by Daryl Slusher | May 19, 2021 | Environment, Strong Mayor Initiative, True Stories
The Prop B results have rightly gotten almost all the post election attention and analysis since the May 1 election. (Prop B was the reversal of the Council’s June 2019 repeal of the public camping ban.) That has been the case here at the Austin Independent as well as...
by Daryl Slusher | Apr 18, 2021 | Austin Elections, Strong Mayor Initiative
This story marks the Austin Independent’s final pre-early voting coverage of the strong mayor proposal. Early voting starts Monday April 19 and ends Tuesday April 27. Election day is Saturday May 1. To review, in earlier coverage we laid out the principle that...
by Daryl Slusher | Apr 14, 2021 | Strong Mayor Initiative
For today’s installment in coverage of the strong mayor proposal I want to return to the approach described in an article on the subject back in July. There, I laid out some principles to guide the Independent’s coverage, writing that “changing the form of...
by Daryl Slusher | Apr 13, 2021 | Strong Mayor Initiative
The homeless camping issue is so controversial, visible and seemingly intractable that the proposed rollback of the Austin City Council’s June 2019 repeal of the City’s camping ban long ago became the marquee item on the upcoming May 1 City Charter amendment ballot....
by Daryl Slusher | Dec 17, 2020 | Environment, Land Development Code/Zoning, Strong Mayor Initiative
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...
by Daryl Slusher | Sep 16, 2020 | Strong Mayor Initiative
by Daryl Slusher The group pushing to change Austin’s form of government from Council-Manager to Strong Mayor, Austinites for Progressive Reform (APR), has announced its public input phase. Those meetings will run alongside an already very busy and fraught...
by Daryl Slusher | Jul 27, 2020 | Strong Mayor Initiative
by Daryl Slusher Mayor Steve Adler today responded to the Austin Independent’s question on whether he could guarantee he would not run if a recently announced effort to switch to a strong mayor form of government succeeds. In particular the Independent asked the...
by Daryl Slusher | Jul 23, 2020 | Strong Mayor Initiative
by Daryl Slusher A new local political group featuring a fairly formidable sounding array of local activists, high tech multi-millionaires, and other business people emerged earlier this week with a proposal to change Austin’s form of municipal government from...