Plan for new development services staff on hold

Along the way to passing a budget for the upcoming fiscal year, City Council voted Tuesday to derail the Development Services Department’s plan to hire 51 new employees beginning in either January or March. The department has said it needed…

Prostitution court falling short of county expectations

Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt on Tuesday revealed that a justice program aimed at helping residents charged with prostitution is falling short of expectations. “Relying on the criminal and civil justice system to boot-strap these individuals who are in such…

Austin is ready to close its shelter for Harvey evacuees

Austin’s centralized shelter for Hurricane Harvey evacuees at the Met Center could close by the end of the week. About 170 people remain at the South Austin shelter. It held as many as 400 evacuees after the storm, which brought…

Rezoning applicant loses rematch with neighborhood

A property owner expected different results at last Tuesday’s Zoning and Platting Commission meeting when making the same rezoning application for a Northwest Austin property. The zoning had been previously cut down by City Council, and the commission decided to…

Group keeps gondola hopes alive

The Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s firm disinterest in aerial gondolas is not discouraging one group from working toward a vision of cable car transit in Austin. John McCready of Look Up Austin told the Austin Monitor last week that he…

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Austin’s Blackland Prairie remains unexpectedly unrecovered

On Wednesday, graduate engineer Lindsay Olinde and Mateo Scoggins, a senior environmental scientist from the Watershed Protection Department, presented the Environmental Commission with the unexpected findings on Blackland Prairie riparian corridors. Contrary to the hypothesis that this historically less-urbanized and…

Council begins final slog through budget today

After hours and hours of budget work sessions, including two such sessions last week, today City Council must at least start to make the hard decisions of what to fund and what to leave for another year. Today is the…

Austinites call for halt, and a vote, on CodeNEXT

Residents and activists in East Austin called for a halt and possible public vote on CodeNEXT during a community session Saturday where reparations for displaced individuals and a program to create affordable housing stock on city-owned lands were also discussed…

Austin explores a new approach to helping the homeless

Austin leaders are considering whether to try out a simple strategy for helping the homeless: give them jobs. The idea is based on a program in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that has gained national attention and been credited with connecting homeless…

Reporter's Notebook: Look at all these rumors

Film Commission rumor not confirmed… Louis Black, who is retiring as publisher of the Austin Chronicle, emailed City Council last week claiming that the recent vote to allocate a portion of the city’s Hotel Occupancy Tax from Visit Austin (previously…

Harvey 'washed us back home': Is Austin too expensive for those relocating after Harvey?

Wendy Rivera sat in a metal folding chair outside the shelter for Hurricane Harvey evacuees in Southeast Austin. She shared a 44-ounce convenience store soda with her husband, Ramiro. Ramiro, tall, soft-spoken and tattooed, used his body and a white…