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FIVE
IS EVERCLEAR TOO MUCH TO ASK
ELIAS
Of all the days to have an early meeting, today is the worst. The DA asked me to meet him here less than a week ago.
I walk up the steps of the Travis County courthouse, empty my pockets, and place my briefcase on the scanner’s belt, before stepping through the metal detector.
“Morning, Elias.”
“Good morning, Jon.” I extend a hand and grip his in a firm shake. “What can I do for you?’”
“This is a what-can-we-do-for-each-other situation.” He ushers me down the hall to his office. “You know I grew up with Exton Ranger?”
I do know that so I sit silently and nod for him to continue.
“We were hellions, and he’s still one of my most trusted friends.” Jon’s spinning up to something, and I wait. The lawyer in me knows I’ll get more details the less I speak.
“The Veramendi Conservancy next door to the Ranger Ranch… You know it?”
I’ve heard the story many times. Exton is Braxton’s younger brother, and Brax was my college roommate. We don’t go back as far as Exton and Jon, but I’ve been more enmeshed in their family and on the ranch since we met in our freshmen years at A&M than Jon has been. Exton leaving for the Army and then the FBI didn’t help that situation.
Braxton’s great-grandfather bought the land the ranch is on from an older gentleman who never had kids and didn’t want his land subdivided. Mr. Veramendi sold the old Ranger a huge parcel happy it would be ranchlands and took the rest and made a deal with the local government that what remained would be set as preservation land. Basically, it was deeded with a restrictive covenant. They call it a conservation easement… at least, that’s how we refer to them now. The Veramendi Conservancy is the huge plat of land north of the ranch that legally can never be developed. It’s designed to preserve native trees and grasses, foster habitat for wild animals, and protect the environment.
“I do. I haven’t heard it mentioned in years though. Why?”
“A group of local developers is contesting the legal status of the covenant and plans to develop the land.”
“But it’s legally protected,” I say, not worrying about being overly precise in my words.
Jon leans back in his chair. “I thought so too, but they think it’s worth the fight. That land has to be worth multiple millions to a developer. If you consider how many quarter-acre or half-acre homesites could be built in that area. Hell, even more so with zero-lot-line garden homes or townhouses. It could become a multi-use area. Schools, neighborhood sports complexes, local shops, and restaurants residents could walk to.”
“It’s too hot to walk anywhere in Texas seven months a year.”
“But if you’re from California or New England, you don’t know that. We’re talking country chic. What they’re proposing is a city-changing, county-changing, life-changing project. Multiple home builders, new schools, commercial contractors. It could triple or quadruple the population of the city. And that’s just in the next several years,” he continues.
“That would require infrastructure… new roads, bridges, drainage, sewers, possible new utility districts. We don’t have enough water as it is right now. How will we support that kind of increase to the population?”
“You’re thinking like a resident, Elias. Think like the county Commissioners or the city manager. All they see are dollar signs. Their ten-acre homesites won’t be impacted. Their cattle farms and peach groves won’t take a hit. They’ll be dead and gone before the negative challenges arise.”
“But the Ranger’s ranch—?”
“Constant noise of development for upwards of twenty years depending on how much of the land is contested and purchased. Plus construction traffic. There will be a direct impact from damming the stream on the conservancy side for a lazy river attraction.”
“That water is used for the Ranger’s horses before being sent downstream into the tourist communities. You’re talking about a complete change in how the Hill Country has lived for a hundred years or more.”
His nod is solemn. “The money is big. The kickbacks to the Commissioners and city council are not slight. The promised tax dollars are substantial.”
“Back up for me, Jon. The easement is legally protected. How will they get around that?”
“For now, they’re working on the grounds that the restrictive covenant was never legally established. That deal was a handshake with the then Mexican government. It continued as a handshake with the U.S. and the State of Texas after their respective establishments.”
I’m dumbfounded. “That’s how everything was done here at that time.”
He nods. “The back-up argument is that nationally it was voided, because after the restriction was established, Texas succeeded for a period and joined the confederacy, before rejoining the union. The thought being that the deed is a triad—a national, a state, and a regional jurisdiction, protected by all three governments. And that, should the national piece not be legally ‘registered,’ so to speak, because it’s part of a now-dissolved entity or with the national piece being territory of multiple nations since its inception, that it could be invalidated.”
“So, you’re saying that locally they don’t have to honor what was never legally federally protected because that leg of the stool was never actually valid?”
