Josh Rosenblatt

If the best way to gauge how well you’re doing in a political campaign is by counting how many of your opponents are coming after you, Kathie Tovo may one day look back at yesterday’s City Council Place 3 radio debate on 91.7 KOOP as the day she ceased to be an upstart and became […]

What is the meaning of the word “transient”?  That was the big question at a special called meeting of the Board of Adjustment last week.   At that meeting, the board considered and rejected appeals by two residents of the Allandale neighborhood arguing that city code actually prohibits allowing short-term rentals of residential properties in […]

Nearly a year after passing a resolution directing the city manager to prepare recommendations to improve Austin’s historic preservation program, City Council got its first look at what a newly designed program might look like at its meeting last Thursday.   If implemented, those recommendations would mean higher standards for individual properties, a push for […]

The long-awaited decommissioning of the Holly Street Power Plant has been put on hold again. At their meeting yesterday, City Council voted to postpone the execution of a contract in order to better understand problems with the project’s Request for Proposal process.   At issue is the substantial difference in price between the original bid […]

Once again, the city’s Convention Center is the focus of urgent questions from the City Auditor’s Office.   On Tuesday, members of the City Auditor’s Office told the Council Audit and Finance Committee that the Convention Center can’t assure the validity of the net profit statement they receive each year from Aramark, the company responsible […]

With the Budget Office projecting a $9.8 million shortfall, it looks like FY2012 is going to be another year of belt-tightening for Austin. At a presentation before Council this morning, CFO Leslie Browder, Budget Officer Ed Van Eenoo and economic consultant Jon Hockenyos laid out a picture of the city’s economic outlook and forecast for […]

City Council Place 3 candidates got to talk about their water conservation bona fides last Thursday at a South Austin forum hosted by the Save Barton Creek Association.   The forum seemed custom made for challenger Max Nofziger. The Save Barton Creek Association has been working since the late 1970s to limit the impact of […]

Nearly a year after City Council passed a resolution directing the city manager and the Historic Landmark Commission to come up with recommendations to improve the city’s historic landmark program, the commission is set to vote on those recommendations this afternoon.   Should Council adopt those recommendations, it could limit the tax exemption on historic […]

Moving forward with their plan to ensure more transparency in city government, the City Council took their first real step toward clarifying one of the more complicated areas of open records law yesterday: how to treat communications dealing with city business sent and received by city staff and officials on private electronic devices.   The […]

After weeks of courting Democratic groups, City Council candidates crossed the aisle yesterday, taking their messages to a forum hosted by the Republican Club of Austin.   Forum moderator and club President Dewayne Naumann told In Fact Daily that the number of Republicans in Austin may be small compared to, say, anywhere else in the […]

If all goes according to plan, next week the Historic Landmark Commission will at long last vote on changes to the city’s historic landmark ordinance. Those changes, which were originally supposed to be ready at the beginning of the year, could go before the Council by the end of the month and will likely be […]

City Council made its first move toward creating new policy related to open government issues yesterday. By a 6-0 vote, Council directed city staff to come up with a rough draft of a resolution that would establish how Council members and other members of city government should handle emails and other communiqués sent over personal […]