Free Republic

Mobility Justice From the City of Austin Imagine Austin program – Mobility Justice is one of the crucial political and ethical issues of our day in the midst of a global climate crisis and the extreme challenges of urbanization. – Mimi Sheller, author of Politics of Movement in the Age of Extremes. Please join us as we welcome Dr. Lugo, who will share her work on a building movement called “mobility justice,” the practice of accounting for the diverse vulnerabilities that individuals carry with them as they travel through shared public spaces. How can cities, including Austin, use mobility justice...

City budget boosts spending for homelessness services The new city manager and City Council agree: The city needs more money to address the homelessness situation. The proposed Fiscal Year 2018-19 budget submitted by City Manager Spencer Cronk includes $3.1 million in new spending on homelessness-related services. That’s on top of the roughly $25 million of spending on such services that will continue from last year. Part of that proposed increase comes from the Watershed Protection Department, which has proposed hiring a contractor for an estimated $1 million over four years to clean up litter in creeks or drainage facilities that...

El Paso — Outfitted with his Canon camera and a telephoto lens, Austin Mayor Steve Adler got his first look at the burgeoning “tent city” of Tornillo on Wednesday evening. The brief glance came a day ahead of a scheduled protest at the Tornillo port of call along the Mexican border, where Adler, nearly the entire Austin City Council and mayors from across the nation will protest the practice of separating immigrant children from their family members who illegally cross the U.S. border. On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to end the separations — part of his...

Austin tax dollars to city election campaign dollars has some concerned about the legality of so called "Democracy dollars" An Austin commission is kicking around the idea of giving taxpayer dollars to residents who would then donate the money to local political candidates. Fred Lewis of the Charter Commission calls it the democracy dollars program. The program was created in Seattle and is so far the only US city with such a program. The commission’s Fred Lewis explained its to combat major donors from dominating elections. Each voter could get 50 bucks for each city race they can vote in....

Austin might soon ditch a three-decade-old policy of requiring downtown buildings and tenant businesses to have a minimum number of parking spaces tied either to square footage or the number of condos and apartments in a building. Supporters of the move say the minimum requirement has caused a parking surplus downtown, encouraging people to use their cars rather than bikes, buses and rail. Take away that requirement, they say, and eventually garage parking will become a more scarce (and expensive) resource, encouraging people to use alternative transportation. (excerpt)

The City of Austin might enact one of the broadest bag bans in the nation and prohibit disposable paper and plastic bags at all checkout counters starting in January 2016. In the meantime, starting in 2013, retailers could continue to offer thin, so-called single-use bags, but customers would have to pay 25 cents apiece for them, according to a draft of the ban. That three-year period would give the public and retailers time to prepare for the ban, city officials say. More than two dozen U.S. cities have enacted bag bans since 2007. Most prohibit plastic only, or ban plastic...

I remember BCM.

"Airing of Grievances" anyone?

Union members want a contract on their terms, without regard for the residents of Austin. They have forgotten who pays the bills. In rejecting a fair and generous contract, the Austin Firefighters Association is engaging in a kind of political extortion to maintain high pay and perks while preserving an outmoded culture at the fire department. That culture has for decades resisted the kind of change Austin leaders have demanded as a way of integrating the department into the greater Austin community. The department is, and has been, a closed club that does not look like the city or reflect...

[b]City won't set new talks soon; union members to keep working without contract.[/b] Austin firefighters overwhelmingly rejected a proposed labor contract with the city that would have given them pay raises and increased pension contributions and the department more hiring flexibility to add minorities to the ranks. Austin Firefighters Association Local 975 officials said that 582 firefighters voted against the agreement during four days of voting that ended Wednesday, while 160 supported the measure. The union has 948 members. (snip) Union leaders said many firefighters feared that the agreement would weaken hiring and training standards, potentially putting their lives at...

Oh wait... there isn't any. They are ungrateful dirt-bags, as usual.

Police investigating incident at North Austin station. Authorities are investigating an incident in which a recently promoted Austin firefighter found human excrement smeared on her locker at a Duval Road fire station. Firefighter Rebecca Farris discovered the waste when she showed up to work Dec. 21, about four months after being promoted to drive the fire engine at Station 25 in Northwest Austin, fire officials said Tuesday. Officials said she also found urine in a shampoo bottle. Assistant City Manager Mike McDonald said police investigators might require the 15 firefighters assigned to the station to provide DNA and fingerprint samples...

Russians playing a game of amateur rugby have been arrested by police who mistook the match for a mass brawl, local media reported. "We got a call to our control room saying there was a fight involving a lot of people on some waste ground just outside town," RIA news agency quoted a police official in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don as saying. The players and supporters - nearly 100 people in total - were taken to the local police station. They were released without charge when officers realised they had been playing rugby, the news agency reported.

Austin halts hiring of firefighters Federal agency and union raise concerns that department's screening process is flawed By Joshunda Sanders AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Tuesday, August 2, 2005 The Austin Fire Department has doused its hiring until its union contract expires Sept. 30, officials said Monday. The decision comes after several concerns were raised about the department's screening process, the latest of which was a notice in June from the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission saying that Austin's physical ability test was unfair to female applicants. Michelle DeCrane, a spokeswoman for the Austin Fire Department, said that the city's physical test mirrors...

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — The Dominican Republic will pull its 302 troops out of Iraq early, and Thailand will withdraw its 451 medical and engineering troops if they are attacked, officials said... ...Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's government is facing increasing calls to withdraw the country's troops, who were sent last year to do humanitarian work in Karbala, about 60 miles south of Baghdad. "If we get hurt or killed, I will not keep them there," Thaksin told reporters...

Although there is debate over the exact date it started, on November 02, 2000, a person calling themselves Timetravel_0, and later John Titor, started posting on a public forum that he was a time traveler from the year 2036. One of the first things he did was post pictures of his time machine and its operations manual. As the weeks went by, more and more people began questioning him about why he was here, the physics of time travel and his thoughts about our time. He also posted on other forums including the old Art Bell site. In his posts...

Did Secretary of State Colin Powell's report to the U.N. Security Council convince you that war is necessary to disarm Iraq?

Austin firefighter group wants all rescue operations to be placed within Fire Department. As large urban fires have yielded to the challenge of medical rescues, some Austin firefighters fear that their stomping grounds will be trampled by paramedics. Sept. 11 images of firefighters rescuing and caring for victims of terror in New York showed the public what many firefighters already knew: Medical and rescue missions are more common today than putting out fires. Now, the Austin firefighters union wants to do away with Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services and assume all rescue and medical operations within the city. EMS would...

The majority of Austin's African American firefighters have split from their union and demanded changes in the Fire Department, which they claim has discriminated against minorities for years. "There are some questions that need to be answered, not just with the (union), but with the Fire Department and the City of Austin," Ray Hendricks, a 22-year department veteran and a leader among the African American firefighters, said Wednesday. Hendricks said his group wants more bargaining power in contract negotiations and a push by the department to recruit more African Americans, whose numbers in the department have remained mostly flat for ...

Deer In The Cross Hairs By Dick Stanley American-Statesman Staff Thursday, June 22, 2000 Oh, deer. Angry callers have besieged Lakeway City Hall ever since word got out that hired guns could soon be shooting the town's overwhelming population of white-tailed deer. They're talking head shots at 20 yards, with rifles on tripods using subsonic ammunition, silencers and night-vision scopes -- and about 1,000 deer that won't be around in 2001. "Every one of (Tuesday's) callers was from outside the city," Mayor Charles Edwards said Wednesday. "People want to jump in our business. But we're doing this in the interest ...