Page Two

So many issues; so little time... As this issue goes to press, on Wednesday, June 25, the newly elected Austin City Council is still enjoying their honeymoon. By the time you read this, as of Thursday, June 26, the honeymoon will have ended. That's because tomorrow afternoon, Kirk Watson will call to order the first council meeting of the new green era. And almost immediately, the council will be in the deep end -- they not only inherit a full caseload of knotty problems from the previous, terminally deadlocked council and its lamest of mayoral ducks; they also must bear the impossible hopes and dreams of a cadre of idealists who expect a governmental change something akin to East Germany at the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The council's main challenge is going to be taking all that pent-up enthusiasm, and get it all pulling in roughly the same direction. Emotions and expectations will be high, and patience will be in short supply.

The problem is, there are a lot of thorny issues -- East 11th & 12th, the Holly Street power plant, the Triangle development, traffic, watersheds, transit, the development code rewrite, air quality, indigent health care... I'm out of breath and I haven't even gotten to the bugs and salamanders -- that the new council may find just as intractable as the last one did. Yet each of those issues has its vehement, impatient advocates and supporters, and most all of them feel that this council's widely reported mandate is their mandate. It's one thing to have Ronney Reynolds tell you you're a hopeless idealist; it's quite another if Daryl Slusher tells you the same thing. Expect to hear the word "traitor" become a larger part of the public discourse.

That's the bad news. The good news is, this council really does seem to be, not just ideologically simpatico, but also smart and practical. To add our fuel to the flame of public expectation, it really is time for the Austin greens to put up or shut up. They've been the vocal opposition for so long, it will be hard to change gears, redirect the rhetoric, and start making things happen, instead of trying to stop them for happening. (It's an issue we're feeling acutely around here. The Chronicle persona was built largely on opposition to the powers that be. Now we have a council where we endorsed every member. It's a strange feeling.) But there's an almost cocky optimism (so far) around city hall -- a heady blend of technocracy, which believes that policy can do good, blended with a populism which believes that people can do good, if the fat cats are weaned from the public teat. It's a booster mentality -- if a peculiarly alt-Austin take on one -- and if anyone expects this to be a no-growth administration, they're living way in the past.

The last council that took office with this much environmental good will behind it was the Frank Cooksey council of the late 1980s. That council was later widely reviled in enviro circles for approving more new development than any other before or since. Now the Watson council comes in on an even broader green tide, and don't be surprised if they break that record. Anyway, it'll be an interesting couple of years.