Kimberly Reeves

Last night’s election results guaranteed almost half the Austin Independent School District’s board of trustees turned over.   Gina Hinojosa, Jayme Mathias, Ann Teich and Amber Elenz will join the board, replacing four outgoing trustees. Only incumbent Sam Guzman chose to run for another term, and Mathias beat him by a 54 to 46 percent […]

Solutions for the traffic woes along Interstate 35 through Austin continue to evolve, and a picture of short-term fixes has begun to emerge for often-crowded intersections such as Cesar Chavez, Riverside and Oltorf.   Typically, when the traffic woes of I-35 are discussed, the solutions are large scale. Want to join east to west? Maybe […]

In an appearance before the House County Affairs Committee last week, Travis County Commissioner Karen Huber asked state lawmakers to rein in the abuses of investor-owned water utility companies that are jacking up rates.   Huber said the time had come to enable counties to represent aggrieved water users in rate case appeals before the […]

The latest proliferation of hydrilla and lakeside erosion topped the discussion at the Lake Austin Task Force’s first hearing on Monday night.   The task force will have two hearings, one fall and one spring, to take feedback from Lake Austin users and lakeside dwellers to make recommendations to improve the increasingly busy stretch of […]

Those members of the city’s Mexican-American community worried about the sale of 64 Rainey Street adjacent to the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican-American Cultural Center convinced Council to give up the idea of the sale at last week’s Council meeting. Instead, they directed the Parks and Recreation Department to return with options to incorporate the land […]

The Austin Music Commission last week gave tentative approval to Cheer Up Charlie’s effort to seek an outdoor music venue permit, but the approval was conditional. The commission’s discussion also revealed weaknesses in the process to get venue permits.   Cheer Up Charlie’s has been limited in the hours it can offer live music, the […]

The Lake Austin Task Force started with the idea that watercraft on the lake needed to be reined in to minimize shoreline erosion, but the task has become far more multi-faceted after the group’s first handful of meetings.   Erosion control was the initial charge of the task force, but as they say, no man […]

Austin’s Planning Commission gave a nod to rezone land near East Riverside Drive for a 252-unit multifamily affordable housing project, but residents are divided over whether the city’s ambitious plan to redevelop the East Riverside corridor will displace affordable housing in the area.   The Montopolis Neighborhood Plan Contact Team offered a letter of support […]

The Downtown Commission rejected staff proposals to soundproof future high-rise construction downtown, saying the measures cost too much and would do too little to block rising noise levels.   Co-mingling high-rise condos and with live music venues in downtown Austin has not been as compatible as many had hoped. A third-party study that questioned construction at […]

Council may have granted the Urban Renewal Board plenty of power, but it’s still uncertain whether the members can conjure up an Eastside grocery store.   The idea of putting two city-owned parcels on East 12th Street on the market arose earlier this summer, when the Department of Housing and Urban Development demanded the city’s […]

The Waller Creek Conservancy on Tuesday unveiled four ambitious designs from internationally known teams to create what officials are calling the nation’s most extensive transformation of an urban creek.   In the next month, after a series of public viewings, a jury will select a winning design to present to Austin City Council in the […]

The City of Austin is preparing to overhaul its Land Development Code for the first time in almost three decades, a daunting task that will involve an outside consulting team and additional Planning and Development Review Department staff.   The code rewrite will be the most visible result of the Imagine Austin Comprehensive Plan, which […]