The Daily Hustle: 6/16/10

The city held their first, and so far, only scheduled public forum on the 2011 budget yesterday. Some 100 people showed up, going from table to table in one of the center’s ballrooms to hear from different General Fund departments which cuts or add-backs would affect them most, before electronically voting on the proposals.

The Austin Convention Center crowd was typical of the event: a scattering of City Council members (Chris Riley, Randi Shade), department heads, and (for good or ill) the usual collection of engaged citizens – Mary Arnold, John Bush, Jeff Jack, Brian Rodgers, et. al.

For a reporter, hearing from different departments what cuts worried them the most was valuable: The Fire department was adamantly against converting two fire engines to medical response vehicles, and wanted to preserve funding for four-person staffing on all engines. EMS was there to fight cuts that would provide continuing training online. The beleaguered library system came out against cuts to their books budget with printouts showing their materials spending per capita is $2.84, which “ranks significantly below the lower quartile of $3.58 for public libraries serving comparable communities.”

After remarks by City Manager Marc Ott and Budget Officer Ed Van Eenoo, Communications Director Doug Matthews lead the crowd through a real-time electronic voting exercise. A proposed cut would appear on a screen and be described by Matthews, and the audience would then have 20 seconds to note whether they supported it, didn’t support it, or felt neutral. Voting was tabulated by a passing out some 70 small, remote control-like devices which would record the votes.

The same complaints registered about the city’s online voting page (aka, the saddest page of Digg ever) could be noted about the voting process yesterday: despite Ott’s statement the city would “absolutely” factor in these results in making their decisions, they were the results of a small, self-selected slice of the citizenry. But like lotto, you gotta be in it to win it, the Hustle supposes.

What the hell else is happening?

On the city calendar: Whoa. A joint meeting of City Council/AISD /Travis County Commissioners Subcommittees is happening in the Travis County Commissioners Courtroom, Ned Granger County Administration Building, 314 W. 11th, at 10am.

The Council Committee for Emerging Technology and Telecommunications meets in the Boards and Commissions room at City Hall, 301 W. Second, 3pm.Public Access TV funding is up for discussion.

The Downtown Commission takes over the B&C room at 5:30pm.

The Environmental Board convenes in Council Chambers at 6pm.

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