Audrey McGlinchy

It was as if they’d been studying Austin’s recent petition haps and mishaps.

State lawmakers on the House Elections Committee began hearing testimony Thursday on possible legislative changes to how local petition ballots and bond elections are run. Several of the issues they focused on related to Austin’s May vote on Proposition 1 – although lawmakers did not explicitly call out the capital city.

District 10 is Austin’s wealthiest district – it boasts an annual median family income of $131,100. It’s one of the city’s most sprawling districts, stretching from MoPac to Lake Travis.

The race for District 10 is the most crowded among the five districts on the ballot. Council member Sheri Gallo is the current representative, and she faces three challengers – all who, like Gallo, tout fiscal responsibility, but with some added twists. It's a field of candidates who seem to straddle the political aisle; purple people, if you will.

You could classify Austin’s District 7 as the "middle district"  – it falls smack dab between the city’s lowest and highest income districts, with an annual median family income around $74,000. Half (around 56%) of district residents rent their homes. It’s also geographically central and narrow, stretching from the city’s North Loop area to the boundaries of Pflugerville.

Council Member Leslie Pool represents Austin’s District 7. This year, Pool faces only one challenger: Natalie Gauldin, a former teacher and current technical writer.

Austin’s District 6 is one of the city’s wealthiest – the median family income falls around $86,000 a year. It also boasts the largest number of Asian residents in the city.

Council Member Don Zimmerman represents Austin’s northernmost district. He has served as a resounding voice of fiscal conservatism, often abstaining from votes because of a general aversion for government spending.

Austin’s District 4 is one of its most diverse – more than 65 percent of residents are Hispanic, and nearly 10 percent of the district is African-American.

Complaints we hear citywide about affordability are magnified in Austin’s District 2.

The southeast district has some of the lowest-income residents, with a median family income of $42,650. The district also boasts the largest Hispanic population – a point of pride for current council member Delia Garza, Austin’s first Latina local representative.

Austin’s trolley cars, which retired in 1940, stopped at East 12th and Chicon streets. It’s there that Ada Harden and her brother would hop on, pay the five-cent fee, and ride with little concern about a destination.

The candidates for Austin’s next city manager will be vetted by nearly a million people. At least, that’s how necessary council members and city staff have said public input is to the process of hiring Austin’s newest city manager in roughly a decade.

Mayor Steve Adler has christened a $720 million transportation bond the "Go Big Corridor Plan." So it begs the question, is this really that big? Seattle recently placed on a ballot a $54 billion transportation bond. But judging by other news reports, that number seems like an anomaly among municipal bond programs. 

Regardless, there's plenty to unpack when we discuss the "bigness" of this bond. 

Legal notices and lease copies blanketed a plush beige couch in a North Austin apartment. Rebekah Jara rummaged through the papers. Lawyers had urged her and her fiancé, Juan Aranda, to keep copies of everything.

More letters would come. But, until then, Aranda and Jara were struggling to get repairs done on their apartment on Sam Rayburn Drive in Austin’s Rundberg area.

Members of the public have weighed in on Mayor Steve Adler’s $720 million transportation bond proposal, and council members have taken the first two of three votes needed to officially put the bond on a November ballot.

If voters approve the bond measure, it would mean an increase in property taxes of about $5 a month for the average homeowner in Austin.

So, what would the bond buy, exactly?

Austin Mayor Steve Adler’s transportation bond proposal totals $720 million. At times, the Mayor has said Austin needs to “go big” on mobility.

But some transit activists are asking him to go bigger.

Update: The Austin City Council approved the teleconferencing item on consent. The pilot program will begin in District 6 and will ultimately expand to all Austin City Council districts.

Original post: In a quest to simplify the lives of some constituents, while easing some downtown traffic, Austin City Council Member Don Zimmerman has proposed testing out videoconferencing for some citizen communication.