THE SPECTATOR: ‘HYPOCRITE’

  

Hypocrite.  Someone who says one thing but does just the opposite.  Hypocrite is a good word to describe many of the members of our Brenham City Council.  At Thursday’s meeting of the City Council, the members voted 5 to 2 against a license agreement with Mescalito Coffee for a parklet on Park Street beside their business.  The parklet would take up two parallel parking spaces and would be similar to the one in front of 96 West on Baylor Street.  A major difference, however, would be that the one by Mescalito would be open to the public 24-7.  Anyone who wanted to eat or drink or just sit and relax outside on our beautiful courthouse square would be welcome to use it.  And this nice, landscaped seating area would be paid for by private funds, not your tax dollars. 

It has been a year since Mescalito first inquired about building a parklet.  The City Council directed staff and Main Street Board volunteers to develop a manual to license and govern any parklets in the downtown area, and asked Mescalito to put their plans on hold.  Last summer, after much public discussion and several public meetings, the Council approved the manual with the restriction of allowing only 6 in the immediate downtown.  A two-month window was opened for businesses to apply for a parklet.  Only one did….Mescalito.  They went through the licensing process and did everything as instructed by City staff.  Prior to Thursday’s vote, about a dozen people addressed the Council about the proposed parklet.  Each time someone spoke for the parklet, the overflow crowd in Council chambers applauded loudly. Only one person, the owner of the building directly across from Mescalito, spoke against it.  Yet even that woman’s business tenant voiced her support for the parklet. 

Yet without any real explanation, the Council voted 5 to 2 not to accept the licensing agreement.  Councilman Atwood Kenjura was the only one who spoke up before the vote saying he felt the City needed to address the parking issue before approving another parklet.  Seems like I’ve heard the Council talk about parking before…maybe a hundred times in the past 20 years!  Parking has been the main concern at every public meeting of Brenham Main Street.  Yet the Council has failed to do a single thing to improve the situation.  Nothing.  Just a lot of talk. 

Now, instead of solving the problem, they are once again going against a business’s plans…in this case plans that were also going to benefit the public, locals and tourists alike.  Why would they vote against someone who followed all the rules and was patient while they waited months for those rules to be written?  Perhaps it was because Councilmembers think they are finally doing something to improve parking, by not allowing those two parking spaces to become a parklet.  That’s some great thinking, isn’t it.  Or maybe they succumbed to the woman who went around town asking people to sign a petition saying that Downtown has a parking problem, and want it addressed.  The same woman, from what I heard, originally wanted a parklet for herself until she was told there could only be one per block.  And that’s when she became obsessed with stopping Mescalito’s from being approved.  Hypocrite.  Seems like a good word for more than one person here.

And that’s the way it looks to this Spectator.