An admittedly wonky but far-reaching undertaking at the City of Austin is getting started – and the question of lobbyists’ roles in what happens next is putting pressure on the Austin City Council. All development in Austin is governed by city code – zoning, land uses and just about everything conceivable in the built environment. The Imagine Austin Comprehensive Plan – the recently-passed blueprint for the city’s long-term growth – calls for a revision of the city’s dense, endlessly-amended development code, and in December the...
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Planning to put an event on this South By Southwest? Well, you'll need a permit for that. With just over a month until Austin’s South by Southwest festival begins, the city’s special events office has received a flurry of permit applications – everything from noise permits, to food service, to construction permits for big soundstages. It’s typical of this time of year. But the enforcement of these permits will be extended this year, says the Transportation Department’s Gordon Derr. “The emphasis is to make sure we cover all the periods when there’s activity going on downtown, and really throughout Austin, because it seems...
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