Naked City

Who cares what the polls say about Gov. Rick Perry winning the women's vote? Not the women in this crowd who turned out Oct. 2 to hear Dem challenger Bill White rally the party faithful at the Millennium Youth Entertainment Complex. (Photo by Jana Birchum)

New Voice for Local Music

Austin's music community is amping up its political presence through a new body called Austin Music People. Modeled on advocacy groups like the Downtown Austin Alliance, AMP aims to provide a cohesive voice for the live music community. Former Mayor Will Wynn announced its formation at an Oct. 5 press conference at the Austin City Limits studio, where he introduced Momo's manager and 2008 Live Music Task Force Chair Paul Oveisi as its inaugural executive director. Attendees at the announcement drew heavily from the booking and venue management community, including Charles Attal of ACL Music Festival promoters C3 Presents and South by Southwest Managing Director Roland Swenson. But Oveisi said that they're looking for members from across the music community, from musicians to poster designers to fans. "I use the analogy that if we're starting a band, all we have is a rhythm section," he said. "We've got to get a singer, a manager, a booking agent, merchandise guys, all that stuff." Look for sign-up booths at ACL and other upcoming music events. For more on Austin's booking and promotion industry, see "Big Dogs, Young Rebels, and Aging Giants." – Richard Whittaker

Some 500 people showed up for last Friday's Austin Futures Fair kickoff party, which turned the city's Imagine Austin comprehensive planning process into performance art with help from local musicians, artists, and performers. Installations like this piece – 10,000 Houses by Robert Gay and Lucy Begg of Thoughtbarn and Bbiitt – aimed to inspire participants to reach new creative heights as they provided feedback on how the comp plan should shape Austin over the next three decades. (Photo courtesy of Brittany Coopers)

AISD Gets Money for Sex Ed

The Austin Independent School District is partnering with Planned Parenthood of the Texas Capital Region and LifeWorks under a new grant announced last week to provide comprehensive sex education in Austin schools. The grant, worth $2.9 million over five years, was awarded by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Office of Adol­es­cent Health and will allow LifeWorks and Planned Par­ent­hood to offer "abstinence-plus" sex education to kids in as many as 15 schools. The grant requires that an evaluator determine the program's efficacy in contrast with the sex ed curriculum currently used in the public schools. Texas State University health education professor David Wiley, one of the authors of the Texas Freedom Network's groundbreaking review last year of sex education across Texas, will serve as the project's grant evaluator. – Jordan Smith

DNA Lab A-OK

A sixth audit of the Austin Police Department's crime lab has given its operations a clean bill of health, Chief Art Acevedo said Tuesday. The lab's functions were reviewed this time by the Department of Public Safety and Texas Rangers in response to a complaint made by former DNA analyst Cecily Hamilton, who penned a lengthy memo of complaint about poor training and poor working relationships at the lab before leaving the city's employ earlier this year. She later told Fox 7 that she knew of "contamination" of a piece of evidence in the Nathaniel Sanders II police shooting case; that was not entirely accurate (at issue was DNA from a chemist who tested a baggie of pot connected to the case), and the accusation ticked off Acevedo, who accused Hamilton of invoking the controversial case in order to bolster her own profile. The lab and its practices have now been cleared, and Hamilton's complaints have, once again, been found to be without merit. – J.S.

Bill White makes a campaign pitch in an Oct. 2 stop in Austin; expect to see and hear more of the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in the weeks leading up to the Nov. 2 election. (Photo by Jana Birchum)

APD Loses Bid for Fed Funds

The Austin Police Department was not included among those selected nationally to receive part of the $1 billion in federal grant funding via the Commun­ity Ori­ented Policing Services office. APD had asked for funds to hire 50 new officers. At the Oct. 4 meeting of the Public Safety Commission, APD Chief of Staff David Carter said it appeared that perhaps Austin's economy, which has fared better than others, might have affected the city's bid, despite a local uptick in crime in 2009. Notably, several other big cities across the country were denied funding – including New York and, closer to home, Hous­ton. San Antonio and Dallas scored the lion's share of Texas' COPS funding, with more than $10 million (to hire 50 cops) and close to $9 million (also to hire 50 cops), respectively. – J.S.