East Austin’s residents deserve an unimpeded view of Capitol
As a matter of social equity, Austin City Council Member Ora Houston has offered a proposal to establish Capitol view corridors for residents of East Austin. Part of the proposal has run into the might of the special interests, which stand to reap financial gain through development of the Central Health campus where the Brackenridge Hospital is located.
That development would block the view of the Capitol for one of the corridors as originally proposed by Houston. According to Central Health, the proposed view corridor would have impeded the county health district’s plans to redevelop the site of the University Medical Center Brackenridge at 15th and Red River streets. What is striking is the cynicism of Central Health’s argument that redevelopment of that property would provide revenue for Central Health’s indigent health care services.
Central Health is providing $35 million a year to the Dell Medical School to fund University of Texas faculty and staff positions, not indigent health care services, according to a recent report by Help Ensure Accountable Leadership and Transparency in Health. Central Health also entered a deal for Seton to privatize the Brackenridge Hospital, an agreement that will cost the poor and taxpayers up to $25 million a year in lost rent. This is taking place as proposed federal cuts for health care for the poor are on the table in Washington.
If Central Health needs additional income, it should cut the giveaway to UT and renegotiate its deal with Seton. The county health district says it may lose $1 million a year if it must maintain the original view corridor, according to a Central Health statement. That’s against a projected $10 million a year it says it may realize from eventual development on the campus. Both figures are a drop in the bucket compared to the losses associated with the payments to UT and privatization of the teaching hospital.
In addition, Central Health has presented an overlay of the campus site with four residential towers that have no height or density restrictions and no affordable housing, even though Central Health’s mission is to help the poor — and one of the most powerful social determinants of health is housing. In this light, another resolution by Houston seeking to evaluate the suitability of affordable housing in the city’s recently acquired HealthSouth building near the medical complex should be supported.
To accommodate Central Health, city staff now propose a different corridor in which the Capitol will be visible, ostensibly through a slender opening framed by the Central Health development. The City Council should strictly scrutinize this accommodation and the precedent it may set for other view corridors in the city.
Residents of this city — especially those in East Austin — deserve more than a narrow peephole view of their Capitol. They deserve a full view of the Capitol consistent with the breath of the vision that created this state.
From Mickey Leland’s advocacy of health care rights for the poor while he was in the Texas House to Gonzalo Barrientos’ fight for a health care district in Travis County while he was in the Texas Senate, the struggles for fundamental fairness in the delivery of health care services for all Texans have taken place under the Capitol dome.
Central Health’s proposed development plans, which arise from its own financial mismanagement, would bar low-income minorities from living on its premises in affordable housing while at the same time blocking the view of the Capitol from East Austin, where many of its patients reside.
The City Council should insist that Central Health get its own financial house in order, rather than obstructing the view of the People’s House through ill-advised development on the Brackenridge campus.
Re: May 9 article, “Texas AG sues over constitutionality of ‘sanctuary cities’ bill.”
The Texas attorney general is very busy suing all forms of governments. Now, it’s Travis County officials.
Rather than withhold money from these so-called sanctuary cities, why not offer a raise to the police departments for their added requirement of being immigration agents and pay the same wage as the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who make twice what the local police make?
The Texas government seems to enjoy focusing on segments of the population. Lawmakers have passed laws that restrict female reproductive rights. They have supported bigoted responses by retail and service providers toward certain members of our population. They passed the ignorant “bathroom bill.”
But make sure that anyone can carry a loaded gun anywhere they choose.
And then, with some help,
Re: May 8 article, “Israel-Germany discord puts light on anti-occupation group.”
Thank you for publishing the Associated Press article by Karin Laub about the Breaking the Silence group in Israel.
Members of Breaking the Silence are truly heroes deserving our admiration. I have spoken with a few of them, as well as Palestinians who have had their children dragged out of bed in the middle of the night. Breaking the Silence members love Israel and want it to be unburdened with the immoral stench of the Israel Defense Force and its leadership’s gestapo behavior in the occupied territories.
It takes great courage for an Israeli man or woman to say the continued occupation of the Palestinians is wrong and ruinous for Israel. History will prove them right.