Vela, an immigration lawyer, comes to council with a political background including experience as a South Texas city manager and general counsel for a state representative. Ahead of his inauguration, Vela spoke with Community Impact Newspaper about his path to City Council and his priorities once in office. This interview was edited for length and clarity.
How did you get into politics?
I kind of grew up in politics, honestly. My dad was in politics, he was an attorney that was in politics down in Laredo and I was very active in politics even in college as an undergrad. After undergrad I went to the LBJ School of Public Affairs where my focus was on state and local government.
It’s something that I’ve been engaged and interested in for a long time. When Council Member [Greg] Casar announced that he was going to run for Congress, that was just such a great opportunity. You can have so much impact on City Council and I know the neighborhood, the city so well. I was just ready to go immediately when he announced that. I knew I was going to take a shot at it.
What takeaways do you have from your District 4 campaign?
I’m a big believer in retail politics. You’ve got to get out there and talk to people and meet them in person. Go block walk. Go to the neighborhood meetings and to the schools and to the different organizations and let people get to know you. If people meet a candidate and have a positive impression of that candidate from that short interaction with him or her, that is the most effective campaign.
In a small district like this—100,000 people, about 32,000 registered voters or so—I think that’s when I think retail campaigning is at its best. You really can't block walk your way to a seat in Congress.
What type of voice do you bring to the council dais?
A cooperative and helpful voice. I know just about all of the council members and have talked to just about all of them at this point, and I’m looking forward to working with them. I think we all have relatively similar goals in terms of making Austin affordable. It is a great place to live, but [making it] a better city. It’s just a matter of, sometimes we have different approaches to that, policy differences.
What are some local priorities in District 4 you hope to take on?
There are a number of, what I would call, micro-mobility projects. A gate here, a little bridge here, that can significantly improve things like park access, pedestrian experience [and] can cut down ... walk distances and times between neighborhoods and parks and shopping centers and things like that.
The other one is, there’s a couple of homeless camps that are very problematic. The one in St. Johns in particular. There’s a lot of folks camping along St. Johns [Avenue] and I-35 on both sides of St. Johns, and we need to get them into housing. We need to have a response. It needs to be a humane and a compassionate response. I do not want to go in and clear out the camps or anything like that, but we’ve got to get them into housing so that the neighborhood there in St. Johns and the residents can get that park back. ... We need to start addressing those situations, we can’t just let that go on indefinitely.
What is your focus on the housing front?
The first thing that comes to mind is the permitting process. There seems to be broad consensus, broad agreement, that the permitting process is extremely difficult, cumbersome and expensive. And not just for new builders but even for homeowners getting permits for a deck or for a door or different things like that, remodels. ... I want to streamline that as much as we can.
As far as I'm aware, there’s not a compelling reason that we need a site plan for a ... fourplex or an eight-unit apartment complex or something like that. And that’s one thing that I would like to take a look at and see if we can erase the site plan requirement to more than just duplexes, take it up to 10-, 12[-unit], something like that. Those smaller projects, which I think are your naturally more affordable projects.
What would you like to see happen to help lower-income workers?
Good public transportation is a key part of making a city welcoming to working-class people. ... You go to the subways under Manhattan where there’s million-dollar workers all over the place. Who’s riding the subway? It’s the clerks and the janitors. Even in very wealthy areas, the public transit is just absolutely crucial for working-class people to be able to access good jobs in those kinds of employment centers.
I really want to get [Project Connect] built as quickly as possible and as cost-effectively as possible. And once it’s built, or honestly before it’s built, we’ve got to get the zoning right along that line so that we’re building affordable housing that’s right next to transit.
If we can cluster people along the transit stations, that is some of the most environmentally-friendly types of housing that we can build in Austin, Texas.
What role does council have in shaping Project Connect’s development?
Honestly, I want to be involved with just about anything that has to do with Project Connect. Not only does it go through District 4, but it’s a project that I’ve been supportive of and been pushing from the beginning. My main concern is, as much as I respect and appreciate Austin’s commitment to public engagement and comment, sometimes we can get a little stuck on process and projects can get indefinitely delayed, and I don't want that to happen with Project Connect. And that’s why I really want to be on top of it and aggressively pushing that timeline.
We did have a great public input process for Project Connect, and it was called an election and it was held in November of a presidential year. And 58% of the voters went out and said, ‘Yes, city of Austin, we want you to build that.’ So I think we really need to respect the voters’ wishes on that and get it done as soon as possible.
How do you expect your background in immigration law will affect your work on council?
I have to give credit to my predecessor Greg Casar, who was excellent on this issue. And honestly he’s done just about all the heavy lifting in terms of making Austin a friendly city for immigrants. I’m very tight with that community, I’m in touch with them, and I’ll be very responsive to any of their concerns.
The work that needs to be done on that is—well, on the state level, because the state decided to do some immigrant-bashing over the last few sessions—but on the federal level. We just badly need immigration reform. And honestly, that would give a massive jolt to our economy. If all these people, really quality workers, quality people, could come out of the shadows and into the formal economy—paying taxes, having a Social Security number, having a driver’s license—I just think that would be a huge boost for Austin.
