The Feb. 20 meeting of the Zoning and Platting Commission has been postponed, but at the end of the day on Monday, Vice Chair Jim Duncan told the Austin Monitor that he and Chair Jolene Kiolbassa had not been able to find out why. The agenda for the meeting had been posted as usual last […]
Joseph Caterine
Posted inWhispers
Trustees criticize media influence on school renaming debate
Trustee Ann Teich has a reputation of occasionally slipping in and out of sarcasm when making comments at meetings of the Austin Independent School District board, so it is difficult to discern how sincere she was when, at the Feb. 12 work session, she accused the media of excessively amplifying the issue of the proposed […]
Posted inAISD
School board still split on school renamings
At its Feb. 12 work session, the Austin Independent School District Board of Trustees formally discussed the possibility of renaming several Confederate-affiliated facilities. It was the first time it has done so since tensions between some trustees had culminated in an attempt at African-American Trustee Edmund Gordon’s censure. Having postponed the item once before, the board […]
Posted inLand Development Code
Commission vice chair calls density bonus programs a failure
At the Zoning and Platting Commission’s Feb. 6 meeting, Vice Chair Jim Duncan continued his series of CodeNEXT presentations with an indictment of the city’s density bonus programs, one of the city’s main approaches to facilitating housing for households making less than 80 percent of the median family income. He charged city staff with being “blind” […]
Posted inLand Development Code
City demographer smashes assumptions about growth at CodeNEXT meeting
For the past year, the land use commissions have been reviewing the drafts of CodeNEXT, and the discussions have primarily revolved around how to accommodate the incredible population growth the city has experienced for the past few decades. About two weeks before the third and final iteration of the proposed Land Development Code rewrite debuts […]
Posted inWhispers
Zoning and Platting chair will no longer preside over joint CodeNEXT meetings
At the special called Jan. 30 Zoning and Platting Commission meeting, Chair Jolene Kiolbassa shared an email from staff liaison Andrew Rivera with her colleagues. The email said that the joint land use commission meetings that have been held since the end of 2016 to review the CodeNEXT drafts, which have to date been chaired […]
Posted inZoning
Neighborhood fights for holistic infrastructure improvements on east side rezoning
Less than a week after the Planning Commission held a CodeNEXT discussion on the predicament of upzoning in areas with insufficient infrastructure, it had the opportunity to weigh in on a real-life example. At their Jan. 23 meeting, commissioners voted to approve staff’s recommendation for an east side residential rezoning, but complications concerning transportation prompted […]
Posted inAISD
School district fiscal forecast bleak
Although it did not come as a shock, the precarious position of the Austin Independent School District’s financial future dampened the mood at the end of the board of trustees’ Jan. 22 meeting. The ever-increasing amount of recapture the district pays back to the state in compliance with Chapter 41 is expected to exceed the […]
Posted inWhispers
Confederate name changes back on schedule
Reversing a decision made at a work session two weeks ago, Austin Independent School District Board of Trustees President Kendall Pace said at Monday night’s meeting that the proposed name changes for school facilities with the Confederate military namesakes would be back on February’s agenda. The board will now take up the matter for discussion […]
Posted inPlanning
Mobility plan preview raises questions at Planning Commission
At a special called Jan. 18 meeting, the Planning Commission got its first look at the beginnings of the Austin Strategic Mobility Plan, what will be an amendment to the city’s comprehensive plan, Imagine Austin. The plan is still in its early stages, but some commissioners expressed concerns that the forecasts being created to develop […]
Posted inLand Development Code
CodeNEXT wrong on PUDs, says commission
Waiting for the release of the third and final draft of CodeNEXT has not stopped the Zoning and Platting Commission from continuing to criticize the second draft, even after the commission submitted its formal recommendation last October. One of the main issues of contention discussed at its Jan. 2 meeting was the current system of […]
Posted inWhispers
African-American school trustee targeted for remarks on Confederacy name removals
At Wednesday’s board operations meeting for the Austin Independent School District Board of Trustees, Trustee Ann Teich requested that her colleague Trustee Edmund Gordon be censured for comments he made during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech concerning the board’s recent decision to stall the renaming of several school facilities that currently bear the […]