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Quote of the Day
“I don’t want this to become a situation where only the folks with extra dollars to spend get to utilize our city park spaces… I would love for the parks department to have a bigger slice of the general fund, but when two-thirds of it is going to public safety and we’re still having conversations about the need to increase funding for public safety, we’re just in a tight spot.
— Council Member Paige Ellis, from City, parks boards weigh funding options to stem expected shortfalls
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City, parks boards weigh funding options to stem expected shortfalls
From Chad Swiatecki:
The city could consider new user fees, expanded partnerships, naming rights and even the creation of a regional park authority as part of a broad effort to close a growing funding gap in the parks system, according to a consultant report released last month. Commissioned by the Parks and Recreation Department, the report outlines short- and long-term strategies for addressing the financial pressures facing the department.
The report offers a range of short- and long-term funding options including establishing a $1 per month parks maintenance fee on utility bills, expanding the use of drainage utility funds to reflect the ecological value of parks, revising cost recovery policies for programs and rentals and formalizing the city’s ability to accept naming rights and corporate sponsorships.
Longer-term recommendations include pursuing future bond financing, exploring the creation of a local government corporation to oversee park operations, or pursuing state legislation that would allow the creation of a regional park district spanning Travis County and other jurisdictions.
Some neighbors see progress, others peril in South Lamar DB90 rezoning
From Miles Wall:
Commissioners heard from both neighbors in support of a redevelopment that would offer relatively dense housing in a fast-growing neighborhood and neighbors who fear another tall building. This time around the site is on South Lamar Boulevard, just north of Mary Street.
The rezoning request was supported by city staff, who cited the project’s high unit density and location along an Imagine Austin corridor as reasons for their endorsement. It also received support from neighbors like Sharlene Leurig, who said she had negotiated with Stonelake over various issues including the construction of a fence between her home on Kinney Avenue and the western edge of the development and measures to curtail noise from nighttime trash pickups she said had long troubled her sleep under the previous owners. Leurig said the developer’s willingness to work on a formal agreement with her over those and other issues made her willing to support the project.
Yazmin Melero, a condo owner who served as the primary speaker in opposition during the meeting, said that the development would hurt owners like her by blocking their views, but also by lowering their property values. She alleged that property values on the opposite side had fallen dramatically after an unspecified tall building was constructed on that side, and suggested that the same would happen with the plan presented by Stonelake.
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Planning Commission endorses bulk rezonings on West 34th
Austin’s Planning Commission voted unanimously to recommend a city-endorsed raft of rezonings that would transform entitlements for a cluster of over a dozen addresses on West 34th Street in Central Austin’s Heritage neighborhood during a meeting on July 22.
Together the rezonings, which were requested by one West 34th Street Neighborhood Improvement Company, LLC, would allow for a large-scale redevelopment through new, density-promoting zoning, but no details were included in the backup provided to the commission. City staff noted in their report on an associated request to amend the local Future Land Use Map, or FLUM, however, that the applicants were proposing a “mixed-use development.”
— Miles Wall
Piece of cake: AUS continues to expand
Austin’s West Infill project, which will bring four floors of terminal expansion to the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, is scheduled to be completed in early 2026. The project, which is being touted as a “four-layer cake of a building” by the city’s Fly AUS Blog, will expand the Barbara Jordan Terminal by 75,000 square feet. It will feature a new, faster, outbound baggage system, a wellness room that will “allow for quiet meditation,” a lounge, and three new ticket counters for the airlines that will be booted from The South Terminal, which is slated to be removed next year. “The most prominent feature of the West Infill project’s concourse level is its new security checkpoint, Checkpoint 4. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will host 6 to 8 new lanes for passengers,” explains the blog. The West Infill project is scheduled to be complete in spring of 2026.
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Elsewhere in the News
This week, the Austin Chronicle takes a look at how public media funding cuts are impacting the landscape of local news
The local alt weekly also gives us a window into the people that run UT.
KXAN reports that, despite good news on the federal funding side of things, AISD is still planning for staff cuts.
KVUE celebrates the end of a never-finished strip mall in East Austin that has sat emply and incomplete for decades.
And, if you missed it, the Texas Tribune reported on how Dobie Middle School is in the center of a fight about how schools are rated in Texas.
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