Council moves to dissolve Old Town board

The Port Aransas City Council has decided to dissolve the Old Town Preservation Advisory Board.

Meeting on Thursday, Dec. 15, council directed city staff to develop an ordinance to eliminate the board. In the same motion, the council also voted to accept the board’s final report and new mission statement.

The measure passed with a vote of 6-0. Council member David Sieloff wasn’t present.

“I would like to see them continued as an advisory board but in different terms, maybe not as an extension to the city, taking up city staff time,” council member Tanya Chambers said at the meeting. “Those have been long meetings. Let them continue as an advisory board kind of on their own.”

Old Town

Mallory Kollaja, is the board chair, and Patt Coeckelenbergh is the co-chair. Other members are Cathy Fulton, Barney Farley and Corky Moore. Jill Brodnax is the alternate. The council created the board and appointed members to it in April.

The Old Town area has some of the oldest homes in the city and is made up of an area mostly north of Avenue G, south of Cotter Avenue and east of Oleander and Alister streets.

The board met Oct. 27 and voted to create a mission statement that said the panel was “to encourage preservation and rehabilitation of the historic and unique resources of the ‘old town area’ and in carrying out that task encourage neighborhood stabilization all of these in collaboration with the Port Aransas Preservation and Historical Association.”

The City Council first saw the board’s final report of recommendations including a specific set of regulations for new development and short-term rentals for Old Town during its Oct. 20 meeting. Council decided not to take action on the report and directed the board to come back to council after seeking direction from the Port Aransas Preservation and Historical Association. (See story in Oct. 27 edition.)

“I don’t think they (board members) wanted to put all these restrictions in there. I mean, I don’t think that was their true action on that,” Krueger said.

To encourage

City Manager David Parsons said that since their mission statement would be to “encourage” preservation, the board should not be a city-directed group.

Instead, the board should be a private organization, like PAPHA or the Port Aransas Garden Club, Parson said, calling them “really great organizations we have in the city.”

The groups “do great stuff on their own,” he said.

He said private groups in Port Aransas interact with the city, but the city doesn’t “codify” any of their missions.

“If their mission is to encourage, they are not on level with the Airport Board, the Nature Preserve Board,” Parsons said.

Mayor Wendy Moore agreed with Parsons. Although she wasn’t on council when the ordinance was created that formed the board, she said “the intent was for them to do good work, but they got under the wrong umbrella.”

“I don’t mean that in a negative way, but that’s what happened because they became a city ordained group that led them to have lots of limitations on what they can do,” Moore said. “And it clearly created a lot of back and forth and maybe some confusion.”

Moore encouraged board members to form their own group and “go out there, be like some of those other wonderful community led organizations that have partnered with the city to do great things.”

Board member Cathy Fulton told council she agrees it would be better to come up with a different program. She said being on the board has been difficult. She also said she doesn’t agree with the final report as the board never got to review the written report before it went to the council.

Coeckelenbergh said she doesn’t know if board members will form a separate preservation group.

“I don’t think we are,” she said. “I really don’t think that we qualify to be a group like the garden club. I mean, I have nothing against the garden club, but we were actually appointed by City Council. City council did an ordinance for this group.”

She added, “I really think that they don’t want us as a board. That’s obvious to me. And why I don’t know. If they didn’t want us as a board, they should have let us know early on because they’ve wasted time of people.”

The map

The City Council also voted to not approve another ordinance that would create an Old Town Preservation District Boundary Map with no regulations. The motion passed 5-1. Krueger voted against the measure, and Sieloff wasn’t present.

Krueger wrote the ordinance. The measure mentioned the board would meet the third Tuesday of every month, which council discussed would have to be revised if passed because of the council’s prior vote to dissolve the board.

Parsons said the map ordinance as worded would have to go before the Planning and Zoning Commission because of the part that states the board “makes no further recommendations for regulations at this time.” He said that implies regulation recommendations could be made in the future, making the map a zoning boundary.

Before the vote, Fulton told council the board does want an Old Town boundary to be established, because it would help encourage preservation.

“It’s something concrete we can work with,” she said. “It also helps with the other preservation groups that we might be able to encourage people to get into and kind of help them get something established.”

Earlier in the meeting, Krueger said board members motioned to send an Old Town boundary map to the City Council in July, but the map was never brought before council.

Nicole Boyer responded, saying the map would have garnered an ordinance change, so the board discussed waiting so the zoning change would only have to be done one time.

Coeckelenbergh said the board was pushed by city staff to add regulation recommendations when members voted to send the map to council in July.

“We didn’t get the boundary map anyway. So why have we even met for these months?” she said. “From the start, we were under the impression that we were going to be able to make a boundary map. And then when we voted on the boundary map, … we were told it was going to be presented. And then it wasn’t presented. We were told that it also had to have any kind of regulation that we wanted to go with it already attached.”

Contact Kathryn Cargo at reporter@portasouthjetty.com.