City of Austin Council Message Board

Thanks for providing your additional thoughts, CM Kitchen. I'm really looking forward to narrowing all these ideas down to clear direction for staff to begin drafting! For those keeping score, I would answer the Manager's questions A(i)/C/C/C/C which from my perspective is mostly baked in to our joi...

Thank you, everyone, for the many thoughtful ideas to consider. With the City Manager’s 5 questions in mind, CM Harper-Madison, CM Kitchen, CM Renteria, and I offer the enclosed document which delves into specifics and offers 15 Questions & Answers that we four agree must first be tackled before...

Colleagues, I am excited to see so many of us on the same page with regards to the City Manager’s approach and that we will quickly be discussing and taking action on the key policy issues of the Land Development Code. It is important that Council provide clear direction on key policy drivers at the...

Thanks for the post! I'd like to remain on two of the committees where I've been serving and request one change: Chair - Judicial Committee (current) Vice-chair - Mobility Committee (current) Member - Audit & Finance Committee (new) (stepping off of Housing Committee) I'd also like to stay on th...

I am excited that we are discussing biennial budgeting at our Government That Works discussion during this Tuesday's Council Work Session. In addition to some of the very good points in the Biennial Budgeting Background document that was shared by staff (http://assets.austintexas.gov/austincouncilfo...

I appreciate the effort, and clearly hard questions will be asked and staff will be expected to answer them. However, I don't see what this resolution accomplishes that the Manager's office will not already be planning to do. I also agree with Council Members Kitchen and Renteria in noting that any ...

I'm good with postponement due to your absence related to city business.

Colleagues, Thanks for the good discussion at work session today. As promised, here are the two amendments I will be bringing on Thursday: Amendment One - http://assets.austintexas.gov/austincouncilforum/AD-20180821152825.pdf ------------------------------------- The intent of this amendment is to c...

Colleagues, This week we set a maximum proposed tax rate for FY 2019 that is 6% above the effective tax rate. While I continue to support the Manager’s budgeted increase of 4.9% reached as a result of our year long strategic planning process, I anticipate our ongoing budget conversations will includ...

Colleagues, I appreciate that Item 61 is working to bring some clarity to the spending of future 2018 bonds, however I think it's beneficial to provide even further clarity for the voters and for staff as we move this forward. I’m offering an amendment (see link below) that further clarifies priorit...

We know this to be true: Austin is facing a three-pronged crisis of housing, transportation, and affordability that requires immediate innovative and sophisticated action. The four of us once considered CodeNEXT as a powerful opportunity to finally address these and other major issues. One primary g...

I am also planning to join everyone there on Thursday.

- Jimmy

Colleagues, Since the conclusion of the public hearing, I've been working with CM's Garza and Renteria to propose some language tweaks to the "Goals" document. The three of us are hopeful that our suggestions will help us move closer as a council to more consensus decisions. http://assets....

Thank you for bringing up this very important issue. This is a topic that I've been working on with parents in my district. Two questions I'll ask at work session... are we intending to focus just on opioids or are we talking more broadly about prescription drug abuse? And several of the Whereas cla...

Here's the substitute ordinance, slightly revised from the one I distributed for Item 11 during today’s council work session. This attached draft has been properly formatted by our Law Department and contains minor grammatical and stylistic changes that they proposed. My substitute ordinance would b...

Colleagues, I appreciate the thoughtful discussion this afternoon on Item 36 regarding procedures for the public hearings on CodeNEXT. As I mentioned during today’s work session my initial draft resolution was to provide Council with a starting point to have this conversation. Based on today’s feedb...

Seeing that AISD's last day of classes is May 30th, it might make more sense to address this concern by moving one of the hearings *earlier* rather than later and avoid pushing into summer vacation time. But ultimately I think it's hard to find a perfect date and am happy sticking with the proposed ...

Colleagues, We will complete our discussion on judicial appointments, including compensation, on Thursday in executive session. To ensure we have completed that executive session topic and to allow any speakers the ability to plan to attend, Council Member Casar and I have requested a 3pm time certa...

Colleagues, In follow up to my Judicial Committee Update message board post from January 22, I wanted to let you all know the progress we’ve made over the past month up to this morning’s Judicial Committee meeting. After establishing Council-approved evaluation criteria and posting job descriptions ...

Thank you to the co-sponsors for considering and incorporating so many of the elements of my suggested alternative ordinance. I know your work over the past year was exhaustive. Your work, and the work my amazing staff accomplished through discussions with stakeholders since posting a few weeks ago,...

Colleagues, I first want to thank the co-sponsors of the Paid Sick Leave ordinance for the work they’ve done and the attention they’ve brought to this worthwhile issue. After reviewing the original proposed ordinance and engaging in multiple meetings with stakeholders and advocates, it seems clear t...

Colleagues, As Chair of the Council Judicial Committee I want to inform all of you on our progress towards reviewing and appointing our Municipal Court bench. The City Charter dictates that all Judges are to be reviewed and appointed to the same four year term, beginning on January 1st 2018, with a ...

Hoping to add Human Resource Management groups to the list of stakeholder organizations: • Austin Human Resource Management Association • Texas Society for Human Resource Management • Texas Association of Staffing I also support adding the Greater Austin Asian Chamber of Commerce to the list as was ...

Please add my name to the application as well.

I agree with CM Houston