Austin

Austin residents are no strangers to orange cones dotting the highways or construction cranes in the sky. But one KUT listener wondered: Why does it take so long to get anything built around here? 

To the uninformed, Shonda Mace looked like she was being a real creep. On a morning last March, the young woman loitered in front of a home on East 22nd Street. She eyed the house in front of her before snapping two photos of it.

Protests have erupted in Charlotte and Tulsa following police shootings of black men there.

Here in Austin, the memory of a police shooting of David Joseph, an unarmed black teenager, in February still lingers. And for Ketty Sully, Joseph's mother, each of these police shootings means having to relive her own son's death over and over again.

Last week, the Austin City Council has granted initial approval for new development on the site of the Cactus Rose Mobile Home Park in East Austin. The council’s decision was one of three high-profile zoning cases on the council agenda Thursday. 

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.

Veronique Johnson spends her days at a no-nonsense office on Rundberg Lane, instructing nursing students how to insert catheters, draw blood and bathe life-size mannequins at the Central Texas Nursing Network. She’s been doing this work for 10 years, since she started the business. But, she also has side job – one that doesn’t pay.

State Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, on Thursday proposed creating an "MD Anderson of the brain" on the site of the troubled Austin State Hospital, a psychiatric facility that has been plagued with staff shortages, crumbling facilities and a failure to meet federal health standards.

Regardless of what you think of Austin calling itself the “Live Music Capital of the World,” you’ve got to admit it is pretty effective branding. Even people who don’t like music, and who’ve never been here, equate the city with a vibrant scene.

Austin is home to one of the first mental health care facilities in Texas, but state lawmakers are considering selling the property and relocating the facility.

Travis County election officials are introducing a new interactive map that may help voters find the shortest lines at the election polling places in this fall. 

This week, the Austin City Council is set to vote on a rezoning case for a mobile home park in Montopolis. If approved, the change could force residents of some of Austin’s most affordable housing to find new homes. 

With a presidential election a short seven weeks away, voter registration is heated up throughout Travis County. At the University of Texas campus, volunteers are signing up so many voters that sometimes it’s hard for them to keep enough forms on hand.

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.