Austin City Government - Circus of the Insane

[Pasken 1309]

45 minutes ago, DanRydell said:

I don't remotely comprehend why they did this but yeah, it's going to be a fucking shitshow with people trying to turn left in and out of all the parking garages.

Because it was a 1 way street without a dedicated adjacent 1 way partner. Guadalupe/Lavaca complement each other but Congress is a 2 way street which means people needing access to NB Colorado were joining people who need NB on Guadalupe and congesting Lavaca. This should help clear up some congestion on both Congress and Lavaca. 

Edited July 23, 2018 by Pasken

[DanRydell 799]

Because it was a 1 way street without a dedicated adjacent 1 way partner. Guadalupe/Lavaca complement each other but Congress is a 2 way street which means people needing access to NB Colorado were joining people who need NB on Guadalupe and congesting Lavaca. This should help clear up some congestion on both Congress and Lavaca. 

Making one street significantly more dangerous to drivers and pedestrians in order to moderately reduce congestion on a street that wasn’t overly congested seems a poor trade off.

[Pasken 1309]

1 minute ago, DanRydell said:

 

Making one street significantly more dangerous to drivers and pedestrians in order to moderately reduce congestion on a street that wasn’t overly congested seems a poor trade off.

 

The main NB avenue downtown isn't overly congested? Neither is Congress? If that is the case then why do people complain about downtown traffic? 

 

You're better taking advantage of a recently widened Colorado street which was under capacity with a 1 way designation. Seeing as how people mostly drive 2 way streets, I don't think you are making things that much more dangerous for drivers. Maybe it's more dangerous for bicycles but we can't make all our decisions by what are best for bikes. 

[bschoolprof 6252]

7 minutes ago, Pasken said:

The main NB avenue downtown isn't overly congested? Neither is Congress? If that is the case then why do people complain about downtown traffic? 

 

You're better taking advantage of a recently widened Colorado street which was under capacity with a 1 way designation. Seeing as how people mostly drive 2 way streets, I don't think you are making things that much more dangerous for drivers. Maybe it's more dangerous for bicycles but we can't make all our decisions by what are best for bikes. 

You've just been laid off from council staff Pasken.  Check your inbox.  

[demos 3002]

On 7/23/2018 at 3:00 PM, Pasken said:

Because it was a 1 way street without a dedicated adjacent 1 way partner. Guadalupe/Lavaca complement each other but Congress is a 2 way street which means people needing access to NB Colorado were joining people who need NB on Guadalupe and congesting Lavaca. This should help clear up some congestion on both Congress and Lavaca. 

Maybe it clears some congestion on Guadalupe, but what congestion is it going to clear up on Congress?

[Deej 76759]

On 7/23/2018 at 2:15 PM, DanRydell said:

I don't remotely comprehend why they did this but yeah, it's going to be a fucking shitshow with people trying to turn left in and out of all the parking garages.

Cut 5 minutes off my drive home. I'll take it.

[Facemask 103]

Troxy announced that there’s a mystery candidate who will file soon that shares her political ideology.

Don Zimmerman . I'll vote for him...F it

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

[Pasken 1309]

2 hours ago, demos said:

Maybe it clears some congestion on Guadalupe, but what congestion is it going to clear up on Congress?

People coming from the east that are going to Colorado that have to travel north.  It's not complicated. 

[demos 3002]

23 minutes ago, Pasken said:

People coming from the east that are going to Colorado that have to travel north.  It's not complicated. 

In my experience, there isn't a lot of northbound congestion on Congress once you get passed Cesar Chavez (even less once you're passed 4th)  and not many people coming from the east turning north on Congress. The bigger issue on Congress, imo, is southbound congestion at 5pm. 2-way Colorado doesn't really help that (not that it was helping significantly to begin with). 

Just don't see it helping Congress whatsoever. Might help Guadalupe, but the stretch where the two run parallel doesn't seem that bad in the morning,.

[zman13 179]

This should go over well:

Austin's Equity Office Proposes Renaming 7 Confederate Streets – And Even The City Itself

http://www.kut.org/post/austins-equity-office-proposes-renaming-7-confederate-streets-and-even-city-itself

 

 

[FORTY NINE TO ZERO 2652]

29 minutes ago, zman13 said:

This should go over well:

Austin's Equity Office Proposes Renaming 7 Confederate Streets – And Even The City Itself

http://www.kut.org/post/austins-equity-office-proposes-renaming-7-confederate-streets-and-even-city-itself

 

 

Rename Austin?!?

looks like those arguing that removing the statues was a slippery slope might have been right.  (Only half kidding here)

 

tax dollars pay for this?

[Biff Tannen 45676]

I'm in favor of renaming Austin.  Maybe then people won't know where it is anymore and stop moving here.

[skipperj 377]

Keep Waterloo Weird!

[Orange&White 5522]

So fucking ridiculous.

[Deej 76759]

I'm offended by the people that are offended. The city should remove them. 

[FORTY NINE TO ZERO 2652]

Per Reddit, the head of that department takes home 145k of Austin’s tax payer dollars a year. 

 

 

[atomheartbevo 89651]

21 minutes ago, Xian said:

Per Reddit, the head of that department takes home 145k of Austin’s tax payer dollars a year. 

I can pitch asinine ideas for $75,000 a year.  And I can come up with a lot more than that person.  Shit, I'll crank out a dozen a day.

[atomheartbevo 89651]

They want to rename these streets:

• Littlefield Street
• Tom Green Street
• Sneed Cove
• Reagan Hill Drive
• Dixie Drive
• Plantation Road
• Confederate Avenue

So rename them to:

• Richard Allen Anderson Street
• Roy Perez Benavidez Street
• Thomas Elbert Creek Avenue
• Alfredo "Freddy" Gonzalez Drive
• Robert David Law Street
• Milton Arthur Lee Street
• George Andrew Davis, Jr. Street

That's a freebie.  I can come up with a lot more suggestions, but they'll cost ya.

[Brock Sampson 289]

Austin renamed to Rentistoodamnhighville

[Wally Pryor 5261]

1 hour ago, Xian said:

Per Reddit, the head of that department takes home 145k of Austin’s tax payer dollars a year?

 

 

Does the Director of Bicycling still take home $90K / year?    

Real title, real salary from a few years back.  I'm guessing it's 6-digits by now. 

Edited July 27, 2018 by Wally Pryor

[Orange&White 5522]

1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

 

So rename them to:

• Richard Allen Anderson Street
• Roy Perez Benavidez Street
• Thomas Elbert Creek Avenue
• Alfredo "Freddy" Gonzalez Drive
• Robert David Law Street
• Milton Arthur Lee Street
• George Andrew Davis, Jr. Street

 

I'm sorry, but every one of those is offensive to me. You'll need to keep trying until the all names are not offensive to a single person on the planet. Good luck.

[ChickenSandwich 9833]

2 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

They want to rename these streets:

• Littlefield Street
• Tom Green Street
• Sneed Cove
• Reagan Hill Drive
• Dixie Drive
• Plantation Road
• Confederate Avenue

So rename them to:

• Richard Allen Anderson Street
• Roy Perez Benavidez Street
• Thomas Elbert Creek Avenue
• Alfredo "Freddy" Gonzalez Drive
• Robert David Law Street
• Milton Arthur Lee Street
• George Andrew Davis, Jr. Street

That's a freebie.  I can come up with a lot more suggestions, but they'll cost ya.

Lets name them all after Trump and his family members.  The ensuing meltdown would be epic.

 

Trump Street

Trump Cove

Ivanka Ave

[Longhorn Al 440]

They also want to rename Barton Springs, Pease Park, Waller Creek and Bouldin Creek. 

 

[Biff Tannen 45676]

Can we give these people the Simpsons catapult treatment?  Good god.

[South Austin 52463]

This fucking town.

[Guest Lobo]

Does someobody know the rationale for why they closed off that gradual right turn from South Congress Bridge onto Barton Springs?  in front of that yeti store?  

[skipperj 377]

For the Yeti Park.

[Deej 76759]

Campaign funds to Ann Kitchen from Yeti. They convinced her people could be raped in that turn lane.

[Guest Lobo]

Since her personality is about as warm as the inside of a YETI, sounds appropriate . 

[Texas Jeff 1945]

On 7/27/2018 at 12:04 PM, atomheartbevo said:

They want to rename these streets:

• Littlefield Street
• Tom Green Street
• Sneed Cove
• Reagan Hill Drive
• Dixie Drive
• Plantation Road
• Confederate Avenue

Also Burnet Rd, Lamar Blvd, the Bouldin Creek neighborhood, Barton Springs and other things that have names that might have been associated with someone who may have owned slaves or been involved with the confederacy.  Here's the powerpoint presentation from the equity office:

http://www.austintexas.gov/edims/pio/document.cfm?id=302508

How do you distinguish between someone in the past who did something wrong and thus should not be recognized by having something named after them, and someone who followed the customs of the day that are wrong by today's standards?  Do you draw the line at everyone who owned slaves at a time when that was legal and a common source of labor for land owners, or do you draw the line at people who demonstrably abused people during that time?

[atomheartbevo 89651]

2 minutes ago, Texas Jeff said:

• Dixie Drive
• Plantation Road
• Confederate Avenue

I think the line with those three is pretty clear.  

It does get very hazy with the others. 

[Steel Shank 9422]

27 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

I think the line with those three is pretty clear.  

It does get very hazy with the others. 

Seriously? Plantation? What abut Alabama Dr.? What about South Austin? Jesus Christ people, get a grip!

[South Austin 52463]

3 minutes ago, Steel Shank said:

What about South Austin?

You'll take my Surly name when you pry it from my cold dead nonracist hands.

[Steel Shank 9422]

1 minute ago, South Austin said:

You'll take my Surly name when you pry it from my cold dead nonracist hands.

They said you was hung!

[South Austin 52463]

5 minutes ago, Steel Shank said:

They said you was hung!

And they was right!

[hayden_horn 11362]

Quote

AUSTIN — In a City Council message board on Wednesday, Austin Mayor Steve Adler suggested ceasing the CodeNEXT process and instead asking City Manager Spencer Cronk to create a new process that will help city leaders move forward together.

"Colleagues, I believe we should consider if the best way ultimately to find the right path to fix our land development code is to cease our current process and ask the City Manager to create a new process," Mayor Adler wrote. "While we have learned much and made gains as a council in our June work sessions, it seems evident that we’re not going to get to a place of sufficient consensus. Do we believe that continuing to chop at the same wood is going to change the outcome?"

Adler calls for the recommendation of a new process that builds on work made from the council and city leaders this far while working on the controversial code.

"I remain committed as I have throughout my term as Mayor to finding ways to slow or mitigate gentrification, to stop displacement of long-time residents, to preserve existing housing stock, to support our music and arts community and low and moderate income residents through affordability measures, to find ways to help Austinites who live here and to plan for those we know are coming, all without losing what has always made our city special and continuing to lead on sustainability measures that keep us healthy and safe," Adler wrote.

https://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/austin-mayor-steve-adler-suggests-ceasing-codenext-process/269-579382864

cross posting from the codenext thread. what a clusterfuck.

[Orange&White 5522]

No matter how long you make your run-on sentence, or how many different ways you try to say this:

Quote

"I remain committed as I have throughout my term as Mayor to finding ways to slow or mitigate gentrification, to stop displacement of long-time residents, to preserve existing housing stock, to support our music and arts community and low and moderate income residents through affordability measures, to find ways to help Austinites who live here and to plan for those we know are coming, all without losing what has always made our city special and continuing to lead on sustainability measures that keep us healthy and safe," Adler wrote.

...it is fucking impossible to do all of those things. So eventually you have to grow balls and take an actual stance and get something done instead of standing around and wasting everyone's time and not accomplishing a fucking thing.

 

Edit - PS:  I am really glad that spending several million fucking dollars has allowed you and your council-mates to learn something and now you are ready to scrap all of that time, money and effort and start from fucking zero again. 

Apparently Adler has learned from CapMetro, if at first you don't succeed, just keep ramming the exact same shit sandwich down everyone's throat.

Edited August 1, 2018 by Orange^White

[Guest Lobo]

Does he understand that almost everything he says is a walking paradox?  Actually I shouldn't use the term "Everything he Says"...the ineffectual lip pursing he does that somehow passes as his platform.  You'd think a stooge for real estate development and title work would have a bit more zest.  Laura Morrison is twice the leader he was/is.  

It's a hard thing to do to be elected to guide CodeNEXT this far and then totally shit the bed with it, and then throw it under the bus and declare it being "wraught with cooties."  

 

What a fuck up, this Mayor.  

[Brisketexan 105096]

42 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

Adler calls for the recommendation of a new process that builds on work made from the council and city leaders this far while working on the controversial code.

See, what you need is a charrette to agree on a process to conduct additional charrettes to agree on the parameters of a study, then a blue-ribbon panel to vet those parameters and send recommendations to additional charrettes, which can then agree on the final parameters of a study, engage a consulting firm to conduct the study, send the results of the study to the newly-created City Commission on Nifty Code Stuff, which will them release a report, which can be addressed by some more charrettes, which will produce a final recommendation to the Council, which will mostly look like "DON'T CHANGE ANYTHING!  PRETEND IT'S STILL 1978!"

There.  Skip to the end, and I just saved everyone a fortune, and 7 years of work.

[Guest Lobo]

I like that you used "charrette" properly many times.  It comes up in our hearings quite often and I used to want to take a shot or punch somebody every time I heard it, but now I just laugh because I now appreciate its industry/trade usage.  

[phdhorn 6224]

This is the CodeNEXT/Austin City government study guide:

Edited August 1, 2018 by phdhorn

[Bozo_Casanova 26444]

The problem with this mayor, sadly, is that he’d rather be on the losing end of a 7-4 vote than prevail 6-5.

I’m not planning to get into COA stuff on surly the way I did on shag, but we’ve got a leadership vacuum and mistakes of inaction are being made in this period that will have negative consequences that cannot be undone. There was a window for this city to adapt more or less comfortably to our own growth. It stayed open for a long time. It’s closing soon.

 

[Ghost of LL 15531]

Laura Morrison will be a disastrous mayor.  But she'll lead boldly into disastrous decisions.  Adler just slouches into failure.

[Biff Tannen 45676]

On 7/28/2018 at 4:49 PM, South Austin said:

And they was right!

must spread or whatever the new bullshit is on this forum

[Brisketexan 105096]

31 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

The problem with this mayor, sadly, is that he’d rather be on the losing end of a 7-4 vote than prevail 6-5.

I’m not planning to get into COA stuff on surly the way I did on shag, but we’ve got a leadership vacuum and mistakes of inaction are being made in this period that will have negative consequences that cannot be undone. There was a window for this city to adapt more or less comfortably to our own growth. It stayed open for a long time. It’s closing soon.

 

We've chosen what we want to be.  We chose it a long time ago.  We just need to fucking nut up and admit it.

We want to be a backwards-looking, exclusionary city, and fuck the rest of you very much.

[Bozo_Casanova 26444]

Laura Morrison will be a disastrous mayor.  But she'll lead boldly into disastrous decisions.  Adler just slouches into failure.

She won’t win, but you aren’t wrong about both her very real leadership ability and the direction she would go.

[skittlebrau 474]

3 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

The problem with this mayor, sadly, is that he’d rather be on the losing end of a 7-4 vote than prevail 6-5.

I’m not planning to get into COA stuff on surly the way I did on shag, but we’ve got a leadership vacuum and mistakes of inaction are being made in this period that will have negative consequences that cannot be undone. There was a window for this city to adapt more or less comfortably to our own growth. It stayed open for a long time. It’s closing soon.

 

Agree on the leadership vacuum, wholeheartedly. I know some in the business community pulled support from Adler after he rolled over on sick leave, but are grudgingly back in the game because of his opponent.

 

The only good thing I can say about this is that the money we spent on Code NEXT was a sunk cost. We were moving very quickly toward a land development outcome that would have cost the city far more. I hold some outside hope that we can rethink the process and come up with something better. It’s also quite possible that we can come up with something better in D1 after November.

[TheYoungHorn 58]

This is so predictable.

It is also sickening, because it rewards the chicanery that drives this city into a deeper mess. 

 

[Bozo_Casanova 26444]

Goodnight, CodeNEXT

Quote

And three drafts of a code

That made people holler

And piles of invoices

For eight million dollars

 

[Biff Tannen 45676]

Couldn't find the electric scooter thread, but here's the city survey about them.  Have at it.

 

http://www.austintexas.gov/docklessmobility