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December 18, 2008
Task force makes recommendations on downtown street closures
Fifth and Sixth streets would become the “Red Sea” downtown, eligible for crossing by races and other special events just six times a year under a report presented to the Austin City Council Thursday.
However, the Downtown Street Event Closure Task Force also recommended that the current level of downtown street even not be forcibly decreased from a current level that has caused considerable angst over the past couple of years. RunTex owner Paul Carrozza, co-chairman of the taskforce, predicted that a natural attrition of events would thin out the herd of races and festivals that have bedeviled downtown churches and businesses as well as anyone looking to visit or cross downtown.
The task force had several recommendations:
Create a city Office of Special Events as a one-stop shop for event planners.
Create a Special Events Advisory Commission provide oversight and reviews events applications.
Require that any “moving event” (such as a footrace) not encircle a section of downtown.
Increase the deadline of submission and review of event applications from 60 days before an event to 210 days.
Amend the city code to have a single ordinance for street closures and street events.
All of the recommendations will have to come back to the council for action after the city staff puts them in suitable form. It was not clear today how long that might take.
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October 9, 2007
Heigila .... Heilgila ... oh forget it.
State Sen. Kirk Watson, as facile a public speaker as you’ll ever find, certainly knows his way around the English language. German, not so much.
Watson, presiding over the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization board’s big toll road meeting Monday evening, several times brought Mike Heiligenstein into the conversation. Watson was making various points about the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, which employs Heiligenstein as its executive director.
Watson came up with some creative pronunciations of Heiligenstein’s name, accenting various syllables. For the record, it should be “HEIL-eh-gen-stein.” Watson, of course, is not the first public official to crash on the shoals of Heiligenstein’s vowel-rich name. Most people play it safe and just call him “Stein.”
At another point, Travis County Commissioner Sarah Eckhardt mangled the name of Gerald Daugherty, her colleague on the commissioner’s court. Her attempt came out something like “Dotery.” Should be “Dough-er-tee”
As long as we’re staying away from substance — the CAMPO meeting, in case you missed it, resulted in the Austin area having five more toll roads — then Bruce Byron deserves some sort of humor prize. Maybe the Best Joke/Wrong Audience Award.
Bryon is executive director of the Capital Area Transportation Council, CATC for short. This is typically pronounced Cat-cee. The group supports road building, and was 100 percent behind the toll plan.
At a public hearing on the toll roads a month ago, supporters of the plan had worn white gimme caps, leading one tollway opponent to refer to them as “fat cats in white hats.”
Byron, speaking in favor of the toll plan at the beginning of the meeting, mused that perhaps his group should be renamed “fat CATC.” This riposte, which was actually pretty clever, produced only a smattering of titters. After all, if you were one of the fat cats in attendance — the white hats were once again much in evidence — then you probably didn’t like the reminder. And if you were a cat-hater — at least 100 of them were on hand — then you probably didn’t see much humor in the situation.
But good one, Bruce. Tough crowd, tough crowd.
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September 26, 2007
Letter's message might be between the lines
At first blush, the letter looks like an “uh-oh” for state Sen. Kirk Watson, TxDOT’s lead Austin engineer Bob Daigh and the pending plan for toll roads. After all, when you see the expression “many questions remain unanswered” in the third line of a letter, that’s usually a bad sign.
Maybe not, though.
The letter, so far unsent, would go from the Austin City Council to Daigh if the council votes to approve sending it at Thursday’s council meeting, and it concerns the proposal elevated, six-lane tollway on U.S. 290 West through Oak Hill. The road would have six frontage road lanes alongside, and has been the focus of intense opposition from some environmental activists and an Oak Hill group called Fix290.
For the politicians sitting on the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization board, which will make the decision about this project and four other tollways on Oct. 8, this project and that opposition is a problem. People out Oak Hill way vote in high percentages, and the Fix290 people claim to have more than 2,500 people on their side. In a City Council race, where 50,000 people or less vote in some elections, that’s a meaningful chunk.
But the letter may not be the chiding it seems initially. In fact, it may be the opposite. It could be political cover.
In it, the council suggests a partnership between the city and TxDOT to protect Williamson Creek from damage caused by the construction of the tollway. U.S. 290 passes between the creek and a bluff in Oak Hill, and the 12 lanes of the tollway and its frontage lanes would push part of the project literally over the creek. Some version of a culvert and other controls will be necessary to keep the creek flowing.
“The Austin City Council is requesting that TxDOT and the City of Austin form a team to develop together water quality control plans and to jointly monitor the effectiveness of construction-phase water quality controls,” the letter says. Daigh has already indicated publicly the willingness to do what the letter proposes.
The item on the council agenda to send the letter is sponsored by Mayor Will Wynn — a CAMPO board member thought to be supportive of the tollway plan — and Council Member Jennifer Kim, who has been among the skeptics.
The letter would protect Williamson Creek. That’s not all it will protect though.
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