Josh Rosenblatt

Austin voters will have two competing proposals for changing Austin’s City Council to geographic representation to choose from this November, after City Council approved on third reading Tuesday to put the 8-2-1 “hybrid” plan on the ballot. That Council decided by their own vote to include the hybrid plan on the November charter election ballot […]

After two years of heated debate, which came close to a boil this week, the City Council approved regulations on short-term rentals (STRs) properties last night, voting 5-2 to allow both owner-occupied and the more controversial non-owner-occupied short-term rentals in residential neighborhoods. Those regulations are slated to go into effect Oct. 1.  The vote, on […]

Just three years removed from the low point of the biggest financial collapse since the Great Depression, the City of Austin’s budget is doing well and getting better. Chief Financial Officer Elaine Hart and Deputy Chief Financial Officer Ed van Eenoo laid out its proposed budget for the City Council at a work session this […]

It’s official: City Clerk Shirley Gentry has validated more than 20,000 signatures from petitions gathered by Austinites for Geographic Representation (AGR), clearing the way for the group’s 10-1 single-member district plan to be on the ballot this November. Gentry sent a memo Thursday afternoon to the City Council notifying them that the petition turned in […]

It’s official: City Clerk Shirley Gentry has validated more than 20,000 signatures from petitions gathered by Austinites for Geographic Representation (AGR) , clearing the way for the group’s 10-1 single-member district plan to be on the ballot this November. Late today, Gentry sent a memo to the City Council notifying them that the petition turned […]

The People’s Community Clinic, which provides medical services for more than 10,000 low income and uninsured Austinites, wants the city to add $2 million to this November’s bond package to help pay for a new primary care clinic in East Austin. The proposed location, at the corner of Zach Scott Street and Manor Road, would […]

Austinites for Geographic Representation on Monday submitted more than 33,000 signatures in support of a single-member redistricting plan calling for 10 City Council members and one at-large mayor. If the City Clerk’s office validates at least 20,000 of those signatures by Aug. 20, the 10-1 plan will go on the November ballot.    To celebrate, […]

Back in the early 1940s, Dr. J. Gordon Bryson, a family doctor in the then-tiny city of Bastrop, moonlighted as a writer under the pseudonym of Pete Shady, contributing columns called “Main Street Observations” to the Weekly Bastrop Advertiser. Nearly 50 years later, Bryson’s daughter, longtime Electric Utility Commissioner and environmental activist Shudde Fath, was […]

The group responsible for a petition to put a 10-1 single-member district plan on the ballot in November claims it is the best option to create a district where African-Americans would constitute a plurality of voting-age citizens. Austinites for Geographic Representation contend that any plan with fewer than 10 districts (i.e., the competing 8-2-1 hybrid […]

Some residents of central east Austin, frustrated with what they describe as an “open-air drug market” at the corner of 12th and Chicon streets, are asking City Council to expand the boundaries of the city ordinance that prohibits people from sitting or lying in pedestrian rights-of-way in the downtown area. They believe expanding the so-called […]

After hours of heated public comments last night, City Council split the difference on the controversial subject of single-member districts and voted to put one geographic-redistricting proposal on the November ballot while approving a second, opposing plan on first reading. The split result was perhaps inevitable after Council Member Mike Martinez and Mayor Pro Tem […]

Mayor Lee Leffingwell and Council Members Sheryl Cole and Mike Martinez pronounced themselves ready to do their duty as leaders of the city once more last night before a relatively small audience of family, staff and well-wishers. It was a low-key affair. But after all, it was the fourth time for Leffingwell—having been sworn in […]