Austin Metric

The Statesman recently highlighted an increase in homicides from 22 in '09 to 37 in '10.  While the piece provided a compelling visualization with the long-term count of homicides in Austin, it did not provide data that adjusted for the city's population growth.  In the chart below, I provide the …

The City Council is trying to decide whether or not to provide relocation incentives to LegalZoom, an online legal form provider.

Here are the deal details.  The City pays out $20,000 for ten years for a nominal total of $200,000.  The state's recruitment- and talent poaching-focused Texas Enterprise …

Katherine Gregor writes another excellent and detailed profile of Austin's comprehensive planning process.   This quote by one of the members of the plan's citizen advisers stuck out:

The risk now is that the task force – rich in community activists but weak on the business community – will become mired in questions …

From the Statesman:

It's worth repeating that incentives that spend taxpayers' dollars to attract companies to Austin are not always warranted or justified and should be granted or denied on a case-by-case basis. And whenever incentives are granted, there must be rigorous follow-up to ensure that the companies receiving public …

This table tells you why we need to change Austin's public outreach model.  But first, some context.

Katherine Gregor of the Austin Chronicle delves into some of the dissatisfaction about the diversity of participants in the City's comprehensive planning process.  Highly-educated, center-city types provided the bulk of the engagement so …