AUSTIN, Texas — A local woman says she is paying for a mistake made by City of Austin engineers when approving her construction permit.
The City of Austin fined Cynthia Baihlah Rubin for parking a trailer on the street, unhooked from a vehicle. The trailer holds two kayaks she and her partner bought.
The carport at her duplex is not tall enough to store the trailer under the covering. So, Rubin decided to extend her driveway width by three feet.
“I called 311, and the City directed me to permitting,” Baihlah said.
Baihlah gave the KVUE Defenders a copy of her emails with the city – dozens of pages of what she calls proof of a confusing process.
“I'm down at permitting many, many, many times to try and work with them and understand,” Baihlah said.
Baihlah was bounced around different City departments to get her permit. She displayed emails from six different people working on her one driveway/sidewalk permit.
A City land development engineer emailed Baihlah, stating, “All we need is just a simple plan of the new work and its dimensions” and “it can be hand drawn.”
Baihlah submitted the drawings and a description of each.
Within the stack of paper, Baihlah showed two printed emails she called "golden tickets."
“You may go ahead and use this email as formal approval,” wrote a Land Development engineer. “Permit issued,” wrote a permit and license review analyst in a separate email.
“Now, I have to go find my right-of-way contractor,” Baihlah said.
Baihlah said the City never visited her property at any point during the permit approval process.
But weeks after construction began, an engineer for the City's Public Works and Transportation Department showed up to the property and told Baihlah that the driveway addition broke City land codes.
“This is all like the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing,” Baihlah said.
The entire ordeal left Baihlah paying more than $900 in permitting fees and more than $1,200 in construction costs.
“I hired a contractor and paid for my demo and prep. Now they're rescinding the permit based on these things,” Baihlah said.
“Well, unfortunately, the mistake was made clear,” said Angela Johnson, managing engineer with Transportation and Public Works.
Johnson said the work would have made the driveway too wide, creating dangers for anyone using the sidewalk – things Johnson admits the department should have caught prior to issuing the permit.
“We do not allow editing pieces of concrete … soil moves and it would expand, grow, and it would create pedestrian hazard,” Johnson said, adding, “My apology for that. We’re trying to make it right in whatever way we can."
Baihlah has been refunded the permitting fees but is still out the $1,200 paid to the contractor.
“We, as a City, definitely will go to work, streamlining the process,” Johnson said.
Baihlah bought portable ramps to get her trailer over the City’s curb and onto the parking pad on her property.
For now, the trailer just sits in a neighbor’s driveway.