Commentary
By Bill Peterson
The brand new director in planning in Kyle, Don Q. Reynolds, put it like this:
"Kyle presents a unique situation for a planner. Many places have a city but not many people. In Kyle, the people are here. Now we have to build the city."
That has been exactly Kyle's bind for the last five years. One wants to say Reynolds' new job is more about emergency management than urban planning.
Indeed, that was precisely the job Tom Mattis walked into when he became Kyle's city manager in January 2002. The city was already way too big for its britches, to say nothing of its infrastructure. Most of the controversies arising in Kyle during Mattis' years are a direct consequence of the city's tendency before he arrived to rubber stamp residential development, and the rest are an indirect consequence.
That tendency, by the way, can't entirely be put on the city government. If somebody wants to build houses on his property, the city can't really stop him. If a rancher wants to sell his land to a developer who wants to put houses on the land, the city can't stop either one of them. The city can make the landowner follow the city's rules, if the city has rules.
By the late 1990s, developers seized on Kyle, which hadn't comprehensively updated its zoning ordinances since 1978. And, yes, the city government at the turn of the century was quite friendly to housing developers. So, up went the houses, without all the other necessities to support them – not the roads, not the water supplies, not the wastewater facilities, not the service businesses, not the health care practitioners, not even a grocery store.
A city of 2,225 on the 1990 Census and 5,340 on the 2000 Census, Kyle recently proclaimed itself in excess of 25,000 residents. By some planning estimates going around, the true population is very near 30,000. And the city has added roads, water supplies, wastewater facilities, service businesses, health care practitioners, and, coming this summer, a grocery store. But no Grand Master of city administration could possibly add those resources fast enough to suit such an exploding population.
Meanwhile, as the city grew, the city government didn't even own the physical space to bring in assistance for Mattis. So times have been rocky.
Since last fall, Kyle has moved into a new city hall, hired an assistant to Mattis, brought in a communications director and, now, Reynolds as planning director. But planning, it seems, is something one does to avoid disaster. In Kyle, the disaster has already struck. And the worst part of the storm, it seems, has passed. At this point, and for years to come, it's emergency management.
