Members of the Texas House of Representatives today will consider Senate Bill 4, popularly coined the “sanctuary cities” bill. The practices of the Travis County Sheriff’s Office have been heralded as a reason to pass this bill – one that would create criminal and civil penalties for law enforcement heads who do not honor all […]
Mayor Steve Adler
Mayor of the city of Austin, elected in November 2014
Posted inAustin
CodeNEXT tech talk focuses on familiar topics
Planning consultant Peter Park picked an apt way to describe Austin’s current building code while talking to a room full of technology entrepreneurs and stakeholders at Austin’s Capital Factory. “The (operating system) is kind of broken, and to get the city you want is kind of an arduous process,” Park said of the ongoing reveals […]
Posted inTexas State Legislature
Mayor, Troxclair check in at the Capitol to talk short-term rentals
Mayor Steve Adler and City Council Member Ellen Troxclair took their disagreement over the city’s short-term rental regulations to the Texas Capitol on Tuesday evening. Both testified before the Senate Committee on Business & Commerce on Senate Bill 451, a measure that reverses new rules passed by Council last year. Those rules are set to […]
Posted inTexas State Legislature
Troxclair, Adler present opposite views on tax bill
City Council Member Ellen Troxclair and Mayor Steve Adler presented diametrically opposite views at Tuesday’s Senate Finance Committee hearing on Senate Bill 2, which would prevent cities and counties from raising taxes by more than 4 percent above the effective tax rate from one year to the next. The rate, called the rollback rate, is […]
Posted inAustin
Adler: A blue Texas “all but inevitable”
It’s something of an old saw in the political world that progressive cities in otherwise red states are like “a blueberry in a bowl of tomato soup.” Austin Mayor Steve Adler and his mayoral colleagues on Friday’s “America’s Mayors: Holding The Line” panel at South by Southwest didn’t invoke that line themselves but let panel […]
Posted inAustin
Austin officials rap about Smart Cities, robot cars at SXSW
Nine months after Austin lost the federal Smart City Challenge to Columbus, Ohio, the vision of a data-enhanced urban future is still alive and well. Top officials from Mayor Steve Adler to Austin Transportation Director Robert Spillar took time during South by Southwest 2017 to publicly address the city’s efforts to leverage data collection into […]
Posted inAustin
Adler speech calls for optimism, hard work ahead
Mayor Steve Adler warned the crowd at the Real Estate Council of Austin luncheon Thursday that the CodeNEXT maps showing all the new zoning classifications for the entire city to be released on April 18 will be “wrong,” but the solution is for everyone to take a deep breath and get to work. It’s not […]
Posted inCity Council
Survey says: Austinites dissatisfied with traffic, happy with most else
New survey findings show Austin residents are generally happier with city services such as fire, police, library, and parks and recreation than residents of similarly populated cities. But Austin falls behind the national average of satisfaction in an unsurprising category: traffic. Jason Morado, project manager of the Kansas City, Kansas-based ETC Institute, presented the report […]
Posted inAustin
Economic forecast puts focus on transit, housing, jobs for 2017
AngelouEconomics’ annual economic forecast for Austin sees the city’s economy slowing its growth somewhat in 2017 and 2018. But roughly 107,000 new residents in that timespan will add more pressure on the local cost of living and transportation systems. The forecast from local economist Angelos Angelou gathers data from throughout Austin and Texas as a […]
Posted inReporters' Notebook
Reporter’s Notebook: Pardon
Vote kills Entrada annexation for now… City Council voted 10-1 on Thursday to indefinitely postpone annexation of the Entrada property, approximately 246 acres in northeastern Travis County south of Wells Branch Parkway, with Mayor Pro Tem Kathie Tovo opposed. Mayor Steve Adler said the current Council needs to reconsider the city’s annexation policy. That policy has […]
Posted inAustin
Adler delivers State of the City address this weekend
Last year was a busy one for Mayor Steve Adler. Among many other things, he kicked off a mammoth undertaking to shepherd through a $720 million mobility bond, worked diligently on public outreach on the city’s land use code rewrite and championed a Music and Creative Ecosystem Omnibus to help preserve the city’s legacy as […]
Posted inReporters' Notebook
Reporter’s Notebook: Regarding Twitter
Vela to Dukes: Time to go… Embattled state Rep. Dawnna Dukes (Austin) has reneged on her promise to step down from her seat, leaving in limbo those who were hoping to replace her and actively campaigning to do so. One of them, Chito Vela, released a statement Saturday that said Dukes’ indecision “hurts the people she […]