Elizabeth Christian Public Relations announced Thursday that it had acquired Wyatt Brand Inc. and that the combined firm represents one of the largest independent public relations agencies in Central Texas. Wyatt Brand co-founder David Wyatt has joined ECPR as a director, and co-founder Rachel Wyatt is the firm’s new creative director. In addition, Kristin Marcum has gained the title of president of the enlarged firm. Elizabeth Christian stressed that she will remain active at ECPR as CEO. She said giving Marcum the title of president is a way of recognizing Marcum’s day-to-day leadership role. However, Christian said that she would not be retiring. “I love what I do,” she said. ECPR represents a number of regional and national brands, including St. David’s, Google Fiber, SouthWest Water Company, Austin Board of Realtors, and Precourt Sports Ventures – the owner of Major League Soccer’s Columbus Crew SC. Wyatt Brand’s clients have included the Austin Public Library Friends Foundation, HEB, the city of Marfa, UNESCO, the Long Center and the University of Texas at Austin.

The city of Austin is suspending its Citizen Review Panel, leaving police with less public oversight – at least for now. The move ends 17 years of volunteer panel members weighing in on complaints from the public about Austin police officers.

Under the city’s last labor contract with Austin police officers, members of the review panel had access to internal Austin Police Department documents even before investigations of complaints were complete. That contract expired in December, and City Council unanimously rejected a new one. With negotiations in limbo, police officers are operating under a standard State of Texas civil service law, which does not allow citizen access to internal police documents.

“In light of these factors, and pending future direction from the Council concerning labor relations at APD, I am suspending all further operations of the CRP at this time,” Interim City Manager Elaine Hart wrote in a memo to the mayor and City Council members. “In taking this action, I wish to acknowledge with deep gratitude the work of the current CRP members.”

The Austin Police Association said it anticipates resuming contract negotiations after the new city manager, Spencer Cronk, starts work next month.

This story first appeared on kut.org.

The battle lines have become quite clear in the debate over where in Austin a new soccer stadium might be constructed, and the front line has become Butler Shores Metropolitan Park. Following an Austin Monitor story about a resolution from Council Member Ann Kitchen – then just conceptual, but now actual, with three co-sponsors – the owners of the Columbus Crew soccer club that want to relocate the team to Austin have said they’re not giving up their hopes of building the 20,000-seat facility near the downtown waterfront.

In a widely distributed press statement, Dave Greeley, president of Precourt Sports Ventures, said the group is still conducting an impact analysis on the Butler Shores site. They plan to present those findings ahead of the Feb. 15 Council meeting where a vote on Kitchen’s resolution is expected to take place.

Greeley’s statement:

Polling data tells us the vast majority of Austinites want a Major League Soccer team; we recognize some have reservations about locating a soccer park on parkland.

Since city staff developed the list of potential sites for a proposed Major League Soccer stadium at the direction of Council, Precourt Sports Ventures has researched the merits of each, including Butler Shores, Roy Guerrero Park and McKalla Place. As we have stated from the onset of this process, finding the right site for a stadium will be of the utmost importance as we contemplate bringing MLS to Austin. With that in mind, we have done comprehensive work on the Butler Shores site, including independent studies on traffic, parking, lights and sound, among others, and that will be complete in the next few weeks. We will share these critical findings with the community and City Council before the February 15 council meeting, so that Austin’s elected officials can make an informed decision.

Before any of the sites are removed from consideration, we hope council will allow us the opportunity to demonstrate potential parkland improvements and community impact and benefits for Butler Shores or any of the other potential sites, which could lead to the possibility of a public vote.

Every year, City Hall lends its walls to the People’s Gallery to showcase Austin-area artists. The 2018 yearlong exhibition, the city’s 14th, will open on Feb 23. It includes 102 works across a variety of media. The People’s Gallery is open to the public Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and visitors are encouraged to vote for their favorite piece after viewing the gallery. The 2017 People’s Choice award will be announced at the opening reception for this year’s exhibit, which is from 6 to 9 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 23. Voting for the 2018 People’s Choice award will run from opening night through Oct. 26.

On Jan. 23, the Parks and Recreation Board unanimously recommended that the City Council authorize a consultant to provide the Parks and Recreation Department with a long-range plan for the next five to seven years. According to Randy Scott, acting division manager for park planning, “We’ve selected the consultant and we’re moving forward to Council.” The contract was awarded to the firm Wallace Roberts and Todd in an amount not to exceed $400,000. He said that the plan should be completed within a year. Kimberly McNeeley, the interim director of the parks department, explained that the funding for this contract is coming from the department and is partially augmented by the Austin Parks Foundation. Scott noted that although this is the first time that a consultant will be hired for this project, doing so will “take the long-range plan to the next level.” He also conceded that the department’s current staff is “stretched extremely thin” and could use assistance. According to him, the department has the same amount of staff as it did in 1998, “if not less.”

Some grassroots activists are going to jail for the sake of democracy. The Austin Justice Coalition, in partnership with its sister organization in Houston, announced on Tuesday a voter registration drive at the Travis County Jail in Del Valle aimed at inmates in the Harris County Jail that the AJC appears to want to expand to the Travis County Jail in Del Valle. In a press release, the organization says that the jail houses approximately 2,400 inmates, more than half of whom have neither been convicted nor sentenced. The effort, called #ProjectOrange, is the creation of the Houston Justice Coalition’s co-founder and executive director Durrel Douglas. “When we sat down to plan Project Orange, our goal was to reach out to eligible voters who are often ignored,” Douglas said. Starting this past Sunday and continuing for the next three, volunteers armed with registration cards will work their way through the jail Harris County Jail escorted by jail staff. Eligible inmates will be able to fill out the cards, allowing them to vote in the upcoming March primary elections. According to the AJC, the group’s ambitions don’t appear to end there. “It is important to highlight the fact that since these qualified inmates have yet to be convicted of a crime, they are eligible to vote, and unfortunately, there are no voting booths at the Travis County Jail,” says the press release. “Well, with our ambitious efforts, we hope that is about to change.”

The Workers Defense Project is using the recent Republican-driven revision of the federal tax code to push for an ordinance here in Austin that would expand paid sick leave to thousands of residents. On Tuesday, the group released a short video featuring $100 bills raining down in slow motion on an ecstatic man dressed in business attire. Text fades into the lower half of the screen reading, “Trump just gave Austin businesses one of the largest tax cuts in history, but an estimated 223,000 Austin workers still don’t get paid sick time. Tell Austin City Council: Austin families deserve better.” Council is set to take up the ordinance in February. Today, the Work Strong Austin coalition, which includes the WDP and the Centers for Public Policy Priorities, among others, will hold a community briefing on the ordinance at the Austin Public Library’s Carver Branch starting at 6 p.m.

The Austin History Center is kicking off Black History Month with a new exhibit sharing selected photographs collected by the Travis County Negro Extension Service. The photographs date from 1940 to 1964 and are a window into the assistance Prairie View A&M University provided to African-American rural youth in Travis County through the extension service during that time. Established in 1915, the extension service sponsored a variety of programs such as 4-H clubs, farm demonstrations and home improvement classes. The service was modified after the end of segregation and continues today as the Cooperative Extension Service. Titled “Clearing Stones and Sowing Seeds,” the exhibit will open with a pie social at 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 6. Entrance to the exhibit and reception are free.

The headline of this whisper has been corrected.

The Austin Monitor, Glasshouse Policy and the Austin Tech Alliance are proud to announce the third annual City Summit. This event aims to provide an opportunity for Texans to learn more about the political issues that face the state. The theme for this year is “resiliency,” and the summit will feature panels and breakout sessions relating to how the state responds to challenges such as flooding, other natural disasters and homelessness. This week, we are excited to announce that Annise Parker, former Houston mayor, city council member and city controller, has joined the list of speakers. Parker will share what she has learned about resilience from her considerable experience in the political venue, as well as her experience in the private sector as senior vice president and chief strategy officer for BakerRipley, where she recently coordinated relief efforts following Hurricane Harvey. In addition, as the first mayor of a large U.S. city to openly identify as part of the LGBTQ community, Parker is uniquely qualified to provide an inclusive perspective to the summit.

City Summit 2018 is on Tuesday, Feb. 20, at the Capital Factory, 701 Brazos St., from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Visit the event page here for tickets. Speakers and panels will be announced throughout the month.

Reversing a decision made at a work session two weeks ago, Austin Independent School District Board of Trustees President Kendall Pace said at Monday night’s meeting that the proposed name changes for school facilities with the Confederate military namesakes would be back on February’s agenda. The board will now take up the matter for discussion at its work session on Feb. 12. On Jan. 8, the board had second-guessed the administration’s November 2017 initiation of the item, with the consensus being that more time was needed to think through the process. Since then, Trustee Edmund Gordon, who had not been present at that work session, chastised his colleagues during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech for their hesitation. In response, Trustee Ann Teich had asked the board to formally censure Gordon at a Jan. 17 board operations meeting. The board did not act on that request.

After some thought, members of a working group of the Board of Adjustment were content to let their comments on the first draft of CodeNEXT remain for the second draft. However, at their most recent meeting, during the discussion about the Land Development Code rewrite, the ghost of the Zucker report appeared. Responding to a thought that the report’s observations on the Board of Adjustment might be a useful lens to view CodeNEXT through, Board Member Bryan King agreed, noting that newly hired City Manager Spencer Cronk had only recently heard of the report. “(He) was very interested in it,” said King, who noted the board might want to give Cronk feedback on the report. “As he comes in and splashes in the pool, we (can) hand him a towel,” he said. Board members may take action on the upcoming code draft and map, once they are released.

The Council Judicial Committee is moving forward with the appointment of Municipal Court judges at a breakneck pace, according to a post by Council Member (and committee chair) Jimmy Flannigan. Under the city charter, the four-year appointments should have been made on Jan. 1, 2018, and the committee is now operating under the allowed 90-day extension, creating a firm April 1 deadline for appointments. Due to an oversight during committee reshuffling, and then the reshuffling of that, Austin was left with no committee at all to handle appointment – this incarnation was only created in November. “Our research into how this process has occurred in the past, including how the City of Austin and other cities have conducted their Municipal Court appointment process, has shown there is no historical or national standard, necessitating a new process that can be used for this term and in the future,” wrote Flannigan, who explained that in December he and Council members Greg Casar, Delia Garza and Leslie Pool crafted a new process for evaluating and approving judges and created an independent panel to evaluate and make recommendations. City Council is scheduled to consider the appointments at its March 8 meeting.