Beside The Point

For the last few weeks, BTP has been feverishly scanning web-programming blogs, sticky site aggregators, and all the other tubes within the Internets 2.0. For somehow, our own little news blog, Chronic, launches today at austinchronicle.com/chronic. This is due to the tireless work of many, foremost our Managing Editor Cindy Widner, our magical Web team of Brian and Karen Rheudasil Barry, the little Hemingways at the sports blog who crashed the gates, and many, many more. Together, they've done more with less than anyone could ever have expected – so, please, revel in the snarky fruits of our jaundiced labor.

Beyond the flagrant self-promotion, such concerns take a scenic route to today's City Council agenda, the lesson being: It ain't cheap keeping a design coterie on call. Fresh from their dotty strategic retreat at the Crossings, the council returns to yet another light agenda, but one indelibly concerned with construction and design. Items 21 and 22 are noteworthy: The former essentially keeps eight architecture firms within arm's reach to the tune of $4 million. This is for architectural services over the course of two years, necessitated by smaller projects and those careening along so quickly as to bypass the request for qualifications process. Item 22 similarly keeps four firms in the hopper, ostensibly for "value engineering" savings on various and sundry public works projects, engineering and architectural endeavors.

Servicing and maintaining council's favorite chunk o' infrastructure – Downtown – appears as Item 10 in today's agenda: adoption of this year's Downtown Public Improvement District plan and budget. Clocking in at more than $2.1 million, the budget, drawn up by the Downtown Austin Alliance, pays for the scrubbing, polishing, and promotion of the Central Business District via $1.8 million in PID assessments paid by downtown tenants. (Hopefully the DAA's money won't go missing this time, people.) Item 47 sets a public hearing on the 10-cent per $100 valuation fee, while Item 48 does the same for East Sixth Street PID assessments. The hearings are a tentative go for Nov. 30. Also on the public hearing horizon is the big-box ordinance, expected before council in time for Christmas shopping Dec. 7. Lastly, a late agenda addition is reconsideration of council raises, this time minus cover from the ethics commission.

But what would a council agenda be without something goofy from Water and Wastewater? Item 37 is a one-year collaboration with Texas Parks and Wildlife to study the Jollyville Plateau salamander habitat. The pilot project focuses on "delineating drainage basins for springs and caves in either the Bull Creek or Long Hollow watersheds." Hmm, now that wouldn't be the same Bull Creek of Water Treatment Plant 4 infamy, the same plant allotted $250,000 in legal defense dollars at the last council meeting in anticipation of a legal battle over the likely-soon-to-be-endangered – wait for it – Jollyville Plateau salamander?

Funny how that works out.