The Hustle’s been a little harried this week, putting together tomorrow’s mammoth overview of spring City Council elections. But in the meantime, we’ve got a tasty link roundup to tide you over, encompassing that election, the city budget, urban issues and more.
– An 126-page presentation delivering a “financial forecast” on several of the city’s enterprise departments (Austin Energy, Austin Water, Watershed Protection, Solid Waste Services, Public Works, and Transportation) is now online. The cheerful news starts with the electric utility, who notes a “FY 2011 deficiency of $53 million,” adding that the upcoming, planned rate increase “is not sufficient to achieve structural balance in all forecast years. Yippee!
– We welcome the blogging return of Austin Contrarian Chris Bradford, who, ever since the release of local census data, has been putting up lots of provocative posts.
– More good reading can be found over at Austinist, where Shawn Shillington has been publishing replies from City Council candidates to his robust suite of questions.
– And over at the Travis County Democratic Party’s blog, Dianne Holloway has posted an intriguing interview with local political consultant David Butts on Austin’s abysmal voter turnout: “[We’re] in a post-SOS time now with no defined issue other than that growth is a dramatic creature,” says Butts. “After the ’92 SOS election and then the ’97 election of Kirk Watson and the “green council,” voters have more or less concluded that the direction they wanted the city to go in has been achieved. Conflicts have gone from a raging fire to a simmer. It has become more of a battle between the different factions within the progressive community, so it’s a little harder for voters to discern who’s who in the races.”
On a final note, the Hustle will be sitting out the rest of this week for something approximating some real time off, but will see you bright and early Monday morning.
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This article appears in April 22 • 2011.