SATIRE: This is parody. Not a real news report.
McALLEN — In a decisive 6-1 vote Monday, the McAllen City Commission cleared the way for a duplex at 1317 South 18th Street after Mayor Javier Villalobos established, to everyone’s satisfaction, that the meeting was not about the duplex.
“The item before us is a like-for-like rezoning,” Villalobos explained, over and over, like a lighthouse. “A rezoning is a document. A duplex is a building. Buildings are not documents. Therefore no building has been before this commission tonight, and I will thank everyone to stop pointing at it.”
The ruling came after neighbor Mario Quintanilla asked the city to keep the project “in its own containment” instead of making the alley beside his house the entrance, noting that ambulances, school buses and mail trucks already struggle to squeeze down 17th Street. Villalobos expressed deep sympathy, then ruled that ambulances, school buses, mail trucks, alleys, containment and 17th Street were each, individually, not on the agenda.
“I hear you,” the mayor said gently. “But hearing is not an agenda item.”
Under commission rules, members of the public may address the commission on any subject, provided the subject is not the subject. Several neighbors used their time to object to the duplex, which city staff logged in the minutes as “comments received regarding no specific structure, if any.”
Monday’s vote was the culmination of months of citywide like-for-like rezoning, a process by which the city replaces its old zoning with identical new zoning so that a duplex that was legal under the old code may be legal again under the new one, the difference being that this time there was a meeting about it, and at that meeting no one discussed the duplex.
“We rezoned the whole city so that nothing would change,” said a city planner, admiring the map. “Like for like. That’s the beauty of it. The old code allowed a duplex. The new code allows a duplex. The only thing we’ve added is the agenda item, and the agenda item is not about the duplex.”
District 5 Commissioner Michael Fallek said longtime neighbors should not be sacrificed, that he hoped all parties would somehow find an accommodation, and then voted yes, noting that hope, unlike a duplex, requires no approval from the commission.
“I hope with everything I have,” Fallek said. “I hope loudly, I hope often, and I hope in a way that is not on the agenda and therefore cannot be voted down.”
District 2 Commissioner Joaquin “J.J.” Zamora cast the sole dissenting vote after committing the procedural error of discussing the duplex out loud.
“He said the word ‘duplex’ during a rezoning item,” Villalobos confirmed, shaking his head. “That’s how we knew he was off topic.”
At press time, the alley beside Quintanilla’s house had been designated the official entrance to the duplex, a role it will perform in perfect administrative silence, as an entity that was never on the agenda and can therefore be used but never mentioned. Reached for comment, the alley said nothing, which officials praised as flawless procedure.
