying a new system that shows your tweets on the bottom of the screen so if you want your tweets to show up there, make sure you use the hashtag #abc7xtra. >>> before our discussion, let’s get a quick recap of what happened this week. >> disappointed but not surprised. >> el paso is the last major city in texas to conduct a historic survey like this and cities usually go after these grants because they unleash federal tax credits that can save property owners money when improving their buildings. >> the kind of collaboration and communication that needed to be done for us to accept this grant, which is genuine stakeholder involvement as well as genuine input from the preservation committee and from the city never occurred in a way that was adequate. >> many downtown property owners are concerned the survey would lead to future regulations on them and city reps were adamant there was a quote end game but over and over again, city employees and preservation advocates told city council that just was not so. >> and yes, they got up here today and some of them pontificated, restriction, restriction, restriction, there’s no restrictions involved. >> i think it would have given us ample time to gather that input from stakeholders. so i think it was a little irresponsible to deny the grant. >> only two city reps voted against rejecting the grant. >> let’s start our discussion now with our city representative, the central business association, and the el paso historical commission. thank you to all three of you for joing us. i really appreciate it. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> we have a lot to get to but peter, i want to start with you. when i first spoke to you about this, it was i think a couple of weeks ago you had just gotten into office, you were trying to understand what exactly had happened. you were trying to figure out how we got here, and you put on the agenda to try to vet this publicly on monday. we know how that turned out. and i know you were stressed out about the decision. and i know you agonized over it. but ultimately, there’s a lot of people who believe you broke a really big campaign promise really quickly. >> you know,… i have shown through my actions of the last four years with my involvement with the el paso street project, my support and dedication for historic preservation, and i think that having an historic street car line will only offer more of an incentive for a place for historic preservation within our downtown redevelopment. but what i saw when i came into council and what i tried to understand in less than three weeks now that i’ve been a city councilman is that while i support what the county historical commission was trying to do and what the city of el paso’s economic development was trying to do with this grant and with this survey, the kind of support and the kind of consensus that was needed from multiple sides of this community simply wasn’t there. and if you look back at that meeting, after some of the other city councilmen went up and spoke their piece which i think a lot of it was based on misinformation, i tried to put my first motion is a city councilman to extend as long as we could accepting this grant and create a task force or a commission so we could get those moderate voices from the business community and from the preservation community together to build some consensus. the fact is our city has some problems, our city has some opportunities, but the only way forward where we go is if we can get people talking to each other and getting some consensus so that we can keep on going in the right direction. >> the el paso historical commission has said they tried to start that conversation but i want to — we already have some feedback, daniel lopez saying my concern on the issue is that the small group of downtown investors and the public servants whose campaigns they funded will use the public airways to whitewash the real truth. and i’m sure you know already that there’s people who are saying that this gives the perception that you are beholden to people who contributed to your campaign, who are property owners downtown. >> honestly it’s kind of an insulting suggestion. i’ve had — people that contributed to my campaign that are actively involved in the historic preservation programs now in downtown. i’ve had campaign contributions from environmentalists, i’ve had contributions from land developers, i’ve had campaign contributions from artists, i’ve had campaign contributions from bankers. people elected me because they wanted some intelligence and common sense to the city council and that’s where my vote was based on. >> speaking of intelligence, people believe this decision was based on fear, on misinformation, on misperceptions instead of facts. and they were looking to you and other city reps and saying you are the smart, progressive people, what happened? >> i don’t know what happened because i’ve been in council for three weeks. it seemed that this runup for gaing consensus to approve this grant wasn’t where it need to be. and i don’t know who exactly is at fault there, whether it was from the city’s economic development department, from folks or preservationists. to me, what this vote pointed to and a lot of the misinformation is based on the fact that there’s a lot of mistrust between the different communities here. and when somebody doesn’t believe the messenger of that message, no matter how good it is, it’s really hard to build that consensus and that agreement that is necessary. >> okay, i want to get to the point you’re making there, i do want to say we invited other city representatives, she sent us a statement and we’re going to get to that in just a bit but bernie, i want to to get to the point that if you don’t believe the messenger, no matter how good their message is, people aren’t going to buy it. and we’ve heard from city representatives saying that there are people in the preservation community whose methods are abrasive and aggressive and whose rhetoric is harmful and that property owners just don’t trust whatever it is that they’re bringing to the table. >> i’ve heard that and i know that there’s a lot of passion, passion on both sides of the arena. we’ve met with every single city representative at least once and some more than one time and felt pretty confident that we have conveyed our sincerity and the nuts and bullets of what this meant, not both an encumbrance on the property owner, and that we have a time element that we had to follow in order to accept the funds and use the funds and it was $50,000, it was very much on the high end of what the state normally gives out on an annual basis to the point that it actually stopped other communities in texas from receiving any funds to do a survey and ultimately expand or develop a national historic district. and so they were quite disappointed and shocked that we didn’t go forward with it. then we also got a grant to add to that. so we had about half if not more of what we needed to accomplish a survey to put in place the national historic district downtown. now, when we talked with the city council representatives, myself and max grossman, we felt that we had two people that were kind of on the fence, then we had consensus from everyone else that we were going to go forward with it. so it caught me by surprise when there was such a strong sentiment expressed, totally opposed to it with information that wasn’t accurate. they were citing situations that took place that were caused by the local historic district designation, which is much more strenuous and difficult to meet, not impossible, but more difficult to meet the requirements that are put forth. and they kept quoting those kinds of things that were taking place. i think the sad thing is peter is new there and a lot of folks on council didn’t have a lot of the details. there were some of us that had the information and we could have conveyed that but rules of city council is we have three minutes to talk and they don’t normally just let you come right back up and try to offer input. so we were quite disappointed and the passions really ran high after that. some to the fault i will admit and i’ve asked some folks to tone it down — >> even before the decision, bernie, there’s some concern that the rhetoric, you mentioned max grossman, from mr. grossman on facebook, is so scathing and so harmful that it erodes trust and it helps to destroy your cause instead of help it. >> we’ve had some property owners that have been very, very strong in their sentiments, too. they’re not as ever present in the press, but behind the scenes they’re very vocal and very strong in what they’re saying, opposed to conservation, preservation of these sites. we’re capitalists, we believe in the opportunities and i admire the folks that have been very successful in their development programs and packages throughout the whole community of el paso. and try to develop el paso, facts are we’re 23% below poverty level. we’re trying to reach out to these people. we’re trying to create an esprit de corps. i would like to have property downtown but we want to help these people. there’s folks that have run into situations where they want to improve their buildings but they find it difficult to do so because the city doesn’t have the staff to support them, to hold them from a. to b. to get these things done in a timely fashion, in an economical fashion. so what we’re trying to do is build that up. now, along the way certainly, some things were said and hindsight being 20/20 shouldn’t have been said but moving forward we need to convey to the folks that we’re here to help them, not to make it impossible for the developers to do something downtown. we want to make it a positive. peter here wants to do a lot with the trolley. i think it’s a wonderful idea. the trolley by itself is not going to drive downtown el paso. it’s going to take a lot more than that. there’s got to be something for the people to see when they come down to downtown el paso. >> i do want to get to the statement we received. she mentioned that she’s done a lot to support historic preservation downtown. she mentioned the martin building and she says she believes in incentivizing it rather than further regulating property owners and i want to get to a specific part of her statement that she sent us. she says the challenge with the preservationists is some have created such an adverse relationship with many of the downtown property owners because of their approach and style that have become difficult for us to build consensus about the importance of rehabbing our important historic buildings. she goes on to say this grant should never have been applied for without involving the downtown stakeholders on the front-end so they would have a better understanding of the purpose and potential implications. i support the purpose behind grant. we should have a better sense of the historic assets we have but most of those who are involved in historic preservation advocacy don’t own anything downtown so they are basically imposing their values and philosophies on others who want to be able to use their property and not be saddled with oversight that makes it impossible to retrofit an old building for another use. i want to ask you a question. and i do want to have you respond to that in just a minute, bernie. but representative lily limon said when it comes to investing downtown, when it comes to asking us in an arena or in the ballpark, downtown is for everybody, right? downtown is el paso’s living room but when it comes to this situation, it appeared to a lot of people like the voices that really mattered when it came to downtown were the voices of property owners. you heard over and over again when speakers would come up on monday, the city rep asking them if they owned property. and for a lot of el pasoans, that seemed like their voices matter less if they don’t own property downtown when downtown should belong to everyone. but what do you think about that? >> well, certainly over the last 40 years, i’ve dedicated my life to rebuilding downtown el paso. the union plaza, we gave it that name back in the 1990s. and so looking at downtown restoration and downtown revitalization has been a calling for me over the last 40 years. i think when we talk about public projects, then certainly all of us have a buy in the public projects but there are still, owners still have rights. owners do have rights to their property. you have rights over your house. people who own properties all over the city have rights to their properties, and i think it was interesting what bernie said a minute ago he made it a point to see each and every city council representative to talk about this. my question to him would be how many property owners did he talk to? did he actually convey how beneficial this would be and how they could participate and we could come in unison, which is what pete schwartz actually wanted, for us to come together, for the best interests of downtown and el paso as a whole? but i think there were a couple of points that need to be clarified. when i think when i got up and spoke, and i think i was about the only person who spoke for the way that the motion ended, it was because i had known that there were already surveys done in el paso, 1992, we dedicated $75,000 to doing a survey of downtown properties. in 2001, we did an update to those surveys. i had asked economic development, especially jessica rare who works with economic development for the city to produce those documents so we could get a basis upon which we could solicit for this $55,000 grant by the way which had to be met warn additional $55,000 out of or money. it was $110,000 for a survey that we had previously spent $75,000 on. they didn’t have it. at that moment, economic development did not have it. they did promise city council that they would get it and immediately the next day i did receive a survey that had been done, declaring the south el paso district an historic district. and here is a copy of that report that was given to me by economic development. that wasn’t good enough. i wanted to know what buildings had an historic overlay and could i get the huge survey that was down in 1992, and then subsequently updated in 2002? so on friday of this past week just two days ago, i did receive from the city a 200 page detailed survey of every downtown property of historical significance and it was detailed to the type of structure it was, suggestions on how they should be revitalized, everything that this other survey was going to do we already have it but nobody had seen it because it was buried in a vault when we moved from the old city hall. >> i want to get to that. >> one last point. >> they’re telling me i have to take a commercial break. it’s 10:54. we’re going to get to a commercial break. i’ll let you finish your point and i know bernie you have something to say about this and representative nyland’s comments when we come back. stay with us. you’re watching “abc-7 xtra. we’re also going to get to our phone lines >>> welcome back. we’re talking about that historic grant for downtown el paso for the survey that the city rejected this week. i’m going to let you finish that point. >> very quickly. i went to the national registry site and i looked up buildings that already have an overlay and, believe it or not, on the national registry site you could pull up every county in the city of texas, when you went to el paso county, there was a message that said this page has been released, it’s not there. i went to wikipedia and asked it for all the downtown properties that have historical overlays and sure enough i found 19 buildings all of which are open to receiving the 45% funding, tax credit funding that already have historical relationships with the national registry. then i went to see what does it take to get that registry? you have to go through the state first, that could take 90 days and then 30 additional days to get through the national registry and these 19 buildings which include virtually every downtown property that is declared historically significant already has an overlay, can’t be torn down, has to be built out within the guidelines of the national registry and already is complying with whatever regulations we were about to spend $110,000 worth of public funding on. if you say to me, we want to update, and i think peter’s point was really good. i think what he wanted and courtney niland as well was let’s see what we’ve got. i think we haven’t gotten all the information, and by the way this funding for this grant can be reapplied for in september. >> but bernie, you heard from the state saying they weren’t going to give us the same points if we applied again? >> they’ll looked it with a different view because we’ve turned it down and they did stretch it out and actually give us 56, $6,000 more than the 50 mix that anybody could have gotten. and they have told me there’s no way they could look at it the same way because there’s not a lot of confidence that the city of el paso will move forward with it and the 19 buildings only reflects a percentage of the buildings downtown. the survey we were going to accomplish was going to be more than just the 1991-2001 package that was laid out previously. it was going to grow. historical buildings is in the eye of the beholder. some are historic, some aren’t. as years go on, 1991 was a few years ago, there’s a few more buildings that could be historic. and so we have to look at that and to the city council, niland’s comment about the stakeholders because we don’t have buildings downtown, what we say and what we request aren’t as important, we’re taxpayers. i’m looking at the property tax i see pay on my house, there’s a five story building downtown that pays less taxes than i do. i think i have an interest downtown, not that i want to force my thoughts and my beliefs on that person but why is that building so low in rent? if you look at santa fe, parts of dallas, houston, san antonio, where they went forward with these kinds of programs and packages, the property values increased. certainly on the downside of that they pay more taxes but at the same time, their rentals went up, the occupancy went up, it was a win-win for the property owners. so business as usual is not the winning solution. >> is go ahead. >> when i was there on monday, with my vote, the second part of that motion was to order staff to continue to have a conversation and dialogue with stakeholders and preservation owners to come up with a timeline and solutions about how to move forward. i think — no, i know, that if we can come together with some moderate voices and be able to approach council whether it’s in six months or a year and be able to approach the state again, i know we’ll be in a better footing and one of the things i’m looking to do within the first next three months is to come up with a summit for downtown redevelopment and historic preservation, bringing in some local voices and perhaps some outside voices, too, so we can continue this conversation, which is so desperately needed in this community. >> we’ll take you up on that in a few months. we have an e-mail. if there would be zero effect to the downtown building owners, then why do the preservationists care? they are falsely claiming that nothing negative will happen when they know that this grant will 100% open the door to regulation, period. otherwise, they would have zero interest in the grant because it would not help them force property owners to do what they want them to. how do you respond to that? >> yeah, i’ve read a lot of his comments on both sides of the spectrum there’s comments that have been a little bit too far out there. no, it would not 100% require these people to meet regulations. any regulations that the city deems additional they would have to vote in. to that point, i know that representative niland said when she leaves office what’s to say her replacement is not going to say i need more regulation? that’s true but that’s when you have to depend on the voters and you have to convince the voters that you’re going to be elected to carry their trust forward. and also there was a couple of comments made that we didn’t reach out to the people. 2002, 2013, 2014, we had what we called a heritage preservation summit. very well attended. everyone in the community was invited. there was a lot of press that was taking place, no cost to anybody attending, and we had experts on all aspects of what we’re talking about today discussing historic preservation and also in 2014, one of the major topics we were talking about was the history of place and this particular grant, what it could mean to el paso as a whole, not just the 19 plus buildings downtown but also going into the barrio and the areas of el paso. a lot of heritage, a lot of history that we would like to develop for the community of el paso. >> okay. let’s go to our phone lines. carlos, what’s your comment or question? >> raising taxes seems to be the solution to everything. losing money on grants and everything seems to be the process. is the acceptance of mediocrity by city government, county government and individual enties in this community, is it the norm? this question is for everybody on the panel. can we accept this to be the norm in el paso? >> as i mentioned earlier, we’re going on $2 billion in debt with certificates of obligation and bonds. we have a $450 million bond that the community approved. i chair the bond oversight committee. and my concern is i’m watching taxes go up, looking at a little over 2% tax increase on the average home in the city of el paso and that’s just one small portion of what every property owner has to endure. certainly, tammy’s very much aware of that. if we’re trying to entice team into moving to this community to retire or otherwise, how can we continue to raise taxes on these people and make it more and more expensive for them on fixed incomes to live here? that he isn’t objective. the objective is to make it appealing for people so we don’t have the bloomberg report that said there’s a lot of people leaving el paso for various reasons. we want them to stay here and we want them to be excited. >> we have some tweets, regulation is being used as a curse word. if we did not have regulation, we would be eating bad food more often than now. great idea to show tweets on tv. angel saying i’m glad peter is trying to extend the conversation and preservation of downtown. calvin tweeting we can’t move forward if there’s fear of progressing. robert tweeting squabbles over surveys while the wrecking ball keeps on swinging, shakes my head. eduardo tweeting moneyed interests have been more adversarial by destroying buildings that are clearly historical and extremist muddy the waters. i commend peter for having a level head. alex tweeting always in support of historic preservation. we’ll be back with more questions and we’ll be back with more stay with us. >>> welcome back. let’s get to our callers. we have grace from central on the phone. what’s your comment or your question? >> instead of taking care of lights on airports, finish what you started downtown and restore it. it is a shame how it looks. >> we have an e-mail from jesse. if preservationists are being abrasive it’s with good reason. simply look at the conditions of our downtown area. what was once a glorious thriving and beautiful downtown is now a sad and embarrassing city center. we need to preserve el paso’s historic downtown before it’s too late. the city needs to do everything in its power to restore downtown to its former glory while also embracing modern infrastructure and architecture. now, i do want to talk about downtown development. the city says there’s been $53 million of investment in downtown since the ballpark. and essentially we heard representative niland using the analogy of the carrot and the stick. you have to incentivize, entice property owners to rehab their buildings instead of regulate them she says. and so when you look at the 1992 survey, some point out there was nothing done after that. there was no traction. nobody was redeveloping any building or doing anything downtown to make it look better, whereas when the city started incentivizing a few years ago, that’s when you started to see property owners really put money into rehabbing these buildings. what do you think about that, bernie? >> there has been a push historically to move and spread out from downtown, convenience strip malls, and so on and so forth, the convenience of getting to and from your place of business or where you want to shop and now, the push is going back towards the downtown city center and to that end folks have started investing downtown and i give them a lot of credit for doing it. we do have some programs in place for facade development, for improvements in the buildings. we were working diligently to spread out that availability of tax credits and funds by expanding the downtown historic district to make it a national historic district and make it more available to people. again, the baseball stadium, beautiful stadium, it is a gorgeous stadium. but there’s nothing going on there, a big part of the year, after what 75 home games. it’s just dormant. we have an arena coming up soon somewhere downtown. we don’t know where that’s going to be. all of these things are going to be — they’re going to swallow property. they will add to the downtown attention but will they bring the public down there when there’s no events taking place? we need stuff going on all the time, union plaza, that’s a diamond. it just needs to be polished. >> we heard from property owners on monday saying i am not a multimillion dollar property owner downtown. i own this building and if i got those tax credits that this survey could unleash, i could do so much more to improve that building. there’s property owners who say don’t monopolize my voice. there’s people saying this would have helped me with my building downtown. >> let’s talk about regulations. when you access those 45% tax credits that are available for renovation of buildings, they come with severe restrictions. and if you talk to property owners who have actually gotten those funds, they invest substantially more money in their properties than they receive in tax credits, and i think the martin renovation i read in today’s paper that even the martin renovation, restrictions on the windows that he can use and the way that that has to be developed in order to access those funds that make it extremely onerous on a property owner. this survey was only going to make historical properties within this district open to receiving the funds. i’m not sure if that’s an incentive to renovate properties. i think what we’ve got to do is sit down with property owners, use all the tools that are in our chest and that’s what we heard over and over again at city council. use all the tools that we have available to encourage property owners to go along with creating something. >> but you heard — [ overlapping speakers ] >> but saying local incentives just don’t compare with state and federal incentives. >> i don’t think he has renovated an historic building. >> that’s not true. >> if he has and accessed the 45% in funding. >> absolutely. >> his architecture company did the martin building. >> they’ve done the same thing. >> it’s more expensive and substantially more expensive. >> one particular gentleman went after his incentives and he realized a million and a half dollars in tax credits. without it he would have probably realized somewhere close to $600,000. that’s kind of a nice increase. now, the truth is he could have gotten more had he gotten help at the beginning and walked through the process. he could have been eligible for a lot more tax credit. >> peter i have a question for you. you know, even if there’s clearly some division between the perception of preservationists in the eyes of property owners, and i’m sorry, i know you’re more than preservationist but that’s the de facto term that everybody seems to be using. >> it’s a four letter word. >> and between property owners and there’s this inerrant conflict. is this your job as a city rep to go above the fray, to go above the divisive psychology and to look at the big picture, to look at the long-term thing, to look at the what’s really good for el paso based on the facts and couldn’t you have done that by accepting the grant, knowing that it wasn’t — that the survey wasn’t due until next september and you could have had that time to build consensus? >> for me, my vote was continuing the conversation and thinking a little bit more strategically. i could have easily voted to accept the grant and be one of two other voices where there was no chance for that grant to go down. i’m sure that i would have, you know, not have been as vilified online had i done that but for me what i was trying to concentrate on was thinking strategically about getting those moderate voices together. our cultural heritage and our cultural economy is just as important as our economic one and we can’t progress as a city could you tell — without our history. you have to know where you’re going to know where you’re going to go. with my involvement so early on, i thought it was important to continue this dialogue. being involved i guess in politics now, i’m still developing how to think politically as opposed to thinking logically and i guess i’ll continue to work on that. but to me, it was important to continue this conversation and it was important to view myself as much as possible to be a bridge so that those voices that want to work together can do that. but the fact is you have a neighbor that yells at you every day when you come home and throws pots and pans in your front yard and says you know, the next day i’m going to build a fence with you, are you really going to want to build something with them? we need to think about that. evidently — >> clearly, you’re saying the bad neighbor is the preservation committee? >> i’m saying at this point, there’s a lot of people there and there’s a lot of mistrust on both sides. >> okay. >> taking a step back, working, instructing staff to continue that conversation and trying to build some consensus is vitally important. >> thank you so much for coming. we ran out of time, thank you so much for attending. we appreciate it. thank you so much, bernie i appreciate you. you were so accessible when i called you and you didn’t give any conditions, ask any questions, you just came on. bernie, you always faced up, that takes guts and i appreciate it. and peter, i know you were worried and this was hard for you and there’s a lot of elected officials who will make very impactful decisions and then refuse to answer questions about them publicly later and so i appreciate that you came on this program. thank you so much. >> thank you for having me. >> thank you so much for joining us on “abc-7 xtra. we