City Council Thursday decided to nix the city’s 27-year-old daytime juvenile curfew, extending instead the city’s nighttime curfew for young people until Oct. 1. At that time, members expect to have a report back on alternatives to a criminal curfew and will consider the late-night curfew again. Most Council members appeared ready to decriminalize the […]
Audrey McGlinchy, KUT
Posted inPublic Safety
Here’s what we learned about requests from ICE to pick up Travis County inmates
Drunken driving. Property theft. Possession of a controlled substance. These are some of the crimes for which the Travis County Sheriff’s Office did not honor requests from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain suspected undocumented immigrants past their sentences or dispositions. Records obtained by KUT News show that while Sheriff Sally Hernandez’s policy regarding […]
Posted inHousing
Is ‘missing middle’ housing still missing from CodeNEXT?
Jake Wegmann, an assistant professor of housing and real estate at the University of Texas, stood on the sidewalk in Mueller, a large mixed-use development on the site of Austin’s old airport. He pointed across the street to a string of attached, two-story homes. “These are town homes,” he said. “Here’s some missing middle housing.” […]
Posted inHousing
What is ‘missing middle’ housing?
Annette Naish used to work for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, traveling across the U.S. responding to natural disasters. “I found out that in this country there are some of the most wonderful people in the history of the Western world,” she said. Now that she’s retired, Naish tends to stay in North Austin, at […]
Posted inCity Hall
Austin’s inaugural artist-in-residence takes up her post
Rehab El Sadek marries silly and sober. Take her outfit: a colorfully patterned turtleneck atop a stern dark skirt. Her straight, black hair in low pigtails. Glasses. And while her paintings and prints dot the walls throughout the home she rents in Round Rock, El Sadek’s pieces have hung in galleries in Europe and Africa. […]
Posted inTexas State Legislature
How does Texas’ ‘sanctuary cities’ bill stack up against Arizona’s ‘show me your papers’ law?
City Council Member Greg Casar sat on the floor, his back blocking one of the two main entrances to a state building on the Capitol grounds. He’d taken a seat as part of a sit-in Monday to protest Senate Bill 4, also known as the “sanctuary cities” bill. “(Gov. Greg Abbott) wants to sign the […]
Posted inPublic Safety
Sanctuary cities debate revolves around ICE detainers. But what are they?
Members of the Texas House of Representatives today will consider Senate Bill 4, popularly coined the “sanctuary cities” bill. The practices of the Travis County Sheriff’s Office have been heralded as a reason to pass this bill – one that would create criminal and civil penalties for law enforcement heads who do not honor all […]
Posted inPolice
Activists weigh in on police contract as city begins negotiations
As the city of Austin moves forward with the renegotiation of its public safety contracts, local activists are asking for several changes to the city’s contract with the local police union. The contract, which is negotiated every couple of years, dictates pay, discipline and the legal rights of officers. This is the first labor negotiation […]
Posted inCity Council
Sleep researchers cheer on Council members as they consider ways to avoid late nights
Early on June 24, 2016, City Council Member Delia Garza checked her watch. “We’re making a decision about $720 million at 1:35 in the morning after lengthy discussions,” Garza told her colleagues. “After in my opinion, no real agreement on this.” Despite the Council member’s misgivings, members voted to approve the $720 million transportation bond […]
Posted inLand Development Code
CodeNEXT, as explained to a 6-year-old
Two people – one grown, the other growing – sit in a University of Texas office. The younger one, a girl of just 6 years old, wears a gray T-shirt, pink leggings and cowboy boots, which dangle from the edge of her chair. The other, a woman, wears a blue linen top and bangles on her […]
Posted inTravis County
Travis County DA announces not all police shootings will go before grand jury
The Travis County District Attorney’s Office will no longer bring all police shooting cases before a grand jury. Flanked by representatives of the local NAACP, police union and the Austin Police Department, District Attorney Margaret Moore announced the changes – effective immediately. “We, the DA’s office, the Civil Rights Division, will make a determination whether […]
Posted inHousing
135,000 new housing units over the next decade: feasible or overly ambitious?
Socar Chatmon-Thomas points at an apartment building under construction along the south shore of Lady Bird Lake, near East Riverside Drive. “So this whole thing used to just be nothing,” said Chatmon-Thomas, who has worked in Austin real estate since 1994. “Just fields and that’s it. Nobody lived around here.” And those who did, said […]