A flurry of Citizens Communications about the Lightsey 2 development in South Austin hit their mark at the specially called Planning Commission meeting Wednesday night. Commissioners Stephen Oliver and Nuria Zaragoza, who both voted in favor of the preliminary plan during the first go-round, indicated their wish to have the plan return on the next agenda. The request to rescind was based on the fact that a permit was expired, information that was not presented at the previous meeting. At the next meeting, set for Nov. 25, six commissioners will have to vote to rescind in order for the previous decision to be reversed. The Monitor will have a full story on Friday.

Speaking of South Lamar, one of the most contentious areas of development in the city recently has been the South Lamar area. Residents — and the South Lamar Mitigation Study — worry that the rush of development without proper infrastructure has led to flooding and traffic problems. Next month, the city will host an open house to address the traffic portion of those issues, as part of its South Lamar Boulevard Transportation Corridor Study, which is expected to be completed in August 2015. The open house will take place Dec. 10 from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. for businesses and from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. for the public at the Zilker Elementary School Cafeteria, 1900 Bluebonnet Lane.

Today, the Downtown Austin Alliance, Austin Parks Foundation and Parks and Recreation Department will present a revamped park next to the Congress Avenue Old Bakery Emporium. According to a statement from the Parks Department, DAA and APF each contributed $26,000 to the effort, and the Austin Parks and Recreation Department contributed staff and labor in kind. “With limited funding and extensive needs all over Austin, partnerships such as this are becoming more and more important,” said Colin Wallis, executive director of the Austin Parks Foundation. A “celebratory welcoming” of the new park will take place from 11 a.m. to noon today.

Capital Metro Area Planning Organization Executive Director Ashby Johnson told board members Monday night that he appointed Phillip Tindall as assistant director of the planning organization. Tindall served as the director of a Metropolitan Planning Organization in Florida and most recently worked with Austin Resource Recovery. “He comes to us with a lot of great experience, and I am really looking forward to Phillip getting started,” Johnson said.

A curious reader asked the Austin Monitor what District 3 candidate Sabino ‘Pio’ Renteria meant when he said in his campaign finance report that he had paid the City of Austin $125 for “advertising,” without further explanation. We asked, and Renteria said advertising was the only category he could think of for the permit fee he paid the city for eight days of driving a sound truck around his district. While Renteria seems to be having a good time running for City Council, when the Monitor asked him about the expenditure, he had a complaint. Basically, Renteria said, it is difficult for the average person to navigate the contribution and expenditure reports that candidates are required to file. “It seems like they want you to be a lawyer or hire a consultant, and I’m a grass-roots candidate,” he said, not one who can afford to hire someone else to fill out the reports. “People are so picky, and they are trying to distract you from what you’re trying to accomplish.” Alfred Stanley, who has raised money and advised candidates for years about how to fill out such forms, said he thought that Renteria’s failure to describe the fee was innocuous. “In the old days, I could call the Texas Ethics Commission and they would explain it to me,” he said. “But four or five years ago, they started taking the position that they couldn’t tell you,” because if they told you the wrong thing, they might be liable. Stanley said the city has taken the same position. That leaves candidates who cannot afford legal counsel or consultants on their own, and that should not be the case, he said. Still, Renteria said he is excited about the race, which pits him against his sister, Susana Almanza, in the Dec. 16 runoff. Renteria raised $5,734 and loaned his campaign $1,000. He spent $4,865 and came in second. Almanza reported that she raised $20,765 and spent $15,242.

The city will host its first public meeting for the Guadalupe Street Corridor Study to discuss the purpose of the study and listen to community feedback. Area residents will talk about how to improve the Guadalupe Corridor for pedestrians, bicycles, public transportation and cars. The goal of the study is to recommend short-term to long-term improvements to enhance mobility, safety and the quality of life along the Guadalupe Corridor. The study area includes Guadalupe Street near the UT Austin campus, with approximate boundaries of MLK Jr. Boulevard to the south, West 29th Street to the north, Rio Grande Street to the west, and a block into the UT Austin campus to the east. The meeting is set for 6 p.m. Dec. 3 at University Presbyterian Church, 2203 San Antonio Street.

The Austin Young Chamber of Commerce is adding five new members to its board for 2015. The new board members for AYC include Adam Flagg, Lauren Galea, Andrew Martin, Diana Nogueira and Ashland Viscosi. “We have members from the tech community, civic engagement, finance, real estate, hospitality (communities) and so much more,” said Executive Director Matt Glazer. “The fact that our 2015 board members include Austin natives along with people from across the country and world, puts us in a unique place to serve our members and greater Austin effectively. I know we are all excited about what is coming up in 2015.” Glazer said in a news release that the nonprofit is focused on “identifying and engaging the next generation of Austin leaders.”

Council Members Laura Morrison and Bill Spelman are set to help the Monitor close out its 2014 Beers Brains and Betterment discussion series with what we’re calling an exit interview Nov. 18. As always, the event is at the North Door, 501 Brushy St., where doors will open at 7 p.m. Tickets are free and can be found here. Also as always, we expect a candid discussion.

Todd Phelps, who finished fourth in last week’s mayoral race, announced Monday that he is endorsing front-runner Steve Adler in the runoff election. Adler, who won 37 percent of the vote, faces Council Member Mike Martinez in a Dec. 16 runoff. Martinez garnered 30 percent of the vote on Nov. 4. Phelps, who got about 10 percent of the vote but took only one precinct, Precinct 232, sent out a news release stating, “At this point, I feel that it is in the best interest of preserving the culture and soul of Austin, as well as planning for the future of our city, that I am endorsing Steve Adler in the runoff election for Mayor of Austin. I am urging all of my supporters and those who voted for me to put their support behind Steve at this time.” Phelps, a country singer and entrepreneur, was one of the more conservative candidates in the race for mayor. Mayor Pro Tem Sheryl Cole, who came in third behind Adler and Martinez, has not indicated whether she intends to endorse one of the runoff candidates, but she will likely make a decision on that this week.

The Austin Sierra Club will tackle water resources planning at its monthly meeting tonight. The group will look at the work of the Austin Water Resources Planning Task Force, which was created by City Council in March to address the city’s future water needs. The meeting will feature task force member Sharlene Leurig, who directs the Sustainable Water Infrastructure Program at Ceres, writes about Texas springs on her blog, and serves on the board of directors of the Hill Country Alliance and on the advisory council of the Environmental Science Institute at University of Texas at Austin. The meeting will take a look at the work of the task force, which, according to a statement from Sierra Club, “recommended a water future based on efficiency, reuse, decentralization and stewardship of existing and local sources. The recommendations contrast sharply with the long-existing orientation of Austin’s water utility to ‘grow the business’ by selling more and more water. The task force also rejected proposals for expensive schemes to pipe in groundwater from Lee, Milam and Bastrop counties.” The meeting takes place at 7 p.m. in the north dining room of Scholz Garten, 1607 San Jacinto Blvd.

A series of City Council runoff forums hosted by KLRU, Leadership Austin, the Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life and our City Hall reporting partners at KUT kicks off this evening at KLRU’s studio 6A. All of the remaining Council candidates will participate in discussions focused on the “leadership values and qualities each person will bring” to Austin. Monitor publisher Mike Kanin will moderate a handful of the conversations. RSVP to attend here.

First-time mayoral candidate Todd Phelps, who came in fourth in the Nov. 4 election with about 10 percent of the vote, evidently has some odd interpretations of campaign finance law. Phelps’ reports, generally not filed on time, also leave out the names of most contributors. But he seems to have gotten the most bang for the buck, spending just 84 cents per vote. Some of the contributors he does name are familiar to Austin political watchers. For example, Travis County Pct. 2 Commissioner Gerald Daugherty reportedly gave Phelps $350. The same report indicates that Jim Skaggs, the head of the anti-rail PAC known as Citizens Against Rail Taxes, or CART, contributed $700. That seems unlikely. It was probably Skaggs and his wife who contributed that amount, since $350 is the legal limit for individual contributors. However, most of Phelps’ contributors remain anonymous, which the law does not allow. Phelps also filed one report on Oct. 6 showing he had loaned his campaign $4,600. He also filed five separate reports on Election Day showing loans from himself to the campaign on various dates. Phelps says he loaned himself a total of $26,700. As far as can be determined, Phelps spent about $15,000. He won Precinct 232 in far West Austin, with 29 percent of the vote, or 33 votes. Council Member Mike Martinez and attorney Steve Adler, who advanced to the runoff last week, both received 28 votes in that small precinct, or 25 percent of the vote. Also, Skaggs’ PAC finished the election a winner and reported more than $266,000 still in its treasury. Skaggs contributed $50,000 to the PAC on the last report. Because it is a special purpose committee, it cannot now support a candidate with those funds, according to longtime Austin fundraiser Alfred Stanley. Stanley said if the PAC has not received corporate money, it could contribute $350 to candidates of its choosing. However, he added, the PAC may not now turn all of its money and efforts to supporting a candidate because it does not have the name of the candidate in its title. So we’ll keep an eye on where that money goes next.