The Daily Hustle: 12/13/10

How on earth the Hustle managed to make it through another year of City Council is beyond him.

But here we are at the end of the year, and we've got agenda highlights for this Thursday council farewell to 2010: public safety cameras, WTP4, and historic zoning out the wazoo.

Agenda highlights for City Council’s Thursday, Dec. 16 meeting:

Item 11: $5.2 million in funding for the “Rosedale Storm Drain Improvements Phase 2 project,” meant to alleviate flooding along 39th½, 40th, 41st, 47th, and Burnet Road.

Item 12: An additional $210,000 in funding for roadway reconstruction around Second Street. Projects include rebuilding Second Street from Colorado Street to Congress Avenue and reconstruction of Colorado Street from West Cesar Chavez Street to Third Street. The addition brings project funding to $3.4 million.

Items 18-20: A “set of Council actions that, taken together, will create a district-wide parking plan for the 2nd Street Retail District” – by letting everyone there park at City Hall. It reboots the agreement with AMLI for Second street shoppers parking privileges, and inks agreements with new patrons including the W building for spots (including reimbursement to the city).

Item 23: Adopting the city’s Legislative Program for the upcoming session. Austin hopes to “seek introduction and passage” of three initiatives: Legislation amending the COA Employees’ Retirement System; Legislation codifying changes to COA Police Retirement System; and Legislation authorizing the use of Texas toll tags to pay ABIA parking fees.

Item 24: A beefing-up of provisions largely prohibiting sale of cats and dogs. According to backup, “The first part is the revision of the pet trader portion to make it more enforceable. The second part is the part that prohibits the sale of cats and dogs at a location other than where they are bred.”

Item 32: Paging John Bush: Leveraging $250,000 in funds from the Downtown Austin Alliance against federal bucks to install 23 “public safety cameras” all over Downtown.

Items 34-61: A wooly purchasing office agenda.

Item 66: On to items from council; this one, from Lee Leffingwell and Randi Shade, amends the articles of organization for Austin Integral Care (aka Austin-Travis Co. MHMR) to add the Travis County Healthcare District as a governing agency and remove AISD as one, among other changes.

Item 67: From Mike Martinez and Chris Riley, a resolution supporting HB 212, upcoming legislation from Rep. Eddie Rodriguez which, according to the draft, “would close a loophole in state law that allows payday, auto title and other unregulated consumer loans to carry annual percentage rates upwards of 500%.”

Item 69: From Laura Morrison and Leffingwell, a resolution directing the city manager to work with the Historic Landmark Commission on additional landscape restoration to Hyde Park’s Elisabet Ney museum.

Items 72, 73: 10:30am morning briefings, including the annual report from Austin Technologies Incubator on 2010 activities and accomplishments, and Austin Water’s “140 GPCD Conservation Plan.”

12pm Citizens Communications features several speakers opposing disc golf at Roy G. Guerrero Park.

Items 76–93: The zoning agenda includes both the return of the never-ending Bradford-Nohra saga. Staff recommends against historic zoning, while the Historic Landmark Commission does (Item 92). Two other historic zoning requests are on the agenda, as is second and third reading and potential approval of a local historic district for Hyde Park.

Item 98: The big enchilada: The Chapter 26 hearing on whether the use of parkland for Water Treatment Plant No. 4’s Jollyville line retrieval shaft shall go forward. We already know what the Spicewood Springs neighbors think.

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