Offering to “restore integrity, responsibility, and maturity” to Austin City
Council’s Place 6 seat, community activist Willie Lewis made official Tuesday
his decision to challenge strong-man incumbent Eric Mitchell. “I think a lot of
people see him as a person who hasn’t done as much as he could for the people,”
Lewis said of Mitchell. Among the dozen or so supporters who turned out to hear
Lewis’ declaration was fellow activist Ron Davis, who lost to Mitchell the last
time around. Lewis, of course, doesn’t expect to come close to matching
Mitchell’s campaign fundraising muscle, but he promised to behave better than
his peevish opponent. “We need a councilmember… who respects people,
neighborhood leaders, and other councilmembers,” he said. Lewis has signed on
Todd Main, formerly of Citizen Action and Councilmember Beverly Griffith’s
campaign, as a paid consultant… — K.V.
After four years of publishing the tart and tawdry Fag Rag, Craig
Edwards has moved on to his newest creation, Exposure Magazine. The free gay
and lesbian mag debuts Friday, March 14, in Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San
Antonio. Exposure boasts the largest circulation of any queer pub in
Texas, a claim that threatens to wrest the circulation tiara away from the
weekly Texas Triangle. The new magazine promises a broader scope of
content, with beefed-up coverage of entertainment and culture, plus an
assortment of other nuggets and treats…
— A.S.
In the ball and chain department, Texas’ prison system is three times larger
today than it was in 1991. And the per-capita cost of keeping inmates locked up
is apparently declining. Last month, the Texas Criminal Justice Policy Council
reported that the cost of keeping an inmate behind bars has dropped from $44.40
per day in 1994 to $39.51 in 1996. Is this good news? — R.B.
Rose Smells a Rat
Mark Rose is many things, but he can hardly be described as an environmentalextremist. So when he excoriated FM Properties last week in a four-page memo
that ended the Lower Colorado River Authority’s negotiations with FMP, it was
rather surprising. After all, Rose, the general manager of the LCRA, was seen
by some observers as FMP’s savior when it comes to sewage treatment.
FMP needs to upgrade its sewage capacity in order to expand its project. By
letting LCRA take over the sewage operation, FMP could have escaped much of the
political heat it was facing from the city of Austin. The city has steadfastly
refused to provide sewer service to the 4,000-acre development project, which
lies about 12 stream miles upstream of Barton Springs Pool.
The LCRA was negotiating with FMP to buy the company’s water and sewage
treatment plants for $5 million. But Rose said that at the 11th hour, FMP,
which is managed by New Orleans-based Freeport-McMoRan, demanded that it have
control over the permit issued to the treatment plant by the Texas Natural
Resource Conservation Commission. “In short,” Rose told his boardmembers, “they
want a private corporation to have control over a publicly owned entity’s right
to ask for TNRCC approval of any permit requirement.” Rose went on to say that
FMP’s “favored outcome is one in which they shift liability — political and
regulatory — to us and maintain control over the permit.”
This is not the first time Freeport has made big demands at the end of
complicated negotiations. Brigid Shea, the former city councilmember who is now
executive director of the Save Our Springs Alliance, said, “To me this is
absolute proof that Freeport is untrustworthy. They have demonstrated this
repeatedly.”
The full text of Rose’s memo to the LCRA board is on the Chronicle‘s
web page at /. — R.B.
The Bane of GAIN
A long-standing feud between City Councilmember Eric Mitchell and Guadalupeneighborhood leaders in East Austin went from bad to worse last week when
Mitchell got the boot from a Guadalupe meeting.
Exactly what led to the councilmember’s unceremonious dismissal from the
meeting is a point of disagreement between Mitchell and meeting attendees Mark
Rogers of the Guadalupe Association for an Improved Neighborhood (GAIN), and
the Rev. Bill Elliott of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church and Austin Interfaith.
According to Rogers, Mitchell and Councilmember Gus Garcia’s aide, Paul
Saldana, showed up uninvited to the meeting. (Many in attendance thought they
should be able to discuss the zoning proposals without the presence of local
politicians, Rogers explained.) Once Mitchell was there, he did not play the
part of interested observer, but proceeded to take issue with a
GAIN-disseminated flyer that details GAIN’s stance on Mitchell’s proposed plans
for East Austin redevelopment. “I’m here to tell the truth,” he declared.
Elliott, for one, was unimpressed. Referring to a 1995 letter Mitchell sent to
the Vatican, accusing Elliott of organizing “political hit squads” in East
Austin, Elliott says he asked Mitchell: “Have you heard from the Pope yet about
those truths you wrote about me?” After a heated verbal exchange between
Elliott and Mitchell, the councilmember left the meeting in short order,
grousing, “You’ve all got your minds made up.” Though Rogers says that he and
other neighborhood leaders several times offered to meet with Mitchell at
another time, he says Mitchell left without discussing their offer.
Mitchell, for his part, confirmed that he and Elliott had words, and that he
was “put out” of the meeting, but he defends his decision to attend the
gathering. GAIN’s meeting, he says, was an attempt to thwart his development
plans for East Austin. “These folks, being the duplicitous people that they
are, were having a secret meeting,” Mitchell says. “They have their own agenda,
they hate certain people, and my name’s probably at the top of the list.”
Mitchell mainly took issue with being excluded from what he had assumed was a
public meeting, and with the GAIN flyer that was critical of his planning
initiatives. He called the flyer a “total misrepresentation of the facts.”
Initially, the GAIN meeting was to have included all the Central East Austin
neighborhood groups, but the group later decided to keep the meeting small by
not publicizing it. Mitchell says that if GAIN refuses to cooperate with his
development plans in Central East Austin, “we’ll just make a hole in the
doughnut and leave them out.” — K.V.
Knock, Knock
Who’s there? Police. Police who? Police vote for me. The one who gets to tellthat joke is Councilmember Eric Mitchell, whose candidacy has already won one
of the most sought-after endorsements, that of the Austin Police Association.
The APA awarded the endorsement early, bypassing their usual selection process
of interviews and a candidates’ forum, this year scheduled for March 21 at Town
Lake Center.
“He has been very supportive of us and he’s already been very supportive of
the community,” says APA Vice President Mike Sheffield. APA PAC Chair Sean
Mannix says the endorsement came early so Mitchell could get the one-up on
challenger Willie Lewis and anyone else who might run. “We just wanted to let
Eric know that regardless of who ends up running against him, he’s our
candidate,” says Mannix.
Of the seven councilmembers, Mitchell is the APA’s favorite. He’s been a
firebrand police supporter, often vocally, and is credited with leading the
fight to allow earlier retirement and increase retirement pay. Looks like his
work is paying off. — A.M.
Threadgill’s Plan Nixed
In keeping with the dubious logic of city councilmembers who tried to makelight of a weighty issue, the Austin Music Hall does not serve vegetables and
Threadgill’s does; therefore, Threadgill’s is not going to get an institutional
network (INet) cable drop to broadcast a music series from the venerable eatery
on North Lamar.
Despite the fact that other commercial music venues have been approved for
cable connections, Time Warner (TW) has been dead set against supplying
Threadgill’s with a hook-up on grounds that the INet connection is designed for
government and educational institutions. According to TW, the difference
between Threadgill’s and other approved cable-drop venues, such as the Austin
Music Hall, is that the hall wants to broadcast the one-time Austin Music
Awards show on March 12, whereas Threadgill’s wants to air a 13-part series.
As a consolation prize, TW had instead offered to pay the $14,500 difference
necessary to supply Threadgill’s with a direct fiber-optic connection, but
Threadgill’s program coordinator, media consultant Woody Roberts, says the
offer is a moot point since the restaurant does not have the equipment
necessary to use fiber optics.
The council slogged through a bogus debate on the issue, with Mayor Bruce Todd
taking a stab at humor — something about who serves vegetables, who doesn’t,
and what is the recommended daily allowance? Todd and Councilmember Gus Garcia
wrangled over the implications of setting precedent on INet at commercial
venues. Todd wondered if the same consideration might be given to Luby’s if the
cafeteria wanted an INet connection. Garcia quipped that he had never heard of
anyone singing at Luby’s. Todd responded, “Obviously you don’t go to the Luby’s
I go to, we sing all the time.” Oh, what merriment.
Councilmember Eric Mitchell seemed to have a broader agenda. While admitting
that he never tuned in, he suggested that “maybe we need to sort of rethink
this whole music channel scenario.” No one took him up on the offer.
Roberts, meanwhile, says he’s giving up on the project after a two-year
struggle, which, in the end, was tantamount to a Machiavellian chess game
between TW and the city over the appropriate use for the INet. He surmised that
TW is “afraid that if this is as successful as I think it will be, that music
cities around the United States are going to want to duplicate us. It could
cause a brushfire that they would have to deal with.” — K.V
This article appears in March 7 • 1997 and March 7 • 1997 (Cover).