City Hall Hustle: Sounds like a Plan ... of the Plan ... for the Plan, or ...

The budget's over.

The marathon planning and calculating sessions that engulfed the entirety of the city's spring and summer have finally come to an unceremonious end, adopted in less than an hour when City Council last sat in its chambers.

So the budget's over ... almost.

Well, for starters, today (Thursday's meeting) there's the pro forma public hearing on the proposed rollback property tax rate of 42.09 cents, scheduled for 6pm; although approved, the tax rate isn't formally adopted until the beginning of the city's fiscal year in October. But there are also a few items from council tidying up unfinished fiduciary business for 2010, emerging from the dais' most proactive challenger of the status quo, Bill Spelman.

Item 70 (by Spelman and Laura Morrison) acts on plans the council members shared with the Hustle last week, to expand spay and neuter services offered by the Town Lake Animal Center. The plan, according to the agenda backup, is to "provide service seven days a week without decreasing the number of surgeries done during the existing service days." And, moreover, it looks to bundle the cost into the 2010 budget, directing City Manager Marc Ott to get a plan to council by Nov. 5 "including any necessary budget amendments."

That's followed by Item 72, making good on a Spelman campaign promise: a neighborhood matching fund program. As described on the campaign trail, the program, modeled after a successful one in Seattle, would stretch city dollars by enabling neighbors to match municipal resources. For instance, the city would donate trees for a new pocket park, while the neighbors would raise the funds to landscape it (or just plant 'em themselves). For this more ambitious program, council has requested Ott brief them on its development in January; again, they want to see a "timeline for program implementation within this fiscal year." Sheryl Cole is the co-sponsor.

Absent are a few other items Spelman and Morrison had expressed interest in: beefing up inspection both on high-rise construction sites to prevent further deaths and also on Americans With Disabilities Act compliance in new buildings. Spelman's staff, pleased they could get the matching-grant program on the agenda, said these other priorities would require a "little more cooking," possibly in the form of budget amendments. Still, they hope to have the development inspection item on the Oct. 1 agenda and the ADA proposal prepared around that same time.

If you thought that's all there is to this Sept. 24 meeting, the 105-item agenda should convince you otherwise. Another council proposal (Cole, Spelman, and Randi Shade) pertains to the Millennium Youth Entertainment Complex – the underused Eastside theatre, arcade, and sports venue – calling for an "independent program assessment and analysis" coupled with development of "a long term strategic plan for the facility with a community stakeholder process."

Elsewhere, long-gestating community projects keep bubbling. Item 30 would award nearly $1.2 million to Comprehensive Plan overlords Wallace Roberts & Todd, funding to complete the plan's Phase II (Vision and Plan Framework, or the plan for the plan) and – can it be? – Phase III, the actual Comp Plan itself. Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, Item 54 revisits Phase I – the booting-up and generation of a Public Participation Plan overseeing education and outreach – the plan for the plan for the plan, we suppose. Item 54 simply calls for council approval of the PPP, so maybe now we can just get on with the damn thing. (Guess they weren't joking about the "comprehensive" part.)

Elsewhere, Item 53 acts on findings from the other cheery corporate emissaries of city planning – ROMA Design Group – tasked with drafting the similarly temporized Downtown Austin Plan. Here, council is expected to act upon ROMA's density bonus program recommendations, whereby developers can build more densely than currently allowed on a plat, provided they include community benefits such as affordable housing, public spaces, eco-friendly measures, and more.

Also of note: Item 37 from the Fire Department rejiggers the ranks and bumps up the number of AFD assistant chiefs from four to five, as Rhoda Mae Kerr sought to do earlier this year (but couldn't due to budgetary constraints). Declared as an emergency, if passed, the changes can occur immediately. Meanwhile, in zoning, Items 90 and 91 amend the Crestview Neighborhood Plan with regard to vertical mixed use and allow for VMU opt-in/opt-out, while Item 92 similarly lets the Central East Austin Neighborhood Planning Area choose its VMU tracts. Lastly, Item 97 is the first reading on the Grayco/South Shore District PUD, the Riverside area development described in last week's issue (see "Developing Stories," Sept. 18).

The budget may be over, but the fun never stops.

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