Erin McGann, candidate for City Council Place 9, has provided her responses to the questions we asked of all Place 4 and Place 9 candidates.  Read her responses below:

NNA:  The city council lowered occupancy limits in an attempt to reduce the proliferation of so-called Stealth Dorms, but this reduction in occupancy limits will only be in place for 2 years. What would be your commitment to following through on that initiative to ensure the preservation of single-family homes into the future?

McGann:  Because of the high cost of housing, and the lack of ability for enforcement, I cannot support the continuation of this policy. I don’t like to see people stacking up in residences, but this ordinance unfairly targets the elderly, poor and disabled. A limit of 6 per residence is plenty (still unenforceable).

NNA:  Austin housing prices have increased dramatically over the past 20 years, raising concerns about both affordability and property taxes. What efforts will you take as a city leader to improve housing opportunities in central Austin for people from economically diverse backgrounds. And what will you do to keep increasing property taxes from driving people out of their homes?

McGann: We must phase in the homestead exemption immediately, additionally we must audit the utilities and review their business practices so they are in line with the city’s goals for conservation. Lastly we must trim the budget to reasonable levels, and put an end to the council getting an automatic raise when ever the rest of the city works do (as happened last week), the council should have to propose, hold public comment and vote for a raise for themselves.

NNA: The City of Austin started a process to improve Airport Boulevard, but there has been no progress in recent years. What would be your commitment to continuing that process?

McGann: I am 100% committed to improving Airport, this could be the greatest street in Austin, and we can get there together!

NNA: What are the most important improvements and initiatives that you feel would benefit constituents in the Northfield Neighborhood?

McGann: Reduced taxes, increased attention from the city for improvements and synchronized traffic lights to improve traffic congestion.

Thank you for your consideration!

by Sebastian Wren

The Northfield Neighborhood is fortunate enough to have representation from 3 elected officials on the new 10-1 city council.  Of course we are represented by the Mayor, but we will also be represented by Council Members from District 9 (to the south) and District 4 (to the north).

As the first district-representative city council election draws near, the Northfield Neighborhood Association wanted to ask candidates their thoughts about a few questions that are particularly important to people living in Northfield.  We did not want to inundate them with hundreds of questions about far-flung topics — we restricted our questions to topics that are directly and perhaps uniquely important to our neighborhood.

In the end, we settled on just 4 questions to ask of candidates for City Council.  The questions asked of every available candidate for either District 4 or District 9 were:

1. The city council lowered occupancy limits in an attempt to reduce the proliferation of so-called Stealth Dorms, but this reduction in occupancy limits will only be in place for 2 years. What would be your commitment to following through on that initiative to ensure the preservation of single-family homes into the future?

 2. Austin housing prices have increased dramatically over the past 20 years, raising concerns about both affordability and property taxes. What efforts will you take as a city leader to improve housing opportunities in central Austin for people from economically diverse backgrounds. And what will you do to keep increasing property taxes from driving people out of their homes?

 3. The City of Austin started a process to improve Airport Boulevard, but there has been no progress in recent years. What would be your commitment to continuing that process?

 4.What are the most important improvements and initiatives that you feel would benefit constituents in the Northfield Neighborhood?

 These questions were sent to each candidate who could be contacted through their campaign website.  Candidates who did not have a campaign website or who provided no contact information are still invited to respond to these questions.  Responses to these questions from any candidate for either Place 4 or 9 will be posted to this blog in their entirety.  And responses will be posted in the order in which they are received.

Also, it is important to note that some candidates have had relationships with our neighborhood association in the past, and some candidates may even pay for advertising on this blog.  However, the Northfield Neighborhood Association is not making endorsements or stating support for any candidate.

We encourage all voters in the neighborhood to participate in the November election in an informed manner, and we greatly admire every candidate who is running for office.

Come out and meet the candidates running for City Council District 4 (which covers the north half of the Northfield Neighborhood). The October 4th Candidate Forum for District 4 is being hosted by all of the neighborhoods in District 4 at 2:00 p.m., and will be held at Lanier High School.

All neighborhood associations in District 4 have financially supported the forum, or have had volunteers give their time to plan the forum. ​ The neighborhoods included in District 4 are: Georgian Acres, Heritage Hills, Highland, North Austin Civic Association, North Lamar Contact Team, North Loop, Northfield, Skyview, Windsor Hills, Windsor Park.

This candidate forum will focus on the fact that District 4 is a Hispanic Opportunity District, that District 4 has the lowest percentage of voters compared to all other districts, and that the issues of District 4 must serve as a focus above all else. There will be simultaneous Spanish/English bilingual translation ​provided to the audience ​, and voter registrars at the forum. We are inviting any community partners to help educate the voters outside of the forum as well.

The ​District 4 survey results showed that our top three concerns are crime, transportation, and affordability, in that order. The survey results are posted to http://www.austindistrict4.org. There are 1000 word limit candidate bios submitted by the candidates available on the site, and also the finalized candidate forum questionnaire.

You can RSVP to the event via Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/AustinDistrict4.

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) released their ratings for schools in the state yesterday, and as usual, Austin schools did pretty well.  Almost all of them earned positive ratings from TEA.  Compared to other urban areas in Texas, Austin public schools get quite high marks.

Last year, TEA started using a new accountability system to rate the quality of schools and districts in the state, and a few schools are having a little difficulty adjusting to the new rules.  This new accountability system is intended to highlight and celebrate schools that are improving, and it is also intended to bring public attention to schools where there are substantial gaps, or where achievement scores are dropping.

Every school administrator in Texas knows that their school’s rating is going to be tied to their lowest-performing demographic.  That has always been the case in the state of Texas.  This means that even if nearly all of the students at your school are performing at high levels, your school can still earn a poor rating from TEA if any one of the subgroups at your school (e.g. Hispanic students, or students on Free or Reduced Lunch) is performing poorly.

Beyond this lowest-performing-subgroup rule, the new accountability system additionally takes into account your school’s prior performance.  Low-performing schools that are in the process of improving earn a higher rating than high-performing schools that are in a state of decline.  This also means that if a school has a low-performing subgroup of students, the school can earn a high rating by improving the performance of that particular subgroup.

This is a good thing: this accountability system means that the students most likely to slip through the cracks are the ones who are most likely to get attention and help.

With all of that in mind, we should examine the TEA ratings for our two neighborhood elementary schools carefully.  First the good news — Only nine schools in Austin earned high distinctions in every category. (And there are a LOT of categories!)  Most of them are the usual suspects (magnet schools like LASA and Ann Richards; wealthy schools like Zilker and Anderson), but one newcomer to the short list of exemplary schools was surprising:  Reilly Elementary School.

Under the leadership of the new principal Dinorah Bores, Reilly has been steadily improving for the past few years, and this year, TEA acknowledged their success with distinctions in every rating category.

Now the bad news — there were also nine schools in the city that received the lowest performance rating TEA has: the dreaded “Improvement Required.” Again, the usual suspects were listed in this lowest-performance category: Pearce and Garcia Middle Schools, LBJ and Eastside Memorial High Schools.  Those schools are perpetually in need of improvement, but this year, Ridgetop Elementary was also included in this category — the first time in many years our neighborhood school has been castigated by TEA.

Adding insult to injury, Ridgetop was the only elementary school in the whole city that earned the “Improvement Required” rating this year.

However, this does NOT mean that Ridgetop is the worst elementary school in the city — quite the contrary.  In recent years, Ridgetop has been improving remarkably, but that improvement must be sustained in all categories in order to maintain positive accountability ratings from TEA.  Unfortunately, this year, Ridgetop failed to hit the high marks they have been setting in years past.

Ultimately, what makes a school great is community involvement.  Reilly has improved markedly in the past few years, and Ms. Bores deserves a great deal of credit for her positive leadership.  The teachers at that school have been working very hard to make sure that all students from all backgrounds are as successful as possible.  However if it is to continue to improve, the community needs to get behind that school and help in any way we can.  Ridgetop may have struggled a bit this year, but it has been a great school in years past, and it certainly can be again if we give it our full support.

We truly do have two unique and wonderful schools in our neighborhood, but they won’t stay that way for long without our help.  Volunteer — open your wallet — get involved.  All of us benefit from having great schools near our homes, and all of us are responsible for the success or failure of our neighborhood schools.

The computer storage and cloud computer company Rackspace has just announced an agreement to relocate over 500 employees to ACC Highland.  They will begin renovating the 200,000 square foot space at the former Dillard’s store.

ACC is planning to begin holding classes at the Highland campus starting in August.  This partnership with San Antonio-based Rackspace will give students at ACC hands-on experience with cutting-edge computer systems.

With ACC classes and Rackspace employees a great deal of demand for services will be created at and around the long-defunct mall.  Look for many more shops and restaurants to open in the ACC Highland area in the near future to meet this rapidly growing demand.

Airport Boulevard continues to be the site of a good deal of activity, as businesses and restaurants try to get established in what is sure to be Austin’s next hot spot.

Teresa Wilson, former owner / chef for iconic Austin restaurants Aquarelle and Basil’s, has started construction on her next project — a restaurant she is calling Sala and Betty.  Construction fences went up at the former Stallion Grill (5201 Airport Blvd.), and in the next 6 months, the former drive-through / family-style dining restaurant will be transformed into … well .. another drive-through / family-style dining restaurant.  But hopefully with a better menu.

Aquarelle (W. 6th St.) was once widely acclaimed as one of the finest European-style restaurants in Austin, but Wilson decided to close it down a few years ago to reassess her priorities and goals.  She had planned to open a restaurant she would call Chonita’s (named after her Grandmother) that would allow her to explore her Latin culinary roots, but that restaurant never came to fruition.

Now her plan is to open Sala and Betty which will be a “slow food served fast” restaurant that, she says, will take the guilt out of fast food.

Similarly, down the street, celebrated Austin chef Shawn Cirkiel is planning to open another restaurant (this will be his 5th) that he is calling Bullfight.  Apparently it is not a done deal, but he seems to be at least exploring the possibilities and potential of opening his restaurant at 4807 Airport Blvd.

Due to unspecified health problems, the owners of Texas Sake Company have decided to shut down their business in the next few weeks.  Headquartered near the corner of Lamar and Nelray, Texas Sake Company has been making local, craft Sake since 2011.

For fans of their Sake, they will be liquidating (so to speak) their inventory at a few, final, farewell events, so you may want to sign up for their mailing list to stay informed.

by Sebastian Wren

Many of you know Gregorio Casar.  He has been active in the Neighborhood Association for some time.  He has always been very civic-minded and dedicated to making positive change for our neighbors.  In addition to his active involvement in Northfield projects, Casar also works as the political director at the Workers Defense Project where he has made great gains in improving the quality of life for thousands of workers in our City.

Casar has now decided that he can do even more for the Austin community, and he has announced that he is running for the new City Council District #4 seat.

Recently, Austin voters decided to move away from the “at-large” system of representative government (where all council-members and the mayor are elected based on city-wide results) toward a local-district form of representation.  This new 10-1 system means that voters in each of 10 districts will elect one member of City Council to represent their district.  Northfield is split fairly equally into two different districts — #4 and #9.

The south side of our neighborhood falls in District #9, which also includes Hyde Park, Heritage Neighborhood Association, Downtown, and also Travis Heights.  Current council-members Chris Riley and Kathie Tovo are competing for that seat, and it is a sure bet that one of them will win that seat.

The north side of our neighborhood falls in District #4 which stretches up Central Austin to Braker and includes Highland neighborhood and the Rundberg / Lamar area.  No current council-members live in District #4, so it is an open seat.

This means that we have a golden opportunity to elect a representative from Northfield to City Council.  An opportunity like this is very rare, and hopefully we can take advantage of it and give our full support to our neighbor Gregorio Casar.

Casar is kicking off his campaign on May 28th at 6:00 at the Cuban Sandwich Cafe (9616 N. Lamar). You can keep track of Casar’s campaign through his facebook page and his campaign website.

Well, it didn’t last long.  Just about 2 years ago, Your Mom’s Burgers opened on Airport Boulevard, and now, shortly after In-N-Out Burger opened, Mom’s is closed.

The site has been bought by a couple who plan to open an Asian restaurant that specializes in Vietnamese-style sandwiches (Banh Mi) and bun-based dishes.  For some reason, they have decided to name the new restaurant “Bun Belly.”  Hopefully other people will find that more appetizing than I do.

Apparently, the couple opening “Bun Belly” are also considering remodeling and opening another restaurant in the former Tamale House site.  After Robert Vasquez a few weeks ago, his family announced that Tamale House will not re-open.

The Project Connect commission is starting to realize the size of the bite they have taken.  The ambitious commission that was going to provide a “grand unification theory” for transportation in Central Texas has realized that every foot of rail costs more than anybody on that commission will earn in their lifetime, and they’re starting to get, as we say in Texas, a little lilly-livered.

So they are doing what all grand visionaries do when faced with reality.  They’re ducking and covering.

First, they looked around the city and decided that they did NOT want to pay for rail along the corridor where all the people live and work (Lamar / Guadalupe) because it would be way too expensive, and besides, we already have these shiny new red “bendy” buses that go along that route, and what would we do with those buses if we put train tracks along that same route?  I mean, it’s not like you can drive buses on a different street, right?

Rail, in their opinion, needed to be placed — NOT where the people already live and work — but where the people WILL live and work SOMEDAY. So they mapped out a cheaper route alternative that would connect the urban centers of tomorrow.

They imagined connecting ACC Highland (which will be fully developed over the next 20 years) with the U.T. Medical School (10 to 15 years from now), along the Waller Creek area of downtown (which will be developed “River-Walk Style” over the next few decades), then across the river and out along Riverside Drive, which will probably be an Urban Center by 2050.  Like I said — they want to put the rail where it will serve the people of TOMORROW.

However, the people of TODAY have to pay the $1.4 billion price tag for this rail line, and we’re having a little trouble swallowing it.

So, Project Connect has decided that they were just kidding when they said they wanted to serve the people where they will live in the future, and they’ve started cutting off segments right and left.  As many as 20,000 students may attend school and live near ACC Highland, but they don’t need to be a part of this whole Project Connect thing, right?

You see, now the commissioners are recommending that we trim a few hundred million dollars by cutting off ACC Highland, and stopping the rail service at Hancock Center.

Why Hancock Center you ask?  Well… um… U.T. students might want to go to Sears?

I don’t know, but the point is it would cost less, and when your goals have been completely eclipsed by the price tag, all you can think about is cutting costs.  Goals and objectives no longer matter.

And as long as we are cutting costs, another option on the table would be to cut off the service at U.T.  That would save even more money.  We could spend just shy of $1 billion, plus an annual operating budget of $20 million and give people a first-class ticket to go from East Riverside Drive to U.T.

Because… you know… the people of tomorrow want to do that.

Or, here is an idea, we could save even MORE money if we didn’t build the silly thing in the first place!  No, wait… I’m being stupid. Of course we are going to have rail. Forget I said anything.

Here’s the thing that gets me.  Back in 2000, Austin voters had a chance to put rail where it really would work — right down Lamar and Guadalupe. However, three suburban-dwelling rich guys (Jim Skaggs, Ger­ald Daugherty, and Mike Levy) got together and fought that rail plan with a lot of money and a catchy slogan: “Costs Too Much; Does Too Little.” That was the RIGHT rail proposal for Austin, but with organized and well-funded opposition from the Three Nattering Naybobs, the proposal was very narrowly defeated at the polls in 2000.  (Subsequent polls showed that if that same proposal had been put up for a vote again a few years later, it would have passed overwhelmingly, and we would already have rail through the heart of Austin by now.)

Now we have a new rail proposal that is simply the wrong proposal. The newest iteration of Austin Rail Redux really does cost too much and do too little.  And they’re not trying to make it better — they’re trying to deal with the overwhelming cost by making it do even less. Well, here is my catchy slogan for the next election:  “If you buy cheap, you get cheap.”  Spending 1 billion dollars on a worthless transit system is a lot worse than spending 1.4 billion dollars on a transit system that is less-than-ideal.  If we have to spend $1,000 for every man, woman, and child in Austin (and apparently we do), then let’s at least get something for our money.  If we can’t have rail where it makes sense (Lamar / Guadalupe), then let’s at least create a transit center at ACC Highland that connects bus, Regional Rail, and Light Rail.  With Highland under construction now, there is an opportunity to make it a transit focal point for the Austin of Tomorrow — a Grand Central Station, if you will.

Because if you are going to spend over a billion dollars, you’d like to get something for your money, right?