Austin housing prices have made the national news in a new way recently, but there has been a paucity of local coverage about it. According to multiple national media outlets, the financial giant Goldman Sachs predicted that Austin will be one of four metropolitan...
The holiday season is here. While some may be coasting already, for people in many walks of life the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas means a mad rush to get things done before the end of the year. And, of course, that is the case at Austin City Hall. The...
I know. I know. Most everything in the news now is focused on the elections; and for good reason. The Mayor, Council and/or City staff, however, have chosen Election Night as the time to start this Council’s final push to pass Land Development Code (LDC)...
(Part 2 of a series) In the first installment in this series we looked at how, contrary to the rhetoric of Mayor Steve Adler and numerous others, Austin is a runaway national leader in issuing building permits. To illustrate the point, we noted that on a per capita...
I have long said that following Austin politics is like watching a soap opera, including that you can miss several episodes then catch up quickly. I use that analogy because, as I hope a few folks noticed, I have been on a six month plus break from publishing. Now,...
The Mayor and at least some members of the Austin City Council are talking about bringing back the proposed Land Development Code (LDC) rewrite and working on parts of it on which they can agree. That would be while waiting for an appeals court ruling on the lawsuit...
The Stonegate Neighborhood Association in East Austin agreed to a compromise with developers on the Heflin Lane zoning case reported on earlier in the Independent. Under the compromise more units will be built on the property than the neighborhood would prefer (the...
We’re going to begin December by tying up some loose ends here at the Independent, specifically with some updates on zoning and land use cases we’ve reported on before, but until now we have not followed up with the results. Call it one of the challenges of a small...
In election contests between a Democrat and a Republican it is usually a given that the Democrat has the stronger social justice position. It is very arguable, however, which candidate in the District 6 City Council runoff occupies the social justice high ground when...
by Daryl Slusher A new flashpoint has arisen in the ongoing saga of the Austin City Council majority remaking East Austin in the name of racial and social justice while long time residents push back that the Council policies themselves are aggravating racial...
