Why is Austin, and the whole country too, sleepwalking in the unsafe world of private land use for corporate benefit? For instance, insuring not only that its citizens have pure water but that thay have an affordable place to live is also the responsibility of the City, but here again when the hearings come up on the disposition of the 700 acre Mueller tract the City owns, we'll get the window dressing. No matter how strong the proof that removing the cost of land by leasing, not selling, it will bring homeowning costs down for all lessees; no matter how much evidence is presented that otherwise bidding for land keeps driving the price up and the people out to sprawling suburbs; no matter the evidence that below-market rate sales are not permanently enforceable; the Council will, after the last plea from the public, vote at two in the morning for essentially whatever agreement Catellus Development Corp. and the City staff produced in private. This is the unfortunate procedure that rules out working with the public to get the outcomes it wants, such as containment of homeownership costs for the Mueller tract, or sufficiently pure water for Barton Springs, and permanent, built-in monitoring by the City landowner in both cases. We're left with the theoretical chance of influencing our representatives until the final hearing, which we still shouldn't overlook.

We are not only sleepwalking, we have amnesia as a civilization. We don't know how familiar is the road civilizations travel from small plots for temporary use without debt to large tracts whose owners acquire power to shift obligations (taxes) onto others. (For current tax privileges see www.keeptheland.org/lies of the land ) How far along are we on this road? Two thirds of us have borrowed from the bank to invest in land, making it all too easy to identify with private investing in land --until our local quality of life is so much at stake we wake up, and find that Austin's few chances to own and protect land for us environmentally and financially have come and gone by now. Are we there yet?