Former City Council Member Chris Riley is back in Austin with his brand-new master’s in Urban Placemaking and Management from the Pratt Institute of New York. He described his final paper as a study of “guerrilla street improvements,” which he said started in New York in 2015. Although Riley wants to put his thesis about helping people create their own mobility improvements to work here, his homecoming coincided with the release of CodeNEXT. Riley said a lot of people would like to see a network of safe trail facilities in East Austin, which could be done without necessarily relying on the city for money or manpower. He said, “Usually the city would be an important partner, but there’s a lot people can do to create places that are going to be meaningful to the community.” In the meantime, the former Council member is excited about working on CodeNEXT. He said he is currently consulting with the Austin Board of Realtors but may be working with other groups as well. Implementing a new land development code is “a big, complicated problem, as well as an opportunity. … The good news is I enjoy all that,” he said.

The city’s Public Works Department revealed its Fiscal Year 2016 report on Wednesday. In the last year, the department constructed or repaired more than 156 miles of American with Disabilities Act-compliant sidewalks, patched up 2,868 potholes, maintained 62 miles of urban trail and trained nearly 50,000 students in street crossing, bicycle and bus-riding safety. Its Neighborhood Partnering Program, which helps residents complete projects in their communities, clocked nearly 11,000 volunteer hours throughout the year. Learn more about how the department puts its $86 million budget to use around the city at www.atxpwdannualreport2016.com.

Trying to recall what you learned during our most recent City Summit? Hoping to keep up during competitive dinner party conversation about school finance? Our friends at Glasshouse Policy have you covered. A new post looking back at the school finance panel held during City Summit does the hard work of breaking down some of the data and ideas discussed. There are even informative illustrations!

Yes, people, it’s that time of year again already: South by Southwest. Beginning next week, Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority buses go on a schedule with extended hours and increased service. MetroRapid will run until 2:30 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and until 12:30 a.m. on Sundays. MetroRail will also feature an extended weekend schedule. Saturdays, the train will run from 10:30 a.m. until 2:30 a.m. and from 10:30 a.m. until midnight on Sundays. There will also be overflow buses on hand if the train is experiencing particularly high traffic from March 11-18. Those buses operate from 9 a.m. until 2:30 a.m. Night Owl is scheduled to run past 3 a.m. every day except on Sunday. Anyone who needs to get to downtown from the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport can catch MetroAirport Route 100 every 30 minutes (and every 15 minutes on Sunday, March 19). Learn more, and take advantage of Capital Metro’s trip planner, on the agency’s website.

At its last meeting, City Council passed a resolution to study eastward-radiating Capitol View Corridors, but there remained one outstanding detail to sort. Worried that the study could impact future development of Brackenridge Hospital, the “Rosewood Corridor” that would extend over the site was put on pause. According to a post on the City Council Message Board from Council Member Ora Houston’s office, that has now been worked out. Her office wrote, “In conversation with Central Health, it has been agreed to expedite the Rosewood Park Capitol View Corridor study to allow Central Health to release their request for proposal by the end of March/first of April. The amendment will say: ‘…expediting the results and recommendations for the study of the Rosewood Park Corridor to return to Council no later than the March 23rd 2017 Austin City Council meeting with an analysis of the surveyed coordinates and the spatial impact on the properties within the proposed corridor.'”

Paul DiGiuseppe, a principal planner with the city’s Planning and Zoning Department, will be leaving the city for a big job in his home state of Rhode Island. DiGiuseppe told the Austin Monitor that he still has family and friends in Rhode Island and is excited about moving back home. In his new job, he will be assistant chief of the state’s Division of Planning and will be working on transportation planning, he said. DiGiuseppe described the state agency as akin to CAMPO, the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization. DiGiuseppe, who joined city staff in 2006, has most recently worked as part of the CodeNEXT team. His work included writing certain papers, called prescription papers, as well as public outreach. Dave Sullivan, a member of the CodeNEXT advisory group, described DiGiuseppe as “an excellent city employee” and “a key member of the staff.” DiGiuseppe follows several other members of the CodeNEXT team who have left the city for greener pastures. Friends and co-workers may join him for happy hour on Thursday at the Ginger Man, Sullivan said. His last day at the city is Friday.

Though the exact details are still being worked out for a proposed wastewater discharge permit, there’s one group fully behind the city of Dripping Springs’ wastewater expansion plan and discharge permit application: the Dripping Springs Chamber of Commerce. According to a press release, the chamber voted in support of the permit at its Feb. 21 meeting. “We recognize how much work the city has put into developing a proposal that addresses a critical need of our community,” said Chamber Board Chair Jason McNutt. “The board considered a variety of factors in its decision, including the city’s contracts with Caliterra and the Howard Ranch to accept close to 600,000 gallons per day of treated effluent; the letter of intent with Scott Roberts regarding a Driftwood development to accept up to one million gallons of treated effluent; and the Nov. 2016 ordinance requiring future developments to incorporate beneficial reuse.” At the moment, the permit remains in limbo; no hearing has been scheduled.

Residents have a chance next month to attend a public meeting on how the city should put to use funds from last year’s $720 million mobility bond allocated for Anderson Mill Road. District 6 City Council Member Jimmy Flannigan is scheduled to speak, and staff from the Austin Transportation Department will be on hand to answer any questions about the options for reducing congestion. The meeting is scheduled for March 11 at the Spicewood Springs Elementary School (11601 Olson Drive) beginning at 10 a.m. “Direct citizen participation is essential for ATD to determine the right traffic solutions for this critical stretch of Anderson Mill Road,” Flannigan said in a press release on Thursday.

The Central Health Board of Managers is in need of a new member with experience in health care finance and accounting who wants to make the substantial commitment to serving on the board through December 2020. The person should be an Austin resident with experience on boards of directors who is dedicated to financial transparency and community engagement. City Council’s Health and Human Services Committee will process the applications and choose a candidate for Council’s consideration in April. Learn more about the application process on the city’s website. The deadline to apply is 5 p.m. on March 30.

Austin Monitor publisher Mike Kanin was part of a team that headed to Boston this past weekend to participate in MIT’s MisinfoCon. Kanin, joined by Open Austin’s Mateo Clarke and Nucleus Learning Network’s Sarah Morris, participated in discussions and hackathon activities. Along the way, the team, joined by partners from Mozilla, advanced its Mozilla-funded effort to develop curriculum designed to combat misinformation (another word for the suddenly irrelevant, but briefly really popular, term “fake news”) for use in Austin-area classrooms this fall.

On Tuesday, the Zoning and Platting Commission voted to approve staff recommendation for three environmental variances, a conditional use permit for club/lodge use and a height bonus through the Hill Country Roadway Ordinance for the Junior League Community Impact Center. Dave Anderson with Drenner Group, PC, representing the applicant, said at the meeting that the development qualified for the height bonus because it faced the necessary “undue hardships” detailed in the HCRO. As the author of the HCRO, Commissioner Jim Duncan said that although he supported this recommendation, he would be strict about the ordinance moving forward. “I want to put everybody on notice that the (ordinance) is one of my pride and joys, and I do, as a member of ZAP, in the future plan on strongly enforcing that ordinance,” he said. Duncan made the motion to approve staff recommendation, and Commissioner Sunil Lavani seconded. Commissioner Betsy Greenberg made a friendly amendment that prohibited amplified outdoor sound as part of the club/lodge use. The motion passed unanimously. Commissioner Dustin Breithaupt was absent.

Local game developer Certain Affinity, which launched in Austin back in 2006, is moving into a 55,000-square-foot building at 7620 Guadalupe St. The new digs will reportedly include playtest labs, sound design suites and a virtual reality development lab – among many other amenities for the company’s 125 full-time employees. There will also be additional space for rent on the first floor once the work is completed this summer. Mayor Steve Adler noted that the project is the first to benefit from the state’s Media Production Facilities Development Program, an incentive dating back to 2009 that gives companies like Certain Affinity tax exceptions for construction or renovations costs. The developer hopes to improve on the $100 million in revenue it’s already made since opening shop a decade ago.