Point Austin: Beside the Point

At our first, cursory glance at today's (Thursday) council agenda, something felt amiss. Where was that Prize Pig of the Fair, the Bond Election Advisory Committee's presentation of its much labored-over bond package? Had the council, in their (anticipated) quest to reapportion the recommendations to make room for State Highway 130, pulled the pork apart so zealously as to destroy the package? Despite the BEAC advertising a Jan. 26 delivery, fears of council chambers transubstantiating into an abattoir seemed, yes, overstated. But what happened to the package?

Council agenda manager Sara Hartley reassured us that no, the package is not accumulating dust alongside dog-eared Intel blueprints and Leslie for Mayor placards in some sepia-bathed bureaucratic purgatory, but has indeed been pushed from the week's agenda. Furthermore, shaking off winter's stop-start hibernation, council will meet uninterrupted for the next four Thursdays – so if the bonds don't appear next week (as now expected), they will undoubtedly arise the week after.

Not coincidentally, Mayor Will Wynn is in D.C. until Friday, no doubt partying hearty at the U.S. Conference of Mayors. As COM energy chair, Wynn announced Tuesday an initiative calling on carmakers to boost production of plug-in hybrid vehicles. Flanking him were Council Member Jennifer Kim, City Manager Toby Futrell, and Austin Energy Manager Juan Garza (we thought those cheap JetBlue tickets only went to NYC and Boston). Our thoughts circle back hazily to the Simpsons episode featuring Ed Begley Jr. driving a vehicle powered only by his own inflated sense of self-esteem. In Wynn's case, it would be the incumbent's campaign cash pumping the pistons. In his first campaign finance report, Wynn shows over $40,000 in contributions, nicely supplemented by a 10-grand loan to himself. The challenger, Mayor Pro Tem and Cap Metro board member Danny Thomas – out of the hospital just in time for the likely bus strike (see p.20) – has thus far raised only $300.

So whatinhell is on the agenda this week? A grip of social service grants are clustered in the Health and Human Services items (10-13), with $177,622 for child and maternity health care, grants for Caritas, Meals on Wheels, and SafePlace, funding for AISD tutoring, and youth training and counseling.

Other dollars are directed less altruistically: attorneys' fees. Item 15 sends up to $150,000 to Hughes & Luce for its help in expediting the sale of Block 21, immediately behind City Hall. Item 16 sends up to an additional $50,000 to Thompson & Knight for its work with the Computer Sciences Corp. (and its two west Downtown monoliths) and the oh-so-chic Second Street Retail Project. The city's most interesting legal investment might be Item 14, where we kick down $23,500 more in legal fees (bringing the total to $83,000) in the case of Travis Co., et. al. v. Rick Perry, et. al., the case going to bat for Austin in the aftermath of Texas' DeLay-masterminded Republican re-redistricting. The gang also takes the case up in closed session.

Also of interest is Item 45, executing a contract with Diana McIver & Associates to study affordable housing creation along Capital Metro's forthcoming Austin-Leander commuter rail line. Facts would be welcome, for while affordable housing battled with open space for the title of cause célèbre in the bond package, there were as many definitions of the concept as there were millions of dollars funding it. It could also mean the end to affordable housing struggles in the city proper – now we can ensure commuting Lantana employees won't have to worry about housing prices! (Pardon our insolence – no doubt the study will be useful – but we can't help but recall that the rail line has been tailored by Capital Metro to attract those very suburban voters who reflexively balk at housing and transportation initiatives in the urban core.)

Lastly, while it will assuredly pass silently on the consent agenda, we feel duty-bound to describe the imminent demise of poor Tootertat Drive (Item 8). Seems the homely, unique, but vaguely flatulent cognomen was simply too declassé for the builders of a neighboring upscale home development, the Reserve at Slaughter Creek. In the cause of "neighborhood enhancement" – i.e., yuppie marketing campaigns – they've applied to rechristen the South Austin street "Boyds Way." Fare thee well, Tootertat, we hardly knew ye.