Austin Infrastructure Academy, which was formed early this year, has received contributions of $125,000 from Texas Mutual insurance company and $100,000 from Google.org, the social impact arm of the tech giant. The money will fund program design for the academy that was created to help connect job seekers with careers in construction and operations. Training, wraparound services and recruiting will be some of the primary focus areas of the academy that City Council helped to launch in March, with Austin Community College providing a location for the effort at its Southeast Travis County campus. “I am thrilled to see how our community partners, both public and private, are coming together to develop the Austin Infrastructure Academy and provide Austinites direct pathways to meaningful, in-demand, family-sustaining careers,” Austin Mayor Kirk Watson said in a prepared statement. “The Infrastructure Academy will help bolster Austin’s skilled labor force to meet the workforce needs of major infrastructure projects in our area while also improving economic opportunity throughout the community.”

The city has selected its finalists for the Museums and Cultural Programs Division manager position, who will ultimately oversee the operations of the city’s museums and cultural spaces. To further narrow the field, the Parks and Recreation Department will host an online meet and greet (registration here) from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, July 11, when attendees will get the opportunity to learn more about the candidates and provide feedback.

As part of Austin’s HOME Initiative, the city is looking for ways to preserve its (nonprotected) trees and increase tree planting in the city. And they are looking to residents to help craft recommendations, incentives and planting requirements. Right now, the city is penciling out its recommendations and looking for feedback through a webinar that will take place 11:30 a.m. until 1 p.m. July 16. Registration can be found here. This public feedback will be used in crafting recommendations to City Council in the fall. Additional questions about providing feedback can be directed to dsdcommunications@austintexas.gov.

Effective July 2 and lasting until appropriate kennel space is available, Austin Animal Center is temporarily closing its intake in response to critical capacity issues, with more animals coming in than going out. Intake is functioning on an emergency and case-by-case basis, only for animals with life-threatening injury or illness or those presenting a clear public safety risk. “Between June 24 and June 26, we took in 149 dogs and cats and only 124 left during that same timeframe,” Chief Animal Services Officer Don Bland said. “This has been an ongoing pattern that has led to us having more animals than we have kennels. We started this morning with 24 dogs and 5 cats without an appropriate kennel.” In a statement to the press, the shelter emphasized its mitigation efforts to increase capacity and avoid closing down intake – including waiving adoption fees, publishing an urgent placement list, spending $5,000-6,000 per week to place 24 dogs in boarding and hiring for two temp positions to assist with foster program coordination. For more information on fostering and adopting, visit austinanimalcenter.org. AAC is open for adoption and reclaim 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Sunday, and all adoption fees are currently waived. If you need assistance with an injured animal:

• Call 311 to report that you need help with a sick or injured animal and ask to speak with an animal protection officer.
• Wait for the officer to pick up the animal. Do not take the animal to the shelter.
• If you have found a loose pet that is not injured, visit AAC’s Lost and Found Pet website for guidance.

The city’s Vision Zero program has received $1.3 million in federal funding via the Texas Department of Transportation’s Highway Safety Improvement Program. The money will be used to install new traffic signals, which are historically shown to reduce vehicle crashes by 35 percent. The new signals will be installed on Harris Branch Parkway at Giles Lane (in District 1) and at South First Street and Ralph Ablanedo Drive (in District 2). Since 2020, Austin has received nearly $7 million in HSIP funding to improve traffic safety. According to the latest Vision Zero dashboard data, the city has seen 32 traffic fatalities in 2024, with 5,231 total crashes.

Construction crews working to expand the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center are preparing to install grade beams that will transfer some of the structural load to the spaced foundation of the structure, which consists of reinforced concrete beams at grade level. According to an update from Capital Delivery Services, other recent progress has been made on the project:

• A flow splitter used for stormwater management was installed on the property’s biofiltration pond;
• The pit for a new elevator has been excavated with waterproofing installed;
• Concrete pours for the southern portion’s grade beams have begun, with work scheduled to adhere to city noise ordinances.

Construction of the expansion is set to continue through next summer, with a grand opening in the fall of 2025.

A post on the City Council Message Board showed that Mayor Kirk Watson is concerned about moving forward with a proposed climate bond this November. On Friday, Watson wrote that he agreed with Austin Outside’s assessment that they take the time to move forward in a thoughtful, deliberative and thorough manner. “The Council has discussed a possible climate bond initiative one time—at a work session on May 28th. As a Council, we didn’t give specific direction to the Manager regarding what to bring back as a potential bond proposal. We didn’t identify priorities. We really couldn’t have done so. There was—and is still—insufficient deliberation and information,” Watson wrote. “Anything the Manager’s office would bring to us at this point would be piecemeal and lack the rigor we should want. Even if we decided to just put one thing on a ballot this November, such as land acquisition, we would be doing so without staff being able to answer many of the questions raised at the work session and raised by many constituents who care deeply about this issue and how best to address it.” In his post, Watson also acknowledged that city staff has warned that a large bond election this year would be imprudent and said that, in his opinion, such an election should occur no later than November 2026. As of press time, Watson had at least the support of Mayor Pro Tem Leslie Pool, who added, “The Council does no favors to anyone without properly assessing the work in front of us. We have no second chances these days to get things right. And Austin’s future deserves our focused attention on doing things right.”

The Austin Symphony Orchestra and the city of Austin will hold their 47th Fourth of July celebration this year. The evening is free and will take place at Vic Mathias Shores and the Long Center, with fireworks beginning at 9 p.m. (The event itself kicks off at 4 p.m.) The evening will include food and drink, live music in addition to the symphony performance and, of course, fireworks. Attendees can bring blankets and chairs, but nonservice animals should be left at home. Road closures around Auditorium Shores will be in effect around 7 p.m. to ensure safety. Those closures include sections of South First Street and West Riverside Drive. In addition, roads in the Bouldin Creek neighborhood will be open to local traffic only. There is a road closure map and table of closed streets on the city’s event web page. All roads will be opened by midnight. Lady Bird Lake downtown will be closed to all watercraft from 8 p.m. to midnight. More information and VIP options can be found at starspangledfest.com/july-4.

With City Council Member Leslie Pool retiring, five candidates are lined up for the District 7 seat. However, a sixth candidate may be jumping into the race very soon. Attorney Gary Bledsoe, aptly described by The Austin Bulldog as “a towering figure in civil rights,” confirmed Thursday that he is strongly considering the race. If Bledsoe does decide to run, he will be joining Mike Siegel, Todd Shaw, Adam Powell, Pierre Nguyen and Edwin Bautista, who have already declared their candidacies. Bledsoe has served as president of the Texas NAACP since 1991 and has worked as an attorney on a number of important cases. The Texas Rangers appointed their first Black Ranger in 1988 after Bledsoe threatened to sue the agency for discrimination. If Bledsoe were elected to the District 7 seat, Council would have two Black members for the first time in its history. Council Member Natasha Harper-Madison, the only Black member of Council, represents District 1.

Currently, there are only two candidates running for the District 10 seat on City Council, currently occupied by Council Member Alison Alter, who is retiring at the end of this year. They are Ashika Ganguly and Marc Duchen. Ganguly’s campaign website identifies her as the former legislative director for Rep. John Bucy, a Williamson County Democrat. According to her website, Ganguly, 28, found working at the Texas Legislature frustrating because of issues such as inclusion efforts, LBGTQIA+ rights, school finance and local control. Duchen, 45, has some heavy hitters supporting him from the Democratic Party. These include Travis County Precinct 2 Commissioner Brigid Shea and former Travis County Tax Assessor-Collector Cecilia Burke, who is hosting a party for Duchen at her house on Saturday. Another candidate filed an appointment of campaign treasurer, but then decided to support Duchen instead. Idona Griffith was surprised to learn that she needed to file a report of contributions and expenditures for her campaign even though she did not collect or spend any money. Griffith is supporting Duchen. Sunday is the deadline for collecting contributions for the next reporting period, so many of the candidates are dialing for dollars. Alter, who is retiring from her District 10 seat at the end of the year after two terms, filed her July 15 campaign finance report before either of the contenders for office. The report, filed on June 15, unsurprisingly shows no funds collected, no political expenditures and no loans outstanding.

People who live above the Barton Creek greenbelt have been complaining for a while about a specific encampment in the greenbelt. They were particularly worried about the possibility of a wildfire since the encampment had a grill. This week, the Parks and Recreation Department moved in to clean up the site. Neighbors on the Barton Hills Neighborhood listserv described their fear of what might happen if a fire got out of hand.

Another neighbor wrote, “Campers on the greenbelt have been an issue for decades. What’s different now is how the city deals with the problem. 25 years ago, when I first started spending a lot of time on the greenbelt, there was a zero-tolerance policy for campers. PARD had staff that was dedicated to greenbelt maintenance and the Park Police dept. still existed. When a camp was reported, it was usually gone within a week.” But without the Park Police, there was much less attention to the problem, he noted.

A PARD spokesman told the Austin Monitor via email, “The Parks and Recreation Department (PARD) cleans up small and medium scale abandoned encampments in parks and greenbelts. Staff do not engage if individuals are present when they arrive to clean up a site that had been previously identified as an abandoned encampment. The Homeless Strategy Office (HSO) is notified for any active camps and provides further direction. The encampment cleaned up this week in the Barton Creek Greenbelt near Barton Springs Pool was identified as being abandoned. PARD has a team of four temporary staff funded through Fiscal Year 2024 dedicated to cleaning up abandoned encampments. From January to May 2024, 156 abandoned encampments have been cleaned up.”

As of Tuesday, Austin-Bergstrom International Airport has a new onsite option for enrolling in and renewing PreCheck through the Transportation Security Administration to expedite wait times during security screening. The platform CLEAR now offers TSA PreCheck enrollment at its enrollment kiosks located by TSA Checkpoint 1. No appointment is needed for enrollment in either the CLEAR or TSA PreCheck programs at these kiosks. Since a consolidation earlier this year, all TSA PreCheck and CLEAR users are currently screened at Checkpoint 2 West. For travelers deemed low risk by the TSA, the benefits of PreCheck include keeping your shoes and belt on through the security screening process, not removing your laptop or liquids from your carry-on bag during screening, and screening via walk-through machines rather than full-body scanners. Enrolling passengers must provide an original or certified copy of identity or citizenship status documentation from the approved identification list. TSA PreCheck costs $78 or $85, depending on the enrollment provider, and lasts for five years.