Naked City

Curtis Clarke, owner of Evangeline Cafe, addresses a crowd of people who showed up at Threadgill's last week to air their grievances over programming changes and cutbacks at KUT radio. (Photo by Jana Birchum)

One Drop at a Time

The long-delayed Water Treatment Plant No. 4 – slated initially to draw 50 million gallons a day from Lake Travis, with a potential build-out of 300 MGD – may have come a little closer to reality last week. City Council voted 6-1 to award a preconstruction contract widening the road leading to the Northwest Austin site and approving further preparations, including design work. Laura Morrison was the sole dissenter. "I think that we still have some really important questions to answer about whether we need to move forward now," she told the Chronicle. "Over $6 million in items that were about to be approved, and there was nothing critical about approving them last week." Earlier in the meeting, Morrison voted with new Council Members Bill Spelman and Chris Riley in attempting to postpone discussion of the contract by two weeks, but the motion failed 4-3, with Randi Shade as the swing vote. While the vote marks a direct step toward construction of the plant, the decisions council faces next may mark the point of no return. In October, they will vote whether to clear the land for the site, with an actual construction contract expected in March 2010. A town hall meeting to address the issue is scheduled for Sept. 17. – Wells Dunbar

Movement on the Mobility Front

The city launched a new phase of work this week on the streetcar/light rail project planned for Downtown and Central Austin. Mayor Lee Leffing­well remains committed to a November 2010 transportation bond election, which will include a vote on the first phase of urban rail. (It's now a city of Austin project – entirely separate from Capital Metro and its delayed commuter Red Line.) Citizens will be asked to authorize council to build, operate, and maintain the urban rail system, conceived as a hybrid with both streetcar and light rail elements. Once voters approve the project, trains would be running within five years, according to Transportation Director Rob Spillar. At a Tuesday night briefing to the Urban Transportation Commission, Spillar said the initial phase will be the smallest increment that's feasible and can then attract federal money for future phases. The city is now requesting proposals from consultant teams to develop preliminary engineering plans for the route. Those in turn will yield more definite cost estimates by March. Concurrently, the city is moving forward with three studies necessary to the project, including a multimodal strategic mobility plan, environmental studies, and a resolution on how rails would cross Lady Bird Lake to serve East Riverside and the airport. – Katherine Gregor

AISD Accountability Ratings Are In

Which schools don’t make the grade? That depends if you’re asking the feds or the Texas Education Agency. On Aug. 6, the Austin Independent School District announced its 2009 federal accountability ratings, which determined that 102 of the district’s 108 regular campuses have made adequate yearly progress under No Child Left Behind. Six campuses missed the target (Akins, Lanier, Crockett, LBJ, and Reagan high schools, plus Mendez Middle), down from 14 in 2008. Yet because the federal system uses different metrics than the Texas School Accountability Standards, only three of the six – LBJ, Mendez, and Reagan – were also on the state’s list of nine AISD schools labeled academically unacceptable. Pearce Middle School, which was closed and repurposed because of its unacceptable rating from the TEA, still made the feds’ AYP list. The scorecard is just as confusing statewide. Last year, AISD was the only major urban district in Texas to make AYP. This year, even though it made improvements and is classified academically acceptable by the state, it failed to make the national AYP list because it missed new higher standards for special education students. Explaining the seeming contradictions, AISD Communications Director Andy Welch explained, “It’s the same tests; they’re just sliced and diced in different ways.” – Richard Whittaker

Spotlight on Yogurt Shop Murders

An Aug. 12 hearing in which attorneys were to announce plans to move forward with the prosecution of yogurt shop murder defendant Michael Scott (and, ultimately, second defendant Robert Springsteen) has been canceled. Instead, District Judge Mike Lynch issued an order Tuesday giving the state until Oct. 28 to announce whether it will proceed with a January retrial. If the state instead announces it is not ready for trial and files a motion to continue, it will have to do so based on some new set of circumstances: The court “will not entertain” any further delay based on the state’s inability to find the unknown donor of male DNA found inside at least two of the four young victims, Lynch wrote. (For more, see “The Never-Ending (Crime) Story,” July 17.) Meanwhile, a crew with CBS’s 48 Hours has been poking around town, working on a feature about the murders – presumably picking up where their last piece left off nearly a decade ago. They’ve been trying to come up with copies of the 1999 police interrogation tapes of Springsteen and Scott, prompting Lynch to remind lawyers that a protective order issued last September remains “in full force and effect,” meaning evidence associated with the case remains under seal with the court. – Jordan Smith