Council to discuss amendment

The Austin City Council is threatening to cut a deal with The Domain developer behind closed doors! On Thursday, they want to take the decision away from the voters and give Simon Malls the $65 million by making the agreement mandatory.
 
Please send a group email which goes to all members of the City Council.
 
Just click here to send a message to the Mayor all City Council members
 
Tell them:
* Leave the Domain decisions to the voters in November.
* Let democracy run its course.
* Stop giving away tax money to rich corporations.
* Stop hurting local business!
 
According to a little article in the Statesman, the Austin City Council is working against the people by hiding in Executive Session.  Why Executive Session -- out of the public eye?  Whatever they are planning, needs to be done in public.

Tell the Council how you feel about it. 

Then click here to enter your letter and their responses on our blog.

Please forward this message -- widely!

Thanks y'all!

Linda Curtis & Brian Rodgers
StopDomainSubsidies.com
2153 S. Lamar #205
Austin, TX 78704
383-8484

Austin, Tues May 20, 2008 - Council members will consider legal issues related to the proposed Stop Domain Subsidies charter amendment, which would bar subsidies for developments with retail components, at their May 22 meeting.

According to the agenda posted Friday, council members will go into executive session to discuss legal issues related to the Stop Domain Subsidies proposed charter amendment that will go before voters in November.

After the executive session, another item gives them the option of telling City Manager Marc Ott to negotiate and amend agreements between the city and the Domain and the Mueller airport redevelopment projects.

City spokesman Gene Acuna said information about the discussion would be released after executive session on Thursday.

The City Council gave the Domain an incentive package in 2003 that could be worth $57 million in tax rebates over 20 years.

Supporters of the charter amendment say they object to the subsidies because they unfairly benefit retail development that competes with local stores.

FILING PERIOD OPEN FOR CITY COUNCIL CANDIDATES    Four spots are open – mayor, and places 2, 5, and 6 – for the May 13 election. To run you must be a resident (six months in Austin, a year in state), at least 18 years old, and a qualified Texas voter; you also must pay a $500 filing fee or collect 294 petition signatures. File at the Office of the City Clerk, 301 W. Second, Rm. 1120. www.cityofaustin.org/election

See "Will Won" special election night report with videos, pictures and commentary. Don't miss this! 

Saturday night May 3, 2003 - You could feel the exuberance and energy as Will and Anne Elizabeth Wynn exploded into a spirited dance on the Hill's Cafe dance area.  They twirled, twisted and swirled around the dance floor in celebration of the long awaited Mayor's race victory.  The crowd was gassed by their gyrations.

Getting 58 percent of the vote, Wynn, current city council member, was elected mayor. His major opponents followed further behind with Max Nofziger garnering 16 percent, Marc Katz with 13 percent, and Brad Meltzer with 8 percent of the vote. About 64,000 voters, or 13 percent of total registered voters, cast their ballots. Jennifer Gale and Leslie Cochran each got about a thousand votes or 1% of the total.

There was a full house at the Hills Cafe Beer garden. The crowd was in awe, as Wynn went around slapping backs, giving out hugs and hearty handshakes to the assembled followers. One guy, not the hit of the party, kept running around with his "I gotta tell ya' Will Wynn is the next Mayor" impersonation.  Advice to this Katz impersonator, hold on to your day job.  Overall, it was a huge lovefest and the assembled supporters reveled in it.

Bob Cole, KVET talk show host and Hills Cafe magnate, introduced Wynn.  He said that "we are very lucky to have this gentleman here in Austin" and that "he won an across the board endorsement from nearly every organization in this town."  He said Wynn could maintain a sense of humor and yet do a very serious job and that "he has the support of both developers and environmentalists. In a Longhorn town, Cole said, he is the first Aggie Mayor" Then Cole (pictured below the picture of Wynn at the top of the page at the exact moment he shouted out "Will Won") couldn't contain himself as he introduced Wynn to the excited crowd of supporters, shouting out "ladies and gentlemen, the next Mayor of Austin, Will Won". 

Wynn took the stage after giving Cole a big handshake and hug and you could sense the emotion and the excitement as Wynn recounted his final day of the election, recalled the intensity of the campaign and made clear his priorities for the future.  You could sense that he really wants to involve all the people of Austin in the process of determining their future and sense that he wants the citizens to feel empowered in the process.

"Let's get Austin back to work and rebuild our revenue," Wynn said, "let's reinvent to some degree what we do and bring the community together to keep Austin, Texas, the best city in this country."

Wynn said, everybody knows that pound for pound, Austin is the greatest city in the country.  The first two big priorities, Wynn said were to get as much of this community as possible at the table to resolve the budget issues and can make better choices.  And secondly, Wynn said, we need to focus on the economy and job creation.

Wynn started the final day of the campaign at the newly opened Farmers Market, then went on the opening of the Dino Nature Center, the Pecan Street Festival and wound up entering and competing in the O'Henry punoff on the Square downtown by the O'Henry Museum/house.

In a heartfelt moment, Wynn said that "it's very, very fun for me to have Anne Elizabeth here to stick through this, my wife has made me what I am, she has challenged me now for 11 years to be a better person, to work harder, to think more long term to think more holistically about who I want to be and how we can be together with this community. We chose Austin as our home. "  At which point, Wynn's wife Anne Elizabeth strode up the point and planted a big kiss on Will.  It wasn't quite Al Gore and Tipper, but close! (see "the kiss" in our video).

Wynn then said to his wife "We wake up every morning and thank our stars that we are in Austin, Texas. I want to give big thanks and a big I love you."

 Will, and his wife danced up a storm (to the live music of Chuck Barnes) in celebration and then, after the rousing introduction by Bob Cole, Mayor Will Wynn delivered a talk to the gathering where he pledged to bring the citizens together and give everyone a voice in the process and lay the groundwork for a new budget. Are we going to see this pair on American Idol soon?  They were that good.

He wants to create jobs for out of work Austinites, his number one priority. He has a tough job ahead.  But he has a solid mandate to move forward on his agenda. And he inspired the assembled citizens that the city has sound, inspired leadership.  

The Austin American Statesman's Steve Scheibal wrote "His campaign promises were modest, particularly compared with competitors who offered everything from tax cuts to new transit systems. Wynn instead stressed fiscal responsibility in the face of a tough budget and a languid local economy."

All precincts had reported to the Travis County election center by 10 pm, using the new eSlate voting system for the first time in general elections. "It was extraordinarily quick," said County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir. "That's the only reason we were able to achieve the high speed and the streamlined approach to tallying ballots."

Austinmayor.com's photographer was at all four Mayor's race parties last night and has full video and photo coverage of the event at Hill's on it's special Will Won" special election night report. You may not want to miss these great videos.

AustinMayor.com congratulates Bob Cole and Sammy Allred for providing outstanding coverage on the throughout the entire campaign on their KVET 98.1 FM morning radio show and to Bob Cole for having such a great venue for Austin events like this one. 

The AustinMayor.com website is no longer about the election.  As you can see, the links to the other candidates on this page are gone.  They have been moved to an Election 2003 archive area.   AustinMayor.com will now be about Austin's future and the office of the Mayor. 

AustinMayor supports Will Wynn in the challenges he faces and will be reporting on his progress over the next three years of his term.  And we'll be expanding our coverage in future Mayoral elections to include City Council elections.  Make austinmayor.com your sounding board by checking back in on Will Wynn's progress and by participating in our conferences, forums and chat rooms.

More results: the City Council races

Will Wynn Relaxes before 
launching into action

Monday Will Wynn, according to KVUE News, is going to take a day of relaxation with his kids at his home in West Austin and then launch right in to his heady agenda over the summer to fix Austin's economy and begin to make the tough budget choices.  Will Wynn will be sworn in as Austin Mayor June 16th. Wynn said on the KVUE report that we're facing some "gut wrenching budget decisions about how we carve $70 to $75 million dollars out of our budget for next year"

What about the other Mayoral candidates?  

We had a plan election night.  I decided (my wife had other ideas) we would spend an hour at all the election parties starting with Brad Meltzer ( I call that branding sir) in North Austin and work our way South.  We'd go to Bismallah's on Airport and N Lamar, then (I gotta tell ya)  head to Katz Deli, on to Max party at Threadgills, the wind up at Hills Cafe.  

We got to Brad Meltzer (I call that branding sir) bash around 6 and the early voting returns were in but no precincts reporting,  A lot of young guys in suits and shirts and ties and lovely young women.  My wife, Dot, had a great talk with Willie Brown who is a former City Councilman with a lot of interesting observations and stories.  We walked outside and the folks there said, "you're not leaving, the foods coming". But she said it was too cold in there so we headed to Katz.  

At Katz, I gotta tell ya, we sat down at a side table next to the bar and Marc Katz sat at the table next to us, we spoke briefly.  I overheard one of the waitresses saying to Marc "You're demolishing Leslie!".  We ordered some potato skins and they brought a side of pickles, chips and cole slaw.  But she said she was too cold and wanted to leave early, I said wait just a little bit longer because I wanted to talk to Marc Katz some but she was pretty insistent that we move on.  

I think we were both feeling we didn't want to hang around where folks were losing an election. 

So then we headed to Threadgills and asked where Max party was and it turned out we were way too early (it was getting on toward 9 pm). 

So we headed to Hills and there was one parking space left over by the body shop.  We sat down at a table and then were asked to move since someone was in line for it, so we moved over to the front row.  And just as we moved there, Will Wynn and Anne Elizabeth jumped up and started dancing.  Man, were they great dancers.   We then got our table over the left side of the stage and she got the salad with chicken strips and I got the chicken fried chicken.  Just when we finished, it was time to move back to the center area and then Bob Cole came on and introduced Will Wynn.

We missed Brad (I call that branding, sir) Meltzer at his party but got to talk to his daughter and some of his followers, the mood was cool as they awaited the early returns at Bismallah's on Airport Blvd at North Lamar.  It was a young, bright crowd of Brad's political mavens and brain trust. It was tough to be there knowing how much effort this guy put out. 

Later, Brad showed up at the Wynn party at Hills later in the night and Will Wynn acknowledged him and thanked him and the other candidates for a good campaign. He slipped on his name ("Metzler") but quickly corrected himself.   "I'm very happy the economy has been the focus of the race and will be the focus for the next mayor," Meltzer said. Meltzer spent over a hundred grand on his campaign. "I love Austin so I felt it was a good investment," he said, adding that he plans another run.  

Steven Scheibal noted in a May 4 article in the Austin American Statesman that "Running fourth was Brad Meltzer, another restaurant owner almost as new to local politics as Katz but without the famous name. Meltzer spent at least $128,000 of his own money on the campaign but took only 8 percent of the vote, costing him about $25 per vote."

Marc (I gotta tell ya') Katz seemed upbeat in defeat at his affair at Katz Deli on Sixth and Rio Grande, one of his waitresses came up to him and said, "at least you're demolishing Leslie!"  It was tough being here too as Katz watched the returns on the screen near the bar in his restaurant.  We feel your pain, Marc.  The place was jammed and there were a couple of remote camera crews there. "We had a very hard race and he did very well," Katz said. "I hope he will let me assist him...I support Mayor Will Wynn," adding that he doesn't have any future political plans. "Like I said before, I love Austin, and I can't help it I gotta tell ya, Katz' s never closes."

We showed up too early for Max (the experienced one) Nofziger's party at Threadgills and no one had showed up yet. Rumor has it Max might be moving to Arkansas, the austinmayor.com crystal ball shows Max becoming the next Mayor of Hot Springs (you heard it here first).  Max waged a great campaign and it's amazing how many votes he got for with so little money.  The guy is very kind hearted and nice, and he deserves to be someones Mayor somewhere, sometime.  He's sincere in his desire to help people through the political process.

Luckily the austinmayor crew got to Hills Cafe just in time to catch the Wynn's invigorated dance and victory speech after making the rounds of the three other candidates election night fetes.

Friday March 14 SXSW Exclusive, Mayor's Love Fest The Richard Florida keynote speech on Tuesday, March 11 at SXSW. Florida, author of the "Rise of the Creative Class" poses the challenge to cities to court the creative class of artists, writers, musicians. Cities high on the Bohemian Index, like Austin, tend to develop along economic lines. In the audience were Austin's former Mayor Kirk Watson (who I asked for an interview) and Austin's current Mayor Gus Garcia.

This was followed by a panel with one of the members being Will Wynn, Austin's leading candidate to be the next Mayor. Clearly, Richard Florida was manifesting a mayoral love fest, judging by the approving nods and smiles from all three of the Mayors and Mayor candidate on hand.

I got to ask Will Wynn and the rest of the panel three questions at the SXSW forum. I got the idea for the questions from a guy I talked to over fish and chips at BD Rileys sixth street pub. He worked for Austin Ventures as a telecom funding specialist.

The questions asked by austinmayor.com to Will Wynn and the other panelists.
1. With the advent of "fabless" manufacturing and the rise of Chinese fabs the semiconductor industry may well be moving out of Austin in the next 5-10 years, can this be prevented?
2. What new industries can we stimulate in Austin in the event this does happen?
3. What can the city do to stimulate affordable, two way broadband to homes and businesses? What we have now is essentially one way downstream bandwidth you get with cable, but bandwidth where people can run their own webservers and truly have internet businesses.

Will Wynn's responses:
1. He agreed that China was mounting a serious challenge. We should always try to leapfrog technology, and look in to other areas like cutting edge materials production and tools production.
2. He said he was a big proponent of the clean energy industry (eg. solar panel, wind turbine mfg, fuel cells). We should continue to fund research by the Environmental Research Dept at UT since it is "the best on the planet". And on the consumer side, he said 7500 businesses belong to Austin green energy green choice programs and we have customer base to support R&D and manufacturing of clean energy.
3. On the residential broadband issue, he said the city plays pretty small part in overall economic strategy and economic development of the community, ultimately it takes market demand. City should press for wireless zones, wireless access in city parks.

Scott Aiges, City of New Orleans, said their Mayor oversaw installation of fiber optic network in New Orleans and that broadband was increasing rapidly in New Orleans. Richard Florida passed on the question.

Hans Veldhuizen, http://indictus.com  He said that the city council of Amsterdam has legislated that every house in Amsterdam would have fiber within five years and is serving as a major driver for creative industry. He said, in a post panel interview with me, that he saw no reason why Austin couldn't do the same. It would transform the city in to a world leader in Internet technology.

Richard Florida's "City of Ideas" 
may not be all that it's cracked up to be, 
says Joe Hootman  

At one time, the /Austin American-Statesman/ proudly promoted its "Cities of Ideas" series, authored by reporters Bill Bishop and Mark Lischeron.  Editor Rich Oppel once touted the 15-issue series in two separate editorials as an example of the /Statesman/'s best work.  It certainly displayed praiseworthy ambitions in its attempt to offer a cultural lens through which to view Austin's economic growth in the 1990s . . . (continued)

Contact
Austinmayor.com at
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paul@austinmayor.com    

Good luck to Will Wynn from austinmayor.com!

The Spring Family of Websites.  Some of these sites need webmasters, authors and administrators.  Many of them are available as your email address.  Some are under development.
afirthianado.com Colin Firth
artfabricstudio.com Susa Glenns art fabric supply in the Texas Hill country
atlantea.com Roger Didios story of the legendary Atlantis
auditionshow.com Find out about that movie or tv part
austen.com Jane Austen center of the webverse
austinblogger.com An Austencentric weblog
austinlifestyles.com What the rich, famous and eccentric do, tour their homes and see their cars
austinmayor.com Austin, Texas Mayors race Will Wynn, Max Nofziger, Marc Katz and some wild cards
austinrepeater.com amateur radio Austin Texas
austinshorts.com writers, poetry and short stories
barneyfrauenthal.com The Frauenthals of St. Louis, Mo
bastropbuilder.com Bastrop, Texas for builders, contractors and realtors and home buyers
baylesshigh.com Terry's high school reunion site Affton, Missouri
bioregion.com The world's natural areas as opposed to artificial boundaries 
bonitapearl.com Buy pearls from around the world
borderradioshow.com   Bob Nagy webmasters this great exploration of Texas radio
bridgetsequel.com Bridget Jones new movie
catholic.be World's largest collection of Catholic links
catmandu.org Bill Johnson is a professional Austin, TX cat sitter
childrenstory.com Children's Fairy Tales, Nursery Rhymes, and Stories
childrenstory.org prototype and experimental site
colinfirth.com Colin Firth the English actor/hearththrob
colinfirth.org mirror of colinfirth.com
cybersubdivision.com Our community in Cedar Creek (needs updating)
dropincharger.com Drop in charger ecommerce site 
drsingha.com  Mangala Searles mustard bath and other natural remedies
farmnetnews.com A memorial to Karen Flaherty
firth.com Colin Firth premier site of Karen Rosenberg
firthfan.com mirror of frith.com
fleecegoods.com Fleece Clothing ecommerce storefront/shop
gemgoods.com Gems and Minerals
gunturcomp.com Koti Nandipati's site
happyhollowmotel.com Hot Springs Arkansas
havelistings.com Ecommerce - what do you have to sell?
importanceofbeingearnest.com The movie starring Colin Firth
indytexans.org Linda Curtis Texas Independent group. Jeff Monks, System Admin
janhooks.com Jan Hooks from Saturday Night Live
leatherface2.com Bill Johnson in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
lemurianjade.com Lemurian Jade the stone, the rock
lemurianquartz.com Russian quartz for sale and the mystical story behind it Jane Ann Dow
lifespaces.com Dpark's future site, the people in to adventure travel and nature
loveisintheearth.net Love Is in the Earth is Ames Doty's rock shop
maxformayor.com Max Nofziger is our candidate for Mayor of Austin 2003
microtution.org enabling responsibility in the political community
midnightwolf.com The Springs own "wolfie" who prowls our conferences
motorblade.com Fritz Blau's skateboard school and Austin, Texas postering business
mustardbath.com same as DrSingha.com see above
mysticalplaces.com Jill's website for her "little books" they are astonishing works
nkrao.com Koti Nandipati's website
orphanassist.com Helping the worlds orphan children
outsync.com The Spring's software company, synchronize your Microsoft Outlook
presbyterian.be Largest collection of Presbyterian links in the world
primoincense.com Indian goods and incense ecommerce site
repeater.org The world of repeaters and amateur/ham radio, esp Austin, Texas area
sacredscribescrystals.com goes to sacred quartz website.  Jane Ann Dow.
saveseed.com Save our world's native seeds and prevent geneticly engineered seeds
secretlaughter.com It's a secret!
starofficeportal.com Suns answer to Microsoft Outlook
stonedom.com Stones, gems, minerals, rocks, meteorites, jewels..  News, links, storefront
suzyamis.com Suzy Amis was one of the stars in Titantic
tenorite.com tenorite is an interesting choice, says Michael Flaherty - more rocks and stones
theartco.com Art for your home or office
theedgeofreason.com A site needing a purpose and some content
tribalsurvival.com A charity site to help the world's native people and culture
tvnight.com What's on tv tongiht?
tvreviewer.com What shows on tv do you like?
walhus.com The Walhus, Frauenthal, King, Ebsworth, Cinder Family website History and Genealogy
wearfree.com A site needing a purpose and a webmaster/proprietor
webarter.net We barter goods on the Net
webgirlvillage.com Just what it says, are you a webgirl looking for a village somewhere? Helen Epp.  Huge set of links to designers and more
wholetech.com Our storefront for high tech goods
wirelesscomputerheadset.com A headset that will let you access your computer speaker and microphone
wirelessvideo.ws The world of wireless video and cellphones
workontheweb.com How do you work on the web? 

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