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In the middle of a pandemic that has led to a sharp decrease in the Travis County Jail population, Austin City Council plans to leverage its influence to keep the jail population low by reserving use of pretrial detention for…
City employees will be eligible to receive 100 percent of their regular pay if they take emergency sick leave as a result of Covid-19, retroactive to March 15, under a resolution approved by City Council on Thursday. The resolution, similar…
Each year, United Way for Greater Austin hosts a communitywide Spring Day of Action. This year, with the Covid-19 crisis, United Way decided a change-up was in order. The organization is now hosting a Spring Season of Caring and putting…
The Music Commission has asked the city to protect and replenish the recently created Live Music Fund if any of it is used to help musicians and music venues impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. At a special meeting called for…
City officials are preparing to increase the number of hospital beds in the area in case there is a surge of Covid-19 patients overwhelming existing hospitals. Dr. Mark Escott, Austin’s interim medical director and health authority, said the city has…
Travis County Central Health and CommUnityCare will announce the location of one new drive-thru Covid-19 testing site by the end of this week. “By the end of this week, at the latest, we’ll have a plan,” said Matt Balthazar, a…
The lone zoning case City Council is likely to discuss today would allow a developer to build low-density apartments, as well as a small commercial development, on a 23-acre tract on Colton Bluff Springs Road in Southeast Austin near McKinney…
According to the city’s economic consultant, Jon Hockenyos, a quarter of a million workers in the Austin area will lose their jobs as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. “We’re just at the beginning of seeing the economic implications of…
The financial figures representing the economic repercussions of self-isolation and shuttered businesses are beginning to surface in Travis County. Diana Ramirez, the director of Travis County’s Economic Development & Strategic Investments, told the Commissioners Court on April 7 that although…
On any given day, the majority of individuals held in the Travis County Jail have not yet had a trial or been convicted of the crime that landed them there, yet they cannot afford to pay the bondsman’s fee or…
The Austin Parks and Recreation Department continued its recent pattern of issuing increasingly strict rules for city-controlled parks on Tuesday, with an announcement that all city parks and trails will close over Easter weekend in an effort to prevent the…
With Covid-19 upending daily life, many senior citizens in Central Texas are finding their access to food limited and their social isolation increased. “Food became the overall concern for everybody,” Patty Bordie, director of the CAPCOG Area Agency on Aging,…
