The Kellogg Foundation is awarding the Austin Independent School District $330,000 for a nine-month planning initiative to build better communication with families whose children attend schools in the Rundberg area. AISD officials said the project includes training school staff and parents on community engagement strategies at Hart, McBee, Padron and Wooldridge elementary schools and at the Lucy Read Pre-Kindergarten Demonstration School. Trained staff and volunteers will then conduct home visits, on-campus meetings and interviews of parents and families. During the nine-month initiative, AISD will lead a community engagement effort to cultivate relationships with families. Officials said this will help the district better understand barriers, gaps in service and untapped assets within the Rundberg neighborhood. They added that the  results will inform a second phase of collaborative, community-driven program development and implementation, and will also bolster ties among families, the community and school staff at the five schools.

The city has published the full Zucker Report, which will guide the improvement of processes for development review and permitting. The city hired Zucker Systems, an organizational consultancy specializing in planning processes for cities, in August 2014 to conduct an independent analysis of the Planning and Development Review Department’s functions. Officials say the goal was to get actionable recommendations to improve process efficiency, customer satisfaction and delivery of accurate and timely services. Recommendations in the report were based on discussions with customers and stakeholders as well as employees and city boards and commissions members. A draft report was published earlier this year. The final analysis and report can be viewed here.

The Austin Animal Center will host a pet- and family-friendly event May 30 to highlight the issue of lost pets in the Austin area. The “Don’t Drop the Ball ATX” event will be at 2 p.m. at Mueller Lake Park, 4550 Mueller Blvd., and will include pet welfare informational booths as well as free ID tags and collars. The festivities will kick off a two-month public awareness campaign to keep Austin’s pets healthy and safe. The campaign asks the community to “Don’t Drop the Ball” by ensuring its pets are secure or easily traced with an ID tag and microchip. Officials said that 12,972 lost dogs and cats entered the Austin Animal Center last year. The free event will include booths from the animal center and other city services, as well as organizations that provide pet services to the Austin community, including free and low-cost pet welfare services.

A new passenger screening checkpoint will soon be operational as the terminal addition known as the Terminal East Infill Project nears completion at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. The new screening checkpoint is expected to open in early June. ABIA officials say it will have six screening lanes and create a new connection in the terminal from the east ticket lobby to the concourse near Gate 5. Opening the new checkpoint will mark the completion of all new passenger processing areas created by the project. The lower level of the addition opened with the debut of the new customs area in December 2014. Completion of the Terminal East Infill will occur in phases throughout this summer. Still to be finished are administrative offices and two new bag carousels for travelers on domestic flights. The new bag carousels are scheduled to open in late summer 2015.

City officials are asking members of the community to express their priorities for services for the Fiscal 2016 budget through “Budget in a Box 2.0.” The community engagement exercise can be done at home, at a neighbor’s house or at a series of guided sessions in each of the 10 City Council districts. Budget in a Box is an activity designed for participants to facilitate discussions about city services, performance and budget. The activity tool kit contains instructions, a “Budget Basics” DVD, discussion materials and comment cards. After the group discusses and makes decisions about its preferences for spending in eight categories of city services, the facilitator will return the results sheet and comment cards to the city. That input will be gathered and presented to Council in a Community Engagement Report and published online for public review in September. The Financial Services Department will mail as many Budget in a Box kits as needed directly to homes, groups, churches or neighborhood organizations. For more information and a schedule of district meetings, go here.

While most Austinites were out enjoying their weekend, neighbors in surrounding communities were busy going to the polls for local elections. Austin residents were not in the mix this time around because City Council decided a couple of years ago to move its main elections to November in hope of attracting a higher voter turnout. Cities such as Leander, Lago Vista, Lakeway, Manor, West Lake Hills, Round Rock, Georgetown and others held city council elections, however. Several area school district also elected trustees, and some areas put bond issues before the voters. Voters in the Eanes School District approved $52 million in bonds for new technology, upgrades to aging buildings and expansion of other buildings. In Georgetown, voters overwhelmingly approved a $105 million road bond proposal, the largest bond issue in the city’s history. A number of local water district also held elections, choosing board members. For a complete list of Travis County election results, go here.

Last week, the Texas Legislature made its 2015 and 2016 artist appointments. For 2015, it appointed Carmen Tafolla of San Antonio as Texas Poet Laureate, Jimmie Vaughan of Austin as Texas State Musician, Vincent Valdez of San Antonio as Texas State Two-Dimensional Artist and Margo Sawyer of Elgin as Texas State Three-Dimensional Artist. The 2016 appointees include Laurie Ann Guerrero of San Antonio as Texas Poet Laureate, Joe Ely of Austin as Texas State Musician, Dornith Doherty of Southlake as Texas State Two-Dimensional Artist and Dario Robleto of Houston as Texas State Three-Dimensional Artist. Artists will serve a one-year term in their new positions.

If you have an opinion on how Eilers Neighborhood Park could be improved, the city would like to hear from you. The Parks and Recreation Department is currently at work on the Eilers Neighborhood Park Project and looking for public input on proposed improvements to the park’s picnic areas, play areas, pathways and landscape features. To have your voice heard on the topic, participate in the city’s online survey before the end of May.

Conversation Corps, a program of facilitated dialogue on important community issues, has announced six months of topics for which the City of Austin, Capital Metro and Austin Independent School District will be seeking public input. Each round of conversations will begin the second Monday of the month at various times and locations throughout the city. Every month, groups will meet all around town for facilitated dialogue, discussing the same “issue of the month” from one of the three partner agencies. Conversations will take place in a variety of venues — schools, houses of worship, community centers, coffee shops and restaurants — and will last about an hour. The next round of conversations begins today. This month, the City of Austin, Capital Metro and AISD are seeking input about budget priorities. For a complete list of dates and topics for meetings, go here.

The Texas House passed a bill Thursday that would create a pilot program for transit buses to use state highway shoulders to skip traffic gridlocks. House Bill 1324, filed by Rep. Celia Israel (D-Austin), would apply to certain strips of highway in Travis, Bexar, Tarrant and El Paso counties when traffic slows to less than 35 miles per hour. In Travis County, the pilot will take place on a southbound section of Interstate 35 and a northbound section of US 183. The cost for the programs, such as driver training, signage placement and road repainting, would be borne by each region’s local transit organization, including Capital Metro in Travis County. Similar bills have passed through the Texas Legislature in two previous sessions but were vetoed by former Gov. Rick Perry. The bill’s Senate companion, Senate Bill 422, filed by Sen. Kirk Watson (D-Austin), is currently in the Senate Transportation Committee.

The City of Austin has earned state recognition for its innovative and successful implementation of its Municipal Civil Service System, which applies to the majority of city employees. The Texas Municipal Human Resources Association presented the city its Innovation in Municipal Human Resources Management Award as part of the association’s 2015 Professional Awards Program. In slightly more than a year and a half, Austin’s Human Resources Department conducted a thorough development process to draft and implement Municipal Civil Service Rules — approved by Council in 2014 and trained more than 8,500 employees on those new rules. The commission hears appeals and makes final, binding decisions in the case of any municipal civil service employee who is discharged, suspended, demoted, denied a promotion or put on disciplinary probation.  For more about information about the commission, go here.

Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt paid the Austin Independent School District board of trustees a visit Monday night. Eckhardt briefed the trustees on the county’s developing Civil and Family Courthouse at the board’s Dialogue meeting to see if AISD was interested in jointly occupying the space. The 520,000-square-foot courthouse is part of the Travis County Master Plan and will be located between Third and Fourth streets, bounded by San Antonio and Guadalupe streets. Eckhardt said the county is talking with several governmental entities to explore joint habitation possibilities on the property. The preliminary plan is for the county to occupy the courthouse on half of the block and solicit private developers to build separate, additional office space on the other half. The extra space would be rented out to public or private entities — generating tax revenue — until the county needs it in about 40 years, Eckhardt said. Board President Gina Hinojosa asked about furthering legal, educational programs in the space, and seeking more county involvement and judicial prevention services for AISD students. Other trustees expressed interest in deepening collaboration on how to better use government-owned land, not only for this project, but for future affordable housing.