Agenda highlights for the Thursday, Aug. 30, City Council meeting:
Item 8: $1 million-plus to repair Hornsby Bend Biosolids Management Facility. Eww!
Item 10: Taking a whole shitload (word to Hornsby Bend) of money ($2.8 million in one-time funds, $2 million outta Vehicle Acquistions – I’m so lost!) to buy a bunch of “E85-fuel police patrol sedans.” The Corn Cops hit the streets.
Item 19: $5,000 agreement with Austin Independent School District for Austin Eastside Story camp. When you’re a jet, you’re a jet, etc. (Hey kids, don’t smoke!)
Items 23-25: Lotsa money – more than $27 million – for three Austin Clean Water Program repair programs.
Item 28: And the motherload – another $27 million (with a million-dollar-plus contingency) for the Waller Creek Tunnel Project.
Items 34-66: A Purchasing Office shopping spree, with the city dropping hundreds of millions on 118 police patrol cars, decaled T-shirts, over-the-phone language-interpretation services, gas masks and cartridges, tuberculosis case-management software and hardware, roadway striping and manhole covers, among other things. Item 62 drops $337,000 on new Tasers. Shocking!
Item 72: Setting a public hearing Sept. 27 to consider Jennifer Kim’s new anti-panhandling ordinance. Currently, it’s only illegal Downtown, and we all know how effective that is.
Item 77: 10:30am presentation of the Barton Springs Pool Master Plan.
Item 84: The 2pm utilities and infrastructure budget presentation.
Items 85-86: The entirety of the day’s zoning items! Did a bomb go off that only killed developers?
5:30pm Proclamations: Grand opening of the oft-delayed Mexican American Cultural Center. Hmm. Between zoning and this, hell really has frozen over!
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 29, at austinchronicle.com/chronic.
This article appears in August 31 • 2007.