Archive for the ‘Austin’ Category

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Art (Acevedo), damn it! watch. (#P of a series)

Friday, January 25th, 2013

Today’s Austin Police Department suspension is brought to you by former Sergeant William Lefebvre.

Sgt. William Lefebvre, called to assist in an incident at a shopping center on Aug. 8, used the bottom of his foot to move a suspect further into a patrol car, striking him in the chest, [Police Chief Art] Acevedo said.

Chief Acevedo says “That tactic was not justified or objectively reasonable and (he) failed to report it in a timely manner”.

Okay. What does “failed to report in a timely manner” mean?

Acevedo said that Lefebvre reported the incident the same day, but upon review, it was determined that he could have been more accurate and timely.

Former sergeant Lefebvre will be suspended for 60 days (“The memo didn’t say whether Lefebvre will be paid during the suspension.”) and has agreed to a demotion to corporal detective. Post suspension, he will be “on probation” for a year. “If he commits a similar act of misconduct, he would be indefinitely suspended without the right to appeal.”

It sounds like this was a negotiated deal with the city, and that Lefebvre will not be appealing his discipline. However, the Statesman does not explicitly state this.

Posted in Austin, Clippings, Cops, Law | Comments Closed

Random notes: January 21, 2013.

Monday, January 21st, 2013

I’ve written previously about the pot growers of Mendocino County. Today’s LAT reports on a new development.

Mendocino County set up a program to register medical marijuana growers:

Those who registered with the sheriff had to install security fencing and cameras, pay permitting fees up to $6,450 a year and undergo inspections four times a year. Every plant was given a zip-tie with a sheriff’s serial number on it.

The DEA raided the first person who registered.

Still, 91 growers signed up the next year.
Agents then targeted Matt Cohen, the grower most vocal in advocating for the program and getting it set up.

In spite of this, the county intended to continue registering growers:

But county officials stopped the permitting and inspections in March after the U.S. attorney threatened them with legal action. The federal subpoena landed in October, demanding records of inspections, applications, internal county emails, notes, memos and bank account numbers.

The county is now fighting the subpoenas. Three things about this:

Meanwhile, in local news: Austin has a moderately successful chains of bars known as “Little Woodrow’s”. The owners want to put a new location at 5425 Burnet, but they need a zoning change first. Here’s 5425 Burnet on Google Maps:


View Larger Map

This is a stretch of road I’m fairly familiar with; there’s not much along there except strip centers and stand-alone businesses. As the Statesman notes, there’s a mixed-use apartment/shopping development (with a parking garage) right across the street, which Little Woodrow’s hopes to cater to. There’s two bars close by that I can think of: Ginny’s Little Longhorn Saloon, mentioned in the article, which is also famous for chicken (stuff) bingo, and Billy’s on Burnet (which does very good hamburgers and has limited parking).

Anyway, the point is: the usual suspects – the Brentwood and Allandale neighborhood associations – are all butthurt over this, claiming there won’t be enough parking, the bar would be too noisy, yadda yadda. In spite of their opposition, “the opponents are short by roughly half the number of signatures needed on a petition that would require six of seven council members to approve the rezoning”. They had two votes against in a preliminary vote: Laura Morrison and Kathie Tovo.

(On a completely unrelated note: anyone got any experience organizing recall elections?)

Posted in Austin, Books, Clippings, Guns, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

More of your tax dollars at work.

Friday, January 11th, 2013

A little more than a year ago, I noted the saga of the Turner-Roberts Recreation Center in east Austin: built in 2008, developed structural problems in 2009, closed in 2011 while the city considered how to fix those problems.

Estimates at the time were $2.7 million and seven months to repair, or 10 months and $4.1 million for a tear-down and rebuild.

Today’s Statesman updates the story:

The price tag to rebuild and repair an East Austin recreation center, plagued by structural problems soon after it opened four years ago, has reached $6.4 million — about $1 million more than the original cost to build it.

The city is going to pay $3 million of that cost. The rest will be picked up by the three companies that designed and built the center.

All told, the city will have spent $8.6 million on the building.

The city has also spent another $3.1 million to open a “9,100-square-foot ‘multi-purpose facility; next door that contains a gathering space, restrooms and a kitchen — similar to a rec center.”

I noted above that the three firms involved in design and construction are paying $3.4 million of the cost. That’s based on a settlement between those firms and the city, which didn’t require that the firms admit fault:

City officials wouldn’t provide a copy of the settlement this week and wouldn’t say how much each company had to pay. The American-Statesman has filed an open records request asking for the settlement.

And where’s the city’s share of the money coming from?

The city will pay the $3 million that the settlement didn’t cover using certificate of obligation bonds, which don’t require voter approval and are paid back using property taxes.

Those bonds were also used to pay for the new multi-purpose facility.

Something stinks here, and I don’t think it is the trash I need to take out. (Just to be safe, though, I’m going to do that anyway.)

Edited to add: Well, that’s settled. It wasn’t the trash.

Posted in Austin, Clippings | Comments Closed

Fun. Nasty fun.

Monday, January 7th, 2013

Just finished calling all the Austin City Council members (none were available to talk to me, so I left messages with their staff), and sending emails through the forms on the city website.

My message was short and simple:

  • The Martinez proposal is a bad idea that will do nothing to solve any real problem.
  • It will expose the city to legal action under section 229 of the Texas local government code.
  • If the council member votes for this proposal, I will not only vote against them in the next election, but I will also give money to, and actively work for, their opponent.
  • It only takes 38,000 signatures to get a recall election going.

I can be a real mean SOB if I want to be. (“Take a jam to make you think. Take a challenge to make you great.”)

I plan to back this up with physical letters, which will probably go out tomorrow (assuming I can get my printer working).

Here’s something that folks might find useful: a MSWord merge file of all the council members, with addresses and office phone numbers. The email addresses come off the copies of the emails I sent through the contact forms; the “PO Box 1088” physical address is the one they all list on their contact pages. The phone numbers come from their contact pages as well.

(I could add fax numbers, I guess. If anyone uses fax machines these days.)

(Subject line hattip.)

Edited to add: At Lawrence’s instigation, here’s a CSV version of the Austin City Council members. And here’s a CSV version of the Travis County Commissioners Court, both commissioners and their executive assistants, including phone numbers and email addresses.

Posted in Austin, Guns, Law, Politics | 7 Comments »

This is intended to enrage you. (#4 in a series)

Saturday, January 5th, 2013

What we do instead of doing something:

City of Austin and Travis County officials plan to take steps to ban gun shows on city- and county-owned property — and potentially even curtail them on private property within the city limits, the American-Statesman has learned.

…

Additionally, [Austin City Council member Mike] Martinez said the city will likely explore the possibility of enacting a law that would require a special permit — granted only by the City Council — for gun shows held on private property in Austin. Martinez said he will seek legal opinions on that idea. Eckhardt said she doesn’t think state law gives county governments such authority.

And:

“I can’t think of anything dumber,” [Texas Land Commissioner Jerry] Patterson, a supporter of gun rights, said of the proposals. “It’s absolutely not going to reduce gun violence.”

Time to make some phone calls Monday morning.

Edited to add: Giving this some more thought, Charles Harris of Storied Firearms (who is quoted in the article) deserves some praise. He could easily have thrown the gun shows under the bus. After all, that’d drive business to his place. But no.

…he sees the measure as “a feel-good thing. Politicians saying, ‘Look what we’re doing. We’re doing something to curb gun violence,’ when in reality, it doesn’t do anything to prevent crimes. Criminals can still get a gun on the streets anyway. I think there are other laws that can do a lot more good to get bad guys away from their guns.”

If you live in the greater Austin area, why not stop by Storied Firearms and pick up a little something? I visit there fairly regularly and find it to be a very nice shop. If you’re not in the Austin area, but support gun rights, there’s a contact form on their website that you could use to send a “thank you” to Mr. Harris.

Posted in Austin, Clippings, Guns, Politics, Rage | 3 Comments »

Formula 1 is slightly less heckish.

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012

I wrote previously about the proposals to close large swaths of downtown streets, including Congress Avenue, so people could party when Formula 1 came to town.

We have a deal. The Congress Avenue proposal (from an independent promoter) has been dropped, and that festival is merging with the official F1 “Fan Fest”.

Unfortunately, Congress Avenue is still going to be closed, but it looks like the closures will be for a shorter period than under the original “Experience Austin” proposal.

A bigger festival for 2013 could be held at the circuit in southeastern Travis County, Carroza said. “As COTA becomes more and more finished, it becomes apparent that people will want to spend more and more time there.”

This sounds like a fine idea to me, assuming there is an F1 race here in 2013. I wouldn’t recommend counting that chicken until it hatches, though.

Posted in Austin, Cars, Clippings, Sports | Comments Closed

Quickies for October 11, 2012.

Thursday, October 11th, 2012

The vast majority of people renting homes for this weekend’s Austin City Limits Music Festival could be breaking the law, as only four houses out of an estimated 1,500 short-term rental properties had the required license to operate as of Wednesday.

The city implemented the new rules on short-term rentals ten days ago. Odd how that hasn’t been a problem for the last couple of ACL festivals, but yet the city felt compelled to make a new set of rules anyway. (Yes, it may also have something to do with the F1 race as well, but again, there haven’t been reports of massive short-term rental problems with ACL, or SXSW, or UT football games, or (fill in the blank).)

“It isn’t our desire to be punitive,” Christianson said. “We just want people to have a safe place to stay when they come to Austin.”

Because, of course, people are too dumb to make that decision on their own.

More Alex Karras: NYT. A/V Club.

The question before the court was whether Mr. Ndao was enough of an expert in Senegalese spells to testify at the murder trial of Bakary Camara, 42, who says he killed an ex-girlfriend last fall under the influence of evil spirits. He has pleaded not guilty to charges that he murdered the woman, Rita Morelli, 36.

The answer was “no”.

Unfortunately, the Squirrel Report is off the air this week. Which is a darn shame, as not only could they talk about “Commander Squirrel”, but they could also cover this story:

Since the beginning of September, the center has taken in some 400 abandoned baby squirrels, the most in three decades, if you leave out the Ike year.

(Story includes many cute photos of baby squirrels being fed, exactly the sort of thing that’s up Weer’d’s alley.)

Once again, I feel some obligation to comment on the Lance situation. It is looking like option #2 on my list may actually have turned out to be true. But I want to sit down and actually read the USADA report first, and I haven’t had time to do that. (I’m trying to finish the book I’m currently reading, I need to work on the Stanford Computer Networking class, I’m working on planning a birthday celebration, there’s still a movie I want to see, and some other things going on. Plus, tubular bells.)

Anyway, I’ll try to get to it, maybe over the weekend if I can manage to knock out the Stanford stuff.

Posted in Austin, Books, Clippings, Law, Obits, Politics, Sports | Comments Closed

Art (Acevedo), damn it! watch. (#O of a series)

Tuesday, September 25th, 2012

So Austin’s favorite police chief had a press conference this morning “flanked by two of his harshest critics”. (In case you were wondering, those are Nelson Linder, president of the local NAACP, and Jim Harrington, executive director of the Texas Civil Rights Project.)

Why the press conference? APD policy changes, which Chief Acevedo credits to input from Mr. Linder and Mr. Harrington. Specifically:

It isn’t clear to me if these are the only policy changes, or if there were less significant ones that the Statesman is skipping. One other area that’s been highly controversial lately is photographing and recording APD officers during arrests: Scott Henson over at “Grits for Breakfast” has some good coverage of what’s been going on.

Off the top of my head, none of these sound horrible. I do have a concern that requiring a minimum of four officers to respond to emotionally disturbed persons might, just might, cause problems, if that kind of response looks overwhelming to the subject. However, I think the training requirement may offset that concern. The big issue: does APD have enough people, with the right training, to respond in a timely fashion?

Posted in Austin, Clippings, Cops, Law, Photography, Politics | 1 Comment »

Formula 1 is heck.

Saturday, September 8th, 2012

At least it will be in downtown Austin in November.

“But they aren’t racing in downtown!” No, they’re not. The racetrack is out near the airport.

But the city is considering three applications that involve closing downtown streets for up to a week during the festivities. The closures would include seven blocks of Congress Avenue, the main downtown artery.

Twenty-eight blocks in the area between Lady Bird Lake, Interstate 35, MLK Jr. Boulevard and Lavaca Street would see full closures, some beginning on Tuesday evening before the race and extending until the following Tuesday, and four other blocks would have some lanes closed. Three of the closures wouldn’t end until the Tuesday after all the sleek cars have headed to the next race on the international circuit.

The next question: who and why? The people who are organizing the race have requested two of the three pending closures.

…requested lane closures on Trinity between East 15th Street and East MLK from Friday through Sunday of that week for the scores of shuttle buses that will ferry fans to and from the race. There will also be similar operations at the Travis County Exposition Center and at another yet-to-be announced location.
“They’ll be loading 12 buses at a time,” said Gordon Derr, assistant director of the City of Austin’s Transportation Department. “There may be one through-lane open, which we may close intermittently.”

I’m actually semi-okay with this. I’m not sure they need to close the entire street, but I’ve never tried to run shuttle busses for 30,000 people. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Next:

…centered on the Warehouse District west of Congress, will be the site of Fan Fest, which will “celebrate Formula One the sport,” circuit spokeswoman Julie Loignon said Thursday.
Loignon said the Fan Fest, which will run from the evening of Friday, Nov. 16, through early Monday, Nov. 19, will feature music, food vendors and other elements that she declined to specify. Circuit officials plan to announce details of the event in the coming weeks, she said.
If the permit is granted as currently contemplated, Congress between Second and Fifth streets would close in stages starting Thursday evening, Nov. 15, and would open before rush hour on Monday, Nov. 19. Parts of West Second, Third, Fourth and Colorado streets would also be closed for several days.

I’m less wild about this: it seems like fan wankery for the eurotrash that come in for these kind of events. But it is in the Warehouse District, and they’re only asking to close a few blocks of Congress for what amounts to a long weekend. Number three:

The other pending closure application is for Experience Austin, a festival organized by Run-Tex that will run through the race weekend. It would close Congress from Seventh to 11th streets, as well as parts of Eighth, Ninth, 10th, 11th, 12th and Colorado streets. Some of those closures would last almost a week because of the time required for setup and breakdown of the festival.

Alexandra Stewart, community events coordinator for Run-Tex, said it will be “your typical Austin street festival,” with food, drink, music and artists. “Think Pecan Street.”

Pecan Street doesn’t close Congress Avenue for a week, you maroon! And why do we need both this and the “Fan Fest”? I can’t see a good reason, except that “Experience Austin” sees a way to make a few bucks by screwing up downtown traffic for a week.

In case you were wondering:

By comparison, at this year’s SXSW Music Festival, 36 downtown blocks were fully closed, most for four days. Those closures did not include Congress Avenue.

I’ve got some frequent flyer miles on the former Continental Airlines. Cleveland in November is beginning to sound nice.

Posted in Austin, Cars, Clippings, Politics, Sports | 3 Comments »

Random notes, September 3, 2012.

Monday, September 3rd, 2012

Workers of the world, unite! Dyslexics of the world, untie!

In 2009, the two-year-old Southern lifestyle magazine [Garden and Gun -DB ] lost financial support from its first publisher. Its employees, many of whom had relocated from New York City to work here, were left with dwindling buyout packages and the promise of freelance pay. Real estate developers could no longer afford to buy advertisements, and some new prospects said they would not give a cent to the magazine until the owners took “gun” out of its title.

Oh, yes. Garden and Gun. I remember them. I was considering subscribing: that is, until they refused ads from the NRA. Now they can die in a fire, as far as I am concerned.

In other news, the NYT wants you to know that you should be careful buying art online.

My big question for the day: now that Reverend Moon is dead, how long will the Washington Times be around? I’ve gotten the distinct impression that it has survived that long purely because he wanted it that way, and his successors are not as wild about the paper as he was.

Mike Nesbitt has resigned as offensive coordinator at the University of Houston. That would be two days after the season opener, which they lost 30-13 to Texas State.

I’ve been kind of tied up the past couple of days and haven’t had a chance to blog the Austin Police Department acting as agent provocateurs to Occupy Austin story. I don’t really know what to make of it, so instead I’ll refer you to the Statesman story above, and the coverage from Grits for Breakfast here. (The other problem I have with this story is that much of the coverage comes from sources I don’t read and don’t trust.)

Speaking of Grits, he also has an interesting followup on the Texas Highway Patrol Association and other similar scam organizations.

Posted in Art, Austin, Clippings, Cops, Guns, Law, Media, Obits, Politics, Sports | Comments Closed

I want my two dollars!

Thursday, July 19th, 2012

Back in 2008, Austin Energy (the city’s electric utility) made a deal with Nacogdoches Power LLC to purchase the entire output of a proposed new power plant. The key here was that the new power plant would produce electricity from burning “wood waste”, a renewable resource, and thus would avoid potential federal taxes on carbon-based fuels.

This was not a popular decision at the time. Even the local environmental activists were opposed to the plant. Many people felt the city wasn’t releasing all the relevant information and was rushing into the deal.

The plant went live yesterday.

The privately owned plant will sell $2 billion worth of electricity to Austin Energy for the next 20 years at a price well above the going rate for competing power sources. It will add $1.94 to the average home’s monthly bill of about $100, according to Austin Energy estimates.

More:

But when the deal was unveiled publicly, open-government activists said the city was not releasing relevant details, such as the cost. It was later revealed to be a little more than 9 cents per kilowatt-hour to start, then gradually increasing to around 16 cents per kilowatt-hour. The average is about 15 cents per kilowatt-hour over the life of the contract.
That is well above the current cost of natural gas and wind, and probably above what the utility would have paid for a proposed nuclear plant expansion that city leaders repeatedly turned down.

Austin Energy is currently paying “a little more than” 4 cents a kilowatt hour for “coastal wind” power. If I’m reading the article correctly, natural gas is running at about 2 cents per kilowatt hour.

Posted in Austin, Clippings, Politics | Comments Closed

TMQ watch: January 3, 2012.

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012

The New Year has begun. Our grand vacation from daily cares is over. And once again, we go back to the TMQ well…

(more…)

Posted in Austin, Clippings, Food, NFL, Politics, Sports, TMQ watch, TV | Comments Closed

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