“Grief, loss and love across cultures” are the interlaced themes of an online exhibit from Oakwood Cemetery Chapel featuring photography, video, oral history, news articles, and digital maps. The exhibit, titled “To Remember,” is designed to be a showcase for “different forms of remembrance including burial and funeral practices, memorial anniversaries, cemetery maps, and genealogy research.” Open from now until March 31. View the exhibit.

Waterloo Greenway, the nonprofit group leading the development of a string of downtown parks along Waller Creek, has announced that CEO Peter Mullan is stepping down. Mullan, who joined the project in 2015, has accepted a new position as chief of architecture and design for the Austin Transit Partnership. In that role he will work within the body jointly created by the city and Capital Metro to implement the Project Connect transit plan. Waterloo Greenway will soon name an interim CEO and launch a national search for a new top executive. In a statement announcing the change, Waterloo Greenway Chair Cotter Cunningham praised Mullan for his six years leading the parks project and said the board will take the time needed to find the right candidate. “We will conduct a national CEO search to name our next highly qualified leader. This will include internal and local candidates, as well as those from around the country who share our calling and believe in our mission of environmental and cultural stewardship. We will be thoughtful in taking time to identify this leader, and until then, we will appoint an interim CEO to guide us forward as we prepare to celebrate the opening of Waterloo Park this year.”

Thanks to a $100,000 grant from the Lower Colorado River Authority, Pflugerville will be giving its water metering infrastructure a much-needed makeover and creating a customer portal. A news release from LCRA explains that the grant “will help replace the city’s current meters with advanced metering infrastructure and create an easy way for customers to monitor their water use in real time. The total project cost is $8 million.” In addition, the upgrade will “decrease potable water use and conserve water from the Highland Lakes. Pflugerville anticipates the project will save 92.7 acre-feet, or roughly 30.2 million gallons, of water annually.” Brandon Pritchett, Pflugerville’s public utility director, said, “It means a lot to have LCRA partner with us and approve our grant application for the full amount. LCRA’s trust in us will help us do the right thing for our customers.”

A two-mile stretch of East Riverside Drive between Summit Street and Grove Boulevard will be getting transit priority lanes. The new lanes will be used by nine Capital Metro bus routes that transport nearly 20 percent of the agency’s riders, according to an Austin Transportation Department news release. The lanes are expected to “organize traffic flow, improve the corridor’s efficiency and enhance transit performance on East Riverside Drive prior to the implementation of the Blue Line as part of Project Connect.” Look for new signage and “BUS ONLY” pavement markings to identify the new lanes, located on the right side of the street in the curbside travel lane. While the priority lanes are intended for buses, other vehicles will be allowed to use them in order to make right turns. Transportation Department Director Robert Spillar said, “The transit priority lanes will move more people through this busy corridor, even when traffic returns to pre-pandemic levels. The project is also an important step toward the more connected, multimodal system envisioned in the Austin Strategic Mobility Plan.” Installation will start in late February and the project is scheduled to be completed by early April. Find more facts and a project map here.

City Council met in work session Monday and will hold its regular Council meeting on Wednesday instead of Thursday this week. A city spokesperson told the Austin Monitor that Mayor Steve Adler and City Clerk Jannette Goodall had conflicting events on Thursday. Council will meet in a joint session with the Travis County Commissioners Court today at 9 a.m. to hear a briefing on efforts to fight the Covid-19 virus. Then they will meet at 10 a.m. Thursday to talk about numerous items, many of which relate to finding housing for the city’s homeless population or awarding grants and contracts in response to the economic crisis brought on by the pandemic. One item on Monday’s agenda that the mayor summarily postponed to Wednesday was electing a new mayor pro tem. Council Member Greg Casar announced his interest first, followed by Council Member Alison Alter and finally Council Member Natasha Harper-Madison. Council Member Paige Ellis argued that a woman should have the job, and Casar said he would support a woman from the Eastern Crescent. The Monitor has heard that Harper-Madison and Alter are working out a resolution so their colleagues will not have to choose between them. On Monday, District 6 Council Member Mackenzie Kelly, like her predecessors in that seat, had a lot of questions about the purchase of a property at 10811 Pecan Park Blvd. that the city intends to use for housing previously homeless people. It seems likely the item will be postponed to the Feb. 4 agenda.

The first eight members of the Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, which is tasked with redrawing the boundaries of the 10 City Council districts for the 2022 election, have been selected by City Auditor Corrie Stokes via a random drawing. The eight members are Prabhu Kannan, Brigham Morris, Errol Hardin, Eugene Schneider, Erin Dempsey, Luis Gonzalez, Dr. Sterling Lands and Hoang Le. Now that the first eight members are seated, those members will conduct a process to select the remaining six members of the commission for a total of 14 members. Stokes said in a news release about the selection, “I’d like to thank all applicants for both the panel and the commission. Active citizenry is one of the things that makes Austin a great place to live and I appreciate the time and effort everyone took to apply to both of these important city bodies.”

As part of Austin’s LGBTQIA+ Quality of Life Study, the city has launched a community survey to “help inform the city and its LGBTQ Quality of Life Advisory Commission about the quality of life of Austin’s LGBTQIA+ communities.” The survey is designed to “provide a better understanding of the community’s strengths and diversity, as well as more effectively advocate for its specific needs” as well as “serve as a historical snapshot of the LGBTQIA+ community in Austin, a population with no official historical documentation among city archives to date.” The anonymous survey takes about 25-30 minutes to complete and runs through April 30. Take the survey at shoutoutaustin.org.

The Austin Transportation Department is set to begin work this month on interim improvements to the Longhorn Dam bridge. The construction, taking place on South Pleasant Valley Road (Cesar Chavez Street to Elmont Drive), will “reconfigure the street space over the bridge to a single northbound traffic lane and two southbound lanes between the south Krieg Field entrance and Canterbury Street, with multiple new dedicated left turn lanes.” According to the department’s announcement, “The changes will provide better separation between people driving and people walking and riding bikes on South Pleasant Valley Road” and will “provide significant near-term safety benefits as substantial design work begins on the new ‘wishbone’ bicycle and pedestrian bridge over Lady Bird Lake.” To find out more details about the project, view a map of the project design.

Cyclists and pedestrians will be happy to hear that the Cherrywood Neighborhood Bikeways project, which is designed to connect the All Ages and Abilities Bicycle Network between Interstate 35, Airport Boulevard and East 38th ½ Street, is moving forward. According to Austin Transportation, the design includes “new pavement markings (‘sharrows’) to alert people driving to expect people bicycling, improvements for crossing I-35 near Wilshire Boulevard by foot and by bike, new wayfinding signs to guide people bicycling, speed reduction devices, and new rain gardens.” The project will begin this spring and will be completed in phases.

The city is conducting geotechnical studies as part of its preliminary report for the Redbud Trail Bridge roadway and bridge project. According to the city, “The work will provide important design information for future bridge foundations.” During the study, lanes will be closed near the Redbud Trail Bridge for three weeks, from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. on weekdays. (Red Bud Isle Park will still be accessible.) The road closure will occur in three phases: Lane closures from Lake Austin Boulevard to Red Bud Isle Park, Jan. 25-29; westbound lane closure from Red Bud Isle to Stratford Lane, Feb. 1-5; and shoulder closure and lane shift near Stratford Lane, Feb. 8-11. Find more details at the project website.

A coalition of groups favoring City Council’s decision to reallocate money from the Austin Police Department budget is gathering signatures on a petition to show support for actions such as delaying police cadet classes and eliminating vacant police officer positions. The coalition, operating under the name Austin Is Safer When, is also planning to oppose reinstatement of the ordinance prohibiting camping in public places. Chas Moore of the Austin Justice Coalition told the Austin Monitor the coalition plans to campaign against the Save Austin Now effort. Save Austin Now turned in more than 20,000 signatures to City Clerk Jannette Goodall this week to place the issue on the May ballot. Groups opposing that effort include the Texas Fair Defense Project, Austin Justice Coalition, Just Liberty, Texas Appleseed, the Survivor Justice Project, the Workers Defense Project and Measure, working under the auspices of the Action Network to defend decisions made by Council last summer under the umbrella of Reimagining Public Safety. According to the Austin Is Safer When website, “I know that Austin is already one of the safest cities in America, but #AustinIsSaferWhen we respect all our communities and address each crisis with an appropriate solution. I know that, despite persistent misinformation, Austin didn’t cut $150 million from the budget or layoff officers. The Austin City Council launched a #ReimagineATX public safety process and took a good first step by moving $21 million from the police budget to fund alternative first responders and services for people in need. If city officials hold to their commitments, #ReimagineATX will make us even safer with each step forward.”

This Saturday, Austin will be one step closer to its new City Council districts. This is the first time the city’s districts have been changed since they were established by the 2012 City Charter amendment that created single-member districts. City Auditor Corrie Stokes will conduct a random drawing to select the first eight members of the Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission. Stokes will be selecting from a pool of 60 determined by a (‘nother randomly selected) three-member Applicant Review Panel. The remaining six members of the redistricting commission will be selected by the eight commissioners established Saturday. A list of the possible members, the demographic breakdown of applicants and all sorts of other information can be found at redistrictatx.org. Saturday’s drawing can be viewed on ATXN or Facebook Live.