City Council Notebook

"Cram it in" edition highlights for this Thursday, Dec. 13 meeting – the last this year.

Item 15: Changing Mala Suerte Drive to Buena Suerte Drive. OK, Suerte!

Item 16: Approving the 2008 inductees to the Austin Music Memorial, including Doug Sahm, Roy Montelongo, and Tary Owens.

Items 17,18: Brewster McCracken-boosted biotech and wireless economic development deals, vis a vis UT's Austin Technology Incubator. Sidelined a few weeks back.

Items 34-38: Acquiring five homes as part of the FEMA-affiliated Onion Creek Voluntary Flood Buyout.

Items 46-51: The Purchasing Office's checklist includes another $415,000 to the Tech Incubator, this time for "clean energy;" also a "utility customer information system" (STOP SNITCHING!), plus 51and 78 light duty vehicles, respectively.

Item 55: Jennifer Kim item calling for greater mental health resources for APD – prompted by Iraq vets returning to the force.

Item 56: Authorizing an update to the Austin Tomorrow Comprehensive Plan, along with other long-term transit considerations.

Item 57: Initiating a "comprehensive public participation process for energy resource planning at Austin Energy," through the lens of Will Wynn's Climate Protection Plan.

Item 58: Creating an African American Cultural Arts District, bounded by the I-35 frontage road (West), Airport Boulevard (East), Manor Road (N orth) and roughly East 11th Street to Oak Springs Drive (South).

Item 60: Wynn's item devoting $4,950,000, orignally allocated to the Austin Children's Museum at Block 21, to hardscape and streetscape improvements Downtown instead, reappears. Will council rumble over the funding?

Item 61: Creating a Critical Water Quality Zone on Town Lake. No more feces trickling in, then?

Item 62: Adopting the Density Bonus Task Force recos.

Item 63: Creating the Austin Parking Enterprise.

Item 64: Convening a task force to study Wynn's idea requiring energy efficiency upgrades when a home's sold.

Item 65: The first of three items relating to Seaholm redevelopment, rezoning Green Water Treatment Plant and waiving FAR requirements on the site, amongst other considerations. Aside from questions about the legality of the move, there's also murmurs about whether the redevelopment meets the public interest.

Item 72: 10:30am presentation on the review of the practice and procedures for applying the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) Warrants and Peer City analysis. Excitement!

Item 77: Talking Seaholm in executive session.

Item 78: Talking Water Treatment Plant No. 4.

Item 81: What's this – acting on WTP 4 by "authorizing the City Manager to negotiate and execute all documents necessary to purchase property in western Travis County as a site for Water Treatment Plant No. 4 using September 1984 Proposition 4 Bond Funds." Whoa …

Item 82: 2pm briefing by John Steiner regarding the City's Integrity Office.

Items 83-98: Closed second and third zoning readings include Lamar/Manchaca Mixed Use, Habibi's Hutch, and West Campus frats opting out the university neighborhood overlay.

Items 99- 123: Zoning first-reads include Central East Austin NPA McMansion modifications and Seaholm, yet again, amongst many others.

Item 128: Accepting Bob Wade's "Giant Saxophone" sculpture, as long as the Pecan Street Owner's Association put the damn thing up. And just when we lost all those ugly-ass guitars from Downtown.