Council: Diminishing Returns

City Council meets today (March 12) with a 23-Item agenda, the lightest load in recent memory – perhaps the fruit of last Council's hectic finish or the new Council's packed meeting schedule. It includes a few pending contracts of which some Council members questioned the details in Tuesday's work session – contract review seems to be a growing preoccupation. There was also some discussion of an interlocal agreement (Item 6) with AISD to help underwrite a case management software system to address chronic absenteeism ("truancy"). District 1 Council Mem­ber Ora Houston had pulled the item to learn more of the details, but D6 CM Don Zimmerman weighed in that AISD is a burden on the taxpayers, that "commingling" city and school district funds misleads taxpayers, and that if students were truant from AISD schools it's because they'd rather attend private charters.

Several Council members defended the shared expense as both existing city policy and a public obligation; D5's Ann Kitchen described it as saving future public expenditures by a preventative program to keep students in school. Houston noted that she hadn't pulled the item to undermine it, and said that explaining truancy by promoting charters was a simplistic analysis of a complex problem.

There are three scheduled zoning hearings, including a 9201 Cameron Road proposal (Item 21) to place a multifamily designation within what is currently a limited industrial neighborhood. That project has raised some zone-purity eyebrows, although the developer has suggested it will be aimed at "artist" residents who need lower rents and are less likely to balk at some nonresidential neighbors. (The staff recommends rejection, and the Zoning and Platting Commission proposed a commercial services mixed-use overlay.)

Council and staff both may have more pressing concerns on their minds: the posted release (in response to Council and public pressure) of the draft "Zucker Report" – a systems analysis of the city's Planning and Development Review Department, produced by the consultant firm Zucker Sys­tems. In very brief, the report recommends investing $3.5 million in additional staffing and improvements, including 464 recommendations (121 priority items). The takeaway thus far has been that the PDRD is not popular with Austinites, either outside or within the department. The negative responses from PDRD "customers" (e.g., permit applicants) are "the worst [Zucker has seen] in our national studies, including several Texas communities." Of the employee survey on departmental conditions, the consultants report: "These are the worst scores we have ever recorded in our various studies. ... Employ­ees are very unhappy about the direction and leadership in the Department." (The final version is expected in late March; it's not likely to be directly taken up by Council before then.)

It's Red Cross Month, and the musical honorees are the big-voiced and multitalented twinsters Annie & Kate.