The Daily Hustle: 9/21/10

On the agenda: New regulations for mobile food trucks (Photo by John Anderson)

Hey hustlers and hustlettes - TDH is back with a full agenda preview for this Thursday's City Council meeting. As always, there's lots of potential landmines, including new regulations for mobile food vendors, funding for development studies, controversial zoning cases and more.

Agenda highlights for Thursday, September 23.

Items 2-5: Water service extension requests to single-family homes in Westlake.

Item 7: $2.8 million Boggy Creek Life Station improvement project, replacing pipe and adding pumping capacity in the southwest Boggy Creek Watershed. Katy, Texas, builders Pepper-Lawson are the staff-recommended choice. Their 0.33% minority-owned and 0.23% women-owned subcontractor participation may draw notice, however.

Item 21: Adding five firms to the Watershed Flood Hazard Mitigation Engineering Services Rotation List (Espey Consultants; Raymond Chan and Associates; Brown and Gay Engineers; Cas Consulting and Services; AECOM Technical Services), with $7.5 million in work to be divided between them.

Items 24, 28-29: A collection of new regulations for mobile food trailers, including a $125 application fee, a separate $125 fire inspection fee of propane cooking setups, commissary requirements, and more. The application fees will be folded back into new inspection positions.

Item 30: A $4.7 million, 1-year contract with a 1-year renewal option for Front Steps to continue operating the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless (ARCH) Downtown.

Item 37: Renaming the Zilker Neighborhood Park on Bluebonnet Lane to Bluebonnet Park.

Item 38: $55,000 in funding for the East Riverside Corridor Regulating Plan to steer development along the populous transit hub.

Item 39: $478,000 in funding for the Airport Boulevard Form-Based Code Initiative, a trial-run for FBC's focus on building style and compatibility in zoning, versus our current system governed by land use.

Items 85-94: This week's items from council.

Items 96-97: 10:30am briefings, including the finalists presentation on Airport Boulevard's Form-Based Code initiative, and a briefing on the soon-to-be-revamped social services contracting process.

Items 102-122: The zoning agenda, including second and third reading of Neighborhood Planning Area rezonings for the Windsor Road and West Austin neighborhoods (Items 103, 104).

Also up: The Domain impervious cover swap, likely postponed until Sept. 30 (Item 106), the 909 Congress development's request for height-boosting Central Urban Redevelopment (CURE) zoning, which will likely result in wrangling over concessions from applicant Dalton Wallace (Item 111), and more.

Item 136: A public hearing on the proposed property tax rate for Fiscal Year 2010-2011; at their budget hearings, Council set the maximum rate they could go up to, but the actual rate – likely the city manager's proposal – will be formally named September 29.

What the hell else is happening?

On the city calendar:City Council's Public Health and Human Services Committee meets in Board and Commission room at City Hall, 310 W. Second, 3pm.

The Mexican American Cultural Center Advisory Board meets at the MACC, 600 River, 6pm.

The Zoning and Platting Commission meets in City Hall's Council Chambers, 6pm.

The Resource Management Commission meets in the B&C room, 6:30pm.

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