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Off the Dais
August 28, 2008
Alarm prompts exodus at City Hall
A fire alarm went off at City Hall during a regularly-scheduled Council meeting this afternoon, forcing more than 100 elected officials, city staff, reporters and other interested parties into the outdoor plaza for about 10 minutes.
The alarm interrupted discussion of a new campaign finance rules.
The cause: a driver backed into an alarm box in the parking garage, setting it off.
The Council is now back on the dais and everything is back to normal.
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August 13, 2008
Wynn to meet with McCain, Obama advisers
Austin Mayor Will Wynn and other mayors will meet Wednesday and Thursday in New York City with policy advisers to presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and John McCain.
Wynn, chair of the energy committee for the U.S. Conference of Mayors, is slated to lead a discussion on energy infrastructure.
“Americans are now feeling the first wave of economic pain coming from our lack of a coherent, comprehensive national energy policy,” Wynn said in a statement today. “What we’re seeing is local governments and private entrepreneurs leading the way, but ultimately these efforts and innovations need the right infrastructure in place in order to deliver on their full potential.”
The statement said Wynn will talk about Texas’ success in developing wind power and Austin’s plan to invest in a 100 megawatt biomass plant.
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March 24, 2008
Boardwalk idea for trail gets a boost
The City Council will hire a firm Thursday to design a boardwalk that would close the 1.1-mile gap of the hike-and-bike trail along Lady Bird Lake.
The gap begins at the Austin American-Statesman’s east parking lot and ends near South Lakeshore Boulevard. Right now, runners trying to loop around the whole trail face safety problems as they traverse Riverside Drive sidewalks and cross the busy intersection at Interstate 35.
Some of the land along the gap is sloped, and most of it is privately owned, so the city would have to acquire easements and build around the hills to close it. The other option would be building a boardwalk over the water and along the lakeside.
The Town Lake Trail Foundation raised $40,000 last year to hire a firm to do a preliminary study of the boardwalk idea.
On Thursday, the council will decide whether to hire Carter & Burgess, Inc. for $1.4 million to design the actual boardwalk structure. City officials ranked that firm the best out of seven that applied.
“This will be a very significant step in painting a clear and real picture of what completing the trail would actually look like,” said trail foundation president Griffin Davis.
The boardwalk is expected to cost $10 million to $15 million to build; the trail foundation has agreed to raise $5 million.
What do you think about the boardwalk idea?
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March 10, 2008
Dukes rebukes council members on Villa Muse
State Rep. Dawnna Dukes has sent Mayor Will Wynn and council members Jennifer Kim, Lee Leffingwell and Betty Dunkerley a letter criticizing their recent decision on Villa Muse, a proposed entertainment studio and production facility.
Last Thursday, those council members refused to grant the developers’ request that the city release 2,000 acres in eastern Travis County from its future growth zone. The release would have ensured that the project was not subject to Austin’s development regulations and taxes for decades.
In a 4-3 vote, the council members agreed to pursue a development agreement in the city’s growth zone, but it’s unceratin whether the developers will be willing to negotiate.
Some council members said the city could not be guaranteed that it would be able to eventually annex the property even if the developers signed an agreement. Leffingwell and Kim were also worried about the lack of environmental oversight of the floodplain remediation that would be necessary and the proposed construction of the studio so close to Gilleland Creek.
Dukes wrote that Villa Muse would have been a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the Central Texas area, especially Eastern Travis County.”
“Your decision to deny the temporary release of Villa Muse from the city’s Extra Territorial Jurisdiction takes certain financing options off the table, thus making the project financially unfeasible” and probably ensuring its relocation to a different city, she wrote.
Dukes said she questioned whether environmental concerns were the real reason the council members decided refused to support the project, given that the council is considering building a landfill and wastewater treatment plant in Eastern Travis County.
She asked the council members to reconsider their decision: “This project will succeed somewhere in Texas. It would be ideal to have it here.”
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February 4, 2008
Cauthen taking heat at home
As part of the city manager search last month, the American-Statesman posted online the resume of semi-finalist Wayne Cauthen, the city manager of Kansas City, Mo.
Some of the claims on that resume caught the eye of Kansas City’s alternative paper, The Pitch, which took Cauthen to task for apparently overstating some of his claimed accomplishments — including his work on the city’s budget and performing arts center.
Cauthen did not make it to the final round of Austin’s interviews. The City Council hired Marc Ott, an assistant city manager in Fort Worth, for Austin’s top job. He starts later this month.
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November 1, 2007
Why Kim abstained on Spansion vote
Council Member Jennifer Kim abstained from the vote Thursday to nominate Spansion Inc. for state economic development incentives but offered no explanation from the dais.
She said later that the consulting firm for which she is a vice president, VIAS International LLC, does business in the semiconductor industry. Spansion is a flash memory manufacturer that was spun off from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. in 2005.
Kim said she knew of no conflict between her firm and Spansion but thought it was best to abstain.
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October 22, 2007
Panhandling discussion takes another turn
Council Member Jennifer Kim is requesting that city staff produce a revised proposal that would protect children walking to school and help homeless transition into jobs and housing.
“After meeting with community leaders it’s clear the proposed solicitation ban was perceived as going too far, limiting free speech and was unnecessarily punitive to a vulnerable population.”
Kim’s initial proposal was criticized by homeless, civil rights and day labor advocates.
She got involved with the issue a couple of days after a handful of people protested the panhandlers at Interstate 35 and East Oltorf Street, saying they threaten the safety of students walking to and from nearby Travis High School.
Regular panhandlers at the intersection said they don’t bother the students and members of the school community said they hadn’t heard reports of violent interactions among students and panhandlers. Kim said: “But it doesn’t mean it’s not occurring. I believe it is.”
On Aug. 30, council members put the brakes on Kim’s original proposal in favor of research from staff, a presentation of which also has been postponed. Now Kim seems ready to give it another try. See her statement here.
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October 18, 2007
Smitty the Apostle
Tom “Smitty” Smith of Public Citizen brought the fire and brimstone to Thursday morning’s news conference about the city’s new energy efficiency building standards.
Global climate change is threatening our very existence, he said, and Austinites need to “become Apostles,” spreading the gospel that if Austin can do it so can the rest of the nation.
Ample praise went to the home builders who helped develop the energy efficiency plan, which aims to drastically improve energy efficiency of new homes.
“Our home builders were leading this effort,” Austin Energy’s Roger Duncan said, a fact that has stunned people across the county with whom he has discussed the plan.
Home builders tend not to embrace additional regulation, Mayor Will Wynn said. But Austin’s industry “recognized the long-term value in significant, significant energy efficiency.”
The home builders’ top priority was to avoid driving up housing costs as the city sought to drive down energy use, said Tara Thomason, who represented the Home Builders Association of Greater Austin and Centex Homes on the task force that developed the plan.
She added that they were “very, very touched” to have been invited to join the process.
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October 11, 2007
The downside of downtown boom
For those commuters who got stuck in traffic on Fifth Street this morning, Mayor Will Wynn offered a big, big apology.
Seems that an 18-wheeler delivering construction materials to a high-rise construction site got wedged between the sidewalks early this morning and entirely blocked traffic on the critical eastbound artery into downtown.
Wynn said he will bring forward time restrictions on when deliveries can be made in downtown “so that that won’t happen again.” The City Council will take up those restrictions next week.
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October 9, 2007
Shining a little sunlight on city purchases
Loyal readers of the Statesman’s City Hall coverage might recall a recent story involving snow globes, the now-defunct City Store and the wife of the former chief financial officer.
Wondering how we stumbled on that one? Well, it started way back in August 2006 when Council Member Mike Martinez submitted a budget question asking for all purchases made under the city manager’s administrative authority, the threshold for which was $49,000 in the past fiscal year.
His request languished for a good nine months before the city manager coughed it up.
Most of the expenditures were pedestrian — equipment, furniture, mood pencils.
But the examination did turn up both the $47,000 in Saks Fifth Avenue snow globes and Jan Stephens’ two contracts, one for $48,000 to open the city store and another for $35,000 for a review of minority contracting records. The city’s integrity officer later deemed the contracts a violation of city policy since Stephens was married to a department head.
Those items never faced the glare of a City Council agenda because they fell beneath the administrative authority threshhold.
So now Martinez wants the specifics to be reported to the council on a monthly basis. Although the amounts seem small in the context of a $2 billion budget, the purchases add up — $34.7 million in 2006.
“There is no reason why the council and citizens should not have that information readily available and accessible,” Martinez said.
An item on Thursday’s council agenda, co-sponsored by Council Member Lee Leffingwell, calls for monthly reports on purchases above $5,000 made under the city manager’s administrative authority.
If approved, the resolution also would require regular reporting on vacant jobs and expenditures from a reserve account that catches all extra sales and property tax money not budgeted as well unspent money.
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October 8, 2007
Martinez on the animal shelter
Council Member Mike Martinez called to add his thoughts about the animal shelter issue.
He said and Jennifer Kim withdrew the council agenda item about halting plans for an East Austin animal shelter location for two reasons: It would’ve been redundant. given that Betty Dunkerley and Will Wynn also posted an animal shelter item, and he wasn’t convinced they had enough votes to get it passed.
Martinez said he does not want to delay deciding on a site, but does want more information about the criteria city staff members used to determine that 7201 Levander Loop is the best site.
He said city staff have given him a list of five other sites they considered — the Travis County Expo Center, the old Robert Mueller airport, Vision Village, a vacant store on East Stassney Lane and a piece of property in Onion Creek — but have not explained in detail how those sites came to be considered and why they were ruled out.
Martinez said he has also asked the city manager and an assistant city manager for a list of developable properties citywide that are owned by the City of Austin, but has not received one.
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More Austin animal shelter weirdness
Conflicting items on Thursday’s Austin City Council agenda foreshadowed a catfight over the location of a new city-run animal shelter. But the fur might not fly after all.
Council Member Jennifer Kim said Monday that she and Council Member Mike Martinez now plan to withdraw an item they had proposed that would have stalled plans to build a new shelter in East Austin (7201 Levander Loop) and required the city manager to brief the council on other site options.
Instead, the council will only vote on an item proposed by Mayor Will Wynn and Council Member Betty Dunkerley, which calls for designating Levander Loop as the animal shelter site and proceeding with plans for the facility.
Three neighborhood groups and the animal advocacy group Fix Austin want the 50-year-old Town Lake Animal Center rebuilt at its existing location, 1156 W. Cesar Chavez St., because they say it’s more centrally located to attract volunteers and pet adopters.
Kim said it would be cumbersome to take up conflicting agenda items, and that she and Martinez could still object to the East Austin site by offering an amendment or substitute motion to Wynn and Dunkerley’s item.
It also might be tough to cobble together the four votes needed to stop the East Austin plan. Council Member Lee Leffingwell has said he prefers the Levander Loop site. Council Member Sheryl Cole said Monday that she hasn’t made up her mind. Martinez and Council Member Brewster McCracken didn’t immediately return phone calls.
Even Kim said she thinks the Levander Loop location would be accessible to patrons, but she needs to hear more information from city staff members to decide whether it’s the best site.
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