{"id":189474,"date":"2026-03-04T04:17:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T04:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/189474\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T04:17:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T04:17:08","slug":"lakeway-shifts-view-protection-discussion-to-committee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/189474\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakeway shifts view protection discussion to committee"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLakeway City Council will establish a committee to review rules surrounding view protection following action taken<\/a> at its Feb. 17 meeting.<\/p>\n

The decision is a result of discussion surrounding the need to change the city\u2019s View Protection Conditional Overlay, or VPCO<\/a>, which puts certain restrictions on view obstruction for a portion of the city.<\/p>\n

The details<\/p>\n

The VPCO was established in 2011 and gives guidelines for protecting the view of homes in \u201cOld Lakeway,\u201d or the area largely north of Lakeway Boulevard with about 3,500 residential lots. The ordinance sets rules for how high new construction or additions can be built, but cannot stop development on a site altogether.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some internal issues with the VPCO that make it difficult to administer, or more importantly, answer questions about how it is controlled and derived,\u201d City Manager Joseph Molis said at the meeting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to the staff report, the issue with the ordinance is that certain measures are subjective, such as what counts as an \u201cunreasonably obstructed\u201d view in the case of a new development. Meanwhile, the rules for additions specify that lake views cannot be unreasonably obstructed.\"TheThe VPCO covers about 3,500 residential lots in Lakeway. (Screenshot courtesy city of Lakeway)To address this, the original consideration put before the Zoning and Planning Commission, or ZAPCO, was to repeal the ordinance\u2014a measure voted down 6-1, with Chair Gretchen Vance voting against.<\/p>\n

Per ZAPCO\u2019s recommendation, rather than voting to repeal the ordinance, City Council voted to create a subcommittee to review the VPCO and deliver quarterly reports to council on progress. The VPCO ordinance will remain in effect until ordinance updates are made, which prompted Mayor Tom Kilgore to be the sole vote against the item.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the record, I will be opposing it for that very one principle because I think it creates unnecessary litigation risk for the parties I have already mentioned,\u201d Kilgore said.<\/p>\n

Kilgore said the ordinance, as it currently stands, is unconstitutional<\/a> and must either be repealed or no longer enforced to prevent legal risks. The unconstitutionality partially stems from the vagueness of the ordinance and the fact that “view” is not considered a protected property right, among other things, according to documents submitted by Kilgore. He advocated for the creation of a committee to address the issue but to suspend the ordinance while those committee discussions happened.<\/p>\n

When it came to opening the city up to legal liability, Kilgore asked City Attorney Cobby Caputo if it was a greater risk to keep enforcing the current ordinance or to suspend the rule.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt depends on how many of these cases are waiting out there, and how long this process will take. You\u2019re at risk every time one of these [cases] comes up, and we\u2019ve been in that situation for years,\u201d Caputo said.<\/p>\n

Since its establishment in 2011, the VPCO has generated 305 view blocking cases that required investigation\u2014of those, only 12, or 3.9%, found view blocking to be an issue, according to city documents.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2012, we had 44 view blocking cases, and all through that time … last year we had eight,\u201d Mayor Pro Tem Louis Mastrangelo said. \u201cSo to me, the risk is there, but it\u2019s minimal. It\u2019s a lot less than what it would have been 13, 14 years ago, so I\u2019m not concerned. For four or five months, not having it\u2014it\u2019s suddenly now risky when it\u2019s less than a quarter of what it was in volume?\u201d<\/p>\n

What they\u2019re saying<\/p>\n

Of the 20 speakers who signed up, each spoke against repealing the VPCO, citing concerns about how their homes, views and property values might be impacted.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m here tonight to oppose the repeal because if you repeal it without replacing it with something or modifying it, then the whole character of Lakeway goes away\u2014and we know that if you take that away, you can never get it back,\u201d former Lakeway City Council member Jean Hennagin said.<\/p>\n

Lakeway resident Logan Brown, who also filed for the May City Council election, advocated for \u201crefinement, not repeal\u201d at the meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should not keep an ordinance on the books that is constitutionally vulnerable,\u201d Brown said. \u201cRight now height, among other things, has subjective criteria for determination, which I agree creates uncertainty for property owners and potential litigation risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next<\/p>\n

Per the approved motion, council will consider the subcommittee at the March regular council meeting, slated for March 16. The committee will include:<\/p>\n

Two members of City CouncilTwo members of ZAPCOSeven members of the city, each nominated by a member of the council, with the mayor\u2019s nomination as the chair<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lakeway City Council will establish a committee to review rules surrounding view protection following action taken at its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,1604,73235,10708,75354,52573,75353,75352,251],"class_list":["post-189474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-community-impact","tag-community-impact-lakeway","tag-lakeway","tag-lakeway-cc","tag-lakeway-city-council","tag-lakeway-view-protection","tag-lakeway-vpco","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}