City Counseling: Face the Music

Last week council passed an ordinance expediting rezoning for several restaurants hosting live music, after it looked like a laughably low 70-decibel limit (actually dating from the Eighties but seldom enforced) would pull the plug on them. But at the Thursday meeting, it was apparent the ordinance still left some restaurants outside the Central Business District unplugged, specifically the current music scene cause célèbre, Freddie's Place, which – in a move that smacked of headline-grabbing overreaction – had pre-emptively canceled all its remaining gigs for the rest of the year, after a neighborhood complaint drew police monitoring.

Freddie's owner, Fred Nelson, decibel meter in hand, came to council to show the absurdity of the 70-decibel limit, for which loud conversation is a potential violation. Council Member Mike Martinez promised to work with Nelson but intimated that the newly passed cleanup had helped the lion's share of affected restaurants: "There will be four venues that we'll still need to work on," Martinez said. "Out of the 17 [affected restaurants], 13 of those should be able to switch to 'cocktail lounge' use and continue operation as is. But the other four remain." Martinez and other council members argued that despite the snafus, their revisiting of decibel limits – a "simplification" passed in March that inadvertently brought attention to the seldom-enforced limit – has been a success. Yet Nelson wondered why, if the emergency ordinance has been so successful, they had to go back and create loopholes to worm out from under it.

Free Association

The other big news last week was council's selection of Wallace Roberts & Todd to craft the city's comprehensive plan. Council opted not to go with the staff-recommended ACP Visioning+Planning; WRT had been the highest-ranked team, until ACP got additional points from a city staff interview, described by WRT boosters as overly arbitrary.

Coming Thursday (today): City Manager Marc Ott gets his first formal job review. Last week, council held the city clerk and municipal court clerk to the same pay rate as last year (thanks, recession!), so don't expect any big bonuses, Marc... Item 33 (Sheryl Cole) wrangles the University of Texas Athletics Department, Travis County, and the Texas Department of Transportation together "to better facilitate future Texas Relays events." It also assembles a community task force to avoid another collective freak-out about Relays weekend and further welcome Texas Relays' large African-American audience... A clutch of 2pm briefings round out the meeting: updates on Austin Energy's Public Partici­pation Process and CO2 Reduction Plan, the city's strategic mobility program, and last but not least, the city's response to the federal stimulus funding.