Naked City
Austin Stories
Fri., Sept. 27, 2002
Dedicated East Austin activist Robert Donley died Monday at the age of 72. He spent many years in the trenches fighting for a number of causes alongside fellow warriors Gavino Fernandez, Paul Hernandez, and Marcos de Leon, and often served as a voice of reason amid bitter conflicts. His institutional knowledge of local political lore was also legendary, making him a valuable resource for reporters and other curious souls. His organizational ties were many, including El Concilio and chairman of the Holly Power Plant Closure Committee. Donley was buried Wednesday in Assumption Cemetery. -- Amy Smith
Martin Junior High became Martin Middle School this year -- adding sixth grade to seventh and eighth -- leaving Kealing as the only remaining junior high in the Austin Independent School District. Since AISD, like nature, abhors a vacuum, the administration is creating a task force headed by Area 1 Superintendent Ed Leo to address whether Kealing should also add a sixth grade. The proposal worries some parents of students at Kealing's elementary "feeder" schools, especially Lee and Maplewood. They wonder how the plan might be developed and if implementation would effectively mean the end of sixth grade at the two schools. Kealing is already overcrowded and "landlocked" by dedicated parkland -- speculation is that to make the change, a "satellite" campus would be needed, location unspecified. The task force is scheduled to meet on Tuesday nights, beginning Oct. 1. (A Martin task force is also being formed to work with its feeder schools.)
For more information on the Kealing task force, call Area 1 Supt. Ed Leo at 414-3989; on the Martin task force, call Area 2 Supt. Rosalinda Hernandez at 414-4470.
-- Michael King
Pulling an idea from the "Duh!" file, Capital Metro rolled out its new E-Bus, which provides free transit service from around the UT campus down to Sixth Street and the Warehouse District during party hours (8pm-3am Thursday through Saturday). For some reason the American-Statesman is cool on this idea, although the main complaint -- voiced both by columnist John Kelso and a substantial number of respondents to the daily's Web insta-poll -- is that the E-Bus is free to UT students, while "the rest of Austin's drunks" (Kelso's words) have to pay their 50 cents. Of course, all Cap Metro buses are already free to UT students (and staff and faculty), a fact not acknowledged by the Statesman. -- Mike Clark-Madison
The Hill Country Conservancy announced last week that it had received a $1 million grant from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to go toward conservation of the 5,700-acre Storm Ranch in the Onion Creek watershed. The HCC has a goal of $10 million in the Storm Ranch preservation effort. This comes only a week after F&W gave $10 million to the Balcones Canyonlands Conservation Plan. -- Lee Nichols
The city's Historic Landmark Commission has withdrawn its application for historic zoning for 311 Colorado, home of the Bitter End restaurant. Panic erupted earlier this year when the property, once home to Andrew Zilker's ice plant, was bought by San Antonio's Hixon Properties, which has envisioned a boutique hotel on the site. Reps from Hixon convinced the HLC and city staff that they have no idea whether or when their plans would require tearing down the building. The Bitter End's lease expires in December 2003; restaurateur Reed Clemons has bitterly opposed the Hixon hotel deal, which was midwifed by his landlords, Schlotzky's mogul John Wooley and his brother Jeff. -- M.C.M.
Last week the state comptroller's office made available its draft Texas School Performance Review report on Austin Community College, and the early notices are mixed at best. The bulk of the report suggests ACC's academic performance has improved greatly, and there is much in the draft that commends the college's educational service to the region. But the first two chapters -- "Governance and Leadership" and "Institutional and Academic Support" -- blast the administration for poor communication, overcentralization, and a lack of shared governance between the board of trustees, the administration, and the school's faculty. The report also says major decisions -- specifically the creation of a downtown campus -- were driven by small board factions and were "not in the best interest of the college." The consultants who drafted the report say the relationship between the board and President Richard Fonté is "plagued by distrust" on both sides and cite as representative one faculty member's characterization of administrative consultation: "We need dialogue, not monologue, and sometimes we don't even get monologue about decisions." College administrators are reviewing the report, and the Comptroller expects to issue a revised, final report later this year. -- M.K.
UT researchers announced that they have developed a prototype hybrid bus that uses a high-speed, high-power flywheel levitated on magnetic bearings to produce a smoother ride and save fuel. As the bus stops, motors on the wheels convert the energy of the bus into electricity that is stored in the flywheel, and when the bus starts again, it uses energy from both the motor and the flywheel. Researchers with UT's J.J. Pickle Research Center say it produces a fuel savings of about 30% on a typical urban route. -- L.N.
The city this week tested an automated alert system that can call 48 phone numbers at a time to inform them, via recorded message, of emergencies like floods, chemical spills -- or exploding PCB-filled generators. That's what neighbors around the Holly Power Plant worry about, and they were the lucky guinea pigs for the alert-system test. Holly neighborhood leader Gavino Fernandez of El Concilio complained before the test that since many East Austinites don't have phones, the system is insufficient. Austin Energy is now planning to shut down Holly by 2009; the utility provided the funding for the APD to buy the system. -- M.C.M.
The Austin Lesbian/Gay Political Caucus is throwing its weight behind a full slate of Democrats in this season's round of political endorsements. A complete list of its endorsements is available on the ALGPC Web site, www.outaustin.org. -- A.S.
SCIP II II: The city housing office broke ground last week on the long-delayed second phase of the Anderson Hill (nee SCIP II) affordable housing project between 11th and 12th Street. Three homes are now under way; up to 20 more are planned for this phase of the project, which was conceived 10 years ago. The original developers, the Anderson Community Development Corporation and former City Housing Director Gene Watkins, put up 26 of the proposed 100 units in the mid-Nineties before running out of money (prompting a scathing federal audit) and forfeiting the SCIP properties back to the city. The city also formally accepted a $500,000 federal grant to expand and renovate Lott Park, which lies within the Anderson Hill neighborhood. -- M.C.M.
"[It] was a high tech driven environment, and almost anyone who purchased property made money." So says Gov. Rick Perry who, despite being a state employee for nearly 20 years, made himself rich through a series of Austin land deals probed in detail last weekend by the uncharacteristically contentious Dallas Morning News. The deals included a 9.3-acre piece of what is now Michael Dell's estate (the most expensive private residence in America), which Perry sold to the PC magnate at a 270% profit, and a 60-acre chunk of the Barton Springs recharge zone, which Perry found out about through his good friend Gary Bradley. The then-guv lite sold this land -- at double the price he paid -- the week after Gov. George W. Bush signed into law HB 1704, putatively exempting the property from the Save Our Springs Ordinance. The city of Austin has since purchased a development easement on the property from the new owners. Perry, of course, denies that his connections helped him profit off these transactions, but his opponent Tony Sanchez has claimed otherwise. -- M.C.M.
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