Stuff like this was inevitable. Leaders of two Christian groups want City Council to stop extending benefits to domestic partners of city employees, now that the state attorney general has called the benefits unconstitutional. City officials reject the demand, at least for now. Pastor Gerald Ripley of Voices for Marriage and Philip Sevilla of Texas [...]
Posts Tagged ‘San Antonio’
More on that underutilized high speed toll road
More toll road travails. Traffic counts on the new section of Texas 130, released Friday by the Texas Department of Transportation based on newspaper open records requests, show that the tollway southeast of Austin in its first couple of months was seeing fewer than 3,000 vehicles a day. About 5 percent of those were big [...]
Payday and title loan regulation in Houston
From Nonsequiteuse, who got the following email in her inbox: Proposed City of Houston Lending Ordinance Presentation to Council Committee Tuesday, February 5, 2013 The City of Houston Legal Department has proposed new regulations for credit access businesses, commonly referred to as payday loan or title loan institutions. The lending practices employed by these various [...]
San Antonio strip club lawsuit
If you’re a lawyer representing strip clubs these days, you sure don’t lack for business. More than a dozen strip clubs have sued the city of San Antonio over amendments to ordinances requiring entertainers to wear bikinis, claiming the changes are another heavy-handed attempt to shut the cabarets down. The federal lawsuit resembles one at [...]
Austin to get bike sharing
About time, y’all. City Council will vote Thursday on a five-year contract with a newly formed nonprofit organization, Bike Share of Austin, to operate the system. The Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization awarded Austin a $1.5 million grant last summer that would fund most of the project. Bike Share of Austin, the only organization that [...]
Student RFID lawsuit rejected
A win for the school district in federal court. A federal judge Tuesday ruled that Northside Independent School District can transfer a student from her magnet school for refusing to wear her student ID badge to protest a new electronic tracking system. U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia rejected a lawsuit brought by Andrea Hernandez, 15, [...]
Curbside composting
Way to go, Austin. City officials are asking Austinites in 7,900 households in five parts of the city to separate their banana peels, egg shells, meat, chicken bones, milk cartons, leaves and any other organic material from their household trash and put the material into a new rolling garbage cart. The one-year trial run will [...]
Get well soon, Elf Louise
If you’ve ever lived in San Antonio, you are undoubtedly familiar with the Elf Louise Christmas Project. I’m sad to say that “Elf” Louise Locker has suffered a heart attack, but thankfully appears to be recovering nicely. The woman behind one of San Antonio’s most prolific Christmas-based charities, Louise Locker, had a heart attack Sunday [...]
Student RFID case in federal court
Good luck sorting it all out, Your Honor. Because she has a religious objection to Northside Independent School District’s new student tracking system, Andrea Hernandez and her father testified in federal court Monday, she should not be transferred to another school for refusing to carry a student I.D. badge. Hernandez, 15, a sophomore in a [...]
San Antonio B-Cycle expands again
I’m truly impressed at how successful this has been. San Antonio’s newest B-Cycle bike sharing stations opened Friday at six new locations around South San Antonio. The new stations — located at Roosevelt Park, Concepcion Park, Mission Concepcion, Mission Road Street Connection, VFW River Trail Access and Mission San Jose — provide yet another way [...]
The anti-student RFID movement has already begun
When I wrote about the battle over student RFID, I said it was just a matter of time before the Lege intervened. Turns out I was behind the curve on this. Since first hearing about the use of radio frequency technology to track public school students in 2004, state Rep. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, has filed [...]
Student RFID
I have three things to say about this. A Texas high school student is being suspended for refusing to wear a student ID card implanted with a radio-frequency identification chip. Northside Independent School District in San Antonio began issuing the RFID-chip-laden student-body cards when the semester began in the fall. The ID badge has a [...]
What I’ll be looking for tonight
Just a reminder that I’ll be on KPFT tonight starting at 7 PM to talk about the elections. Here’s a preview of the things I’ll be looking for: 1. SD10 – Sen. Wendy Davis vs Mark Shelton: Easily the most important race on the ballot in Texas. Davis has been a progressive champion and a [...]
Draft Julian?
Who wants to see Julian Castro run for Governor in 2014? His fellow Bexar County Democrats, at least. Bexar County Democratic Party Chairman Manuel Medina launched a social media movement last week to draft Castro for the 2014 Texas governor’s race. Medina, who unseated former party Chairwoman Choco Meza in May, describes the push as [...]
It was nice knowing you, Lockhart
There’s so much that’s wrong with this. Community leaders believe the four lanes of Texas 130 will spur growth — despite what is expected to be a charge of about 15 cents a mile to drive on it. The tollway, which will link Lockhart to Austin to the north and will provide a much faster [...]
Castro puts pre-K on the national stage
In addition to thrusting himself into the national spotlight with his DNC keynote address, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro also brought the discussion about pre-kindergarten education to the fore. Under the biggest spotlight of his political career, Mayor Julián Castro brought national attention Tuesday to his early childhood education initiative. An estimated 26 million people [...]
MFU Houston
From the inbox: The Houston Mobile Food Unit (MFU) Collective will present City Council Members with stakeholder-driven Ordinance changes in September, which will further promote business growth and entrepreneurship in Houston. The proposed Ordinance changes will eliminate the 60-foot distance between Mobile Food Units; allow 1 propane (LP) permit to cover multiple locations; provide access [...]
Don’t forget Joaquin
You can’t have a story about one twin and not have one about the other, am I right? When his minute-older brother gives the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, Joaquín Castro will be nearby, as he always is and has been for big moments in their 37 years as identical twins. On Sept. [...]
Julian Castro is ready for his closeup
Here’s your primer on the rising star, San Antonio Mayor, and DNC keynoter Julian Castro. I’ll let you take it in in all its hagiographic glory, but I’d like to highlight my favorite part, where the authors manage to find someone who Does Not Like Him Very Much and Thinks He Really Isn’t All That: [...]
San Antonio’s pre-k referendum
Houston is chock full of ballot referenda this fall, but the most interesting and potentially consequential one in the state is San Antonio. An initiative from San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro that would direct a portion of sales tax revenue to fund full-day pre-kindergarten unanimously passed the City Council, leaving it for voters to approve [...]
Bike sharing to come to Fort Worth
Good for them. The Fort Worth Transportation Authority said Monday it’s raised more than $1 million, and plans to launch a central city bike-sharing program by next Spring that will include 30 stations and 300 bikes. The program will start by April, Dick Ruddell, president of The T, said Monday. Stations will be between the [...]
No term limits referendum this fall
Much as I dislike our silly term limits ordinance, I think this is the correct term of action. A City Council committee on Monday killed a proposal to ask voters whether to give the mayor, controller and council members up to 12 years in office. They currently are limited to six. Councilman Andrew Burks, whose [...]
Local action on payday lending
Patricia Kilday Hart reports on a promising movement. No one was particularly surprised a year ago when the Texas Legislature failed – once again – to pass meaningful regulation of the payday and auto title loan industries. After all, the folks who charge triple digit interest on loans to society’s most desperately poor had invested [...]
Why do we want to subsidize the creation of minimum wage jobs?
That’s a question some people are asking in San Antonio. Thankfully, the local debate over whether to grant Maruchan Inc. of Japan millions of dollars to pay people very little money to make noodles has transcended the mere question of how many workers it would employ. And it’s heartening — in a depressing sort of [...]
Henry Cisneros
The Express News bring us an update on former San Antonio Mayor and onetime rising star Henry Cisneros. Henry Cisneros still talks about housing and urban development with passion, about the future of cities and the ways in which immigrant communities can help the country thrive. He still talks politics and remains involved with President [...]
Solar’s bright future
Here’s a long story in the Observer about the state of solar energy in Texas. The piece covers a lot of ground, including this bit about what’s going on in San Antonio. San Antonio has emerged as a city willing to turn talk into action and its abundant sunlight into energy to spark what Mayor [...]
Bike sharing is officially almost here
From Citizens Net: Beginning Wednesday, May 2, 2012, Houston will be one of only 15 U.S. cities to launch a bike share program to make getting around downtown a whole lot easier. The bike share program, known as Houston B-cycle, is perfect for trips that are too far to walk but too short to drive. [...]
No, San Antonio will not be getting an MLB team any time soon
You are right to be skeptical. It’s a development that has become as predictable as yellow pollen in the spring. A Major League Baseball franchise, struggling financially, seeks a new stadium deal, a new location, a new life. In the midst of resulting contention, options are explored. Such as relocating to another area. San Antonio, [...]
San Antonio going for desalinization
Another thing we’ll be seeing more of in the near future. The San Antonio Water System is now pumping salt water in southern Bexar County as it looks for new water sources for the city. Tuesday the utility gave a tour of one of its first production wells in the middle of pastureland that will [...]
San Antonio B-Cycle keeps on growing
It’s very cool to watch. [B-cycle and city officials announced] plans to add three bicycle stations in April, at HemisView Village apartments, the San Antonio Housing Authority park on South Flores Street, and the 1221 Broadway apartments, said Cindi Snell, executive director of San Antonio B-cycle and co-owner of Bike World. That will bring the [...]
Meet the new rail debate, same as the old rail debate
I feel like I’ve heard all this before. Opponents of the planned downtown streetcar system said Tuesday that county officials broke a promise with voters when they agreed to use advanced transportation district funds to help fund the project. The group contends that multiple pieces of campaign literature used to promote the ATD tax in [...]
San Antonio chooses its solar provider
Nice. Under a bright winter sun Wednesday, CPS Energy CEO Doyle Beneby introduced the companies selected to build one of the country’s largest solar projects and a solar manufacturing plant in San Antonio, an investment of more than $100 million. OCI Solar Power, whose parent is a South Korean chemical company, will build the solar [...]