Fun with Fire

Inside the Fire Truck

The LONG ladder - 105 feet high

Olga and Fire Truck


At last, my childish dream fulfilled. Play with fire. No, not really. But we had a great evening last week out at the training facility for the Austin Fire Department. The department went all out to give us a good time. They brought in various fire trucks, including the special fire truck they have for high rise buildings. The ladder will go up to seven stories. The moral of that fact: the fire chief suggested that we stay no higher than the seventh story when in a high rise hotel.

The training facility is located south of town, near 183 and McKinney Roughs Parkway. The facility includes a training tower for learning how to battle fires in tall buildings, an infra-red facility for training to work in the dark, and plenty of space for learning how to use a fire hose. The facility also has training classrooms. Our evening consisted of time in the classroom for a talk on the fire department and EMS. Later we went outside for hands-on experiences.

The fire department has 1100 employees, 45 fire stations, and covers an area of 280 square miles. The department has functions that go beyond fire fighting. The department employs inspectors of new and existing structures, fire investigators, and educational services on fire prevention in the community. The department works cooperatively with Travis County. The busiest fire station is the station at Sixth St. and Trinity. That station answers about 6,000 calls per year. All fire fighters are certified EMTs. Did you know that? There is fierce competition to become a fire fighter. There are usually about 5,000 applicants for each new cadet class of forty. Amazing! 5% of the fire fighters are female.

The EMS department works closely with the fire department. That department has a budget of $44 million per year. However about $20 million is recovered in fees for service. Most health insurances cover the cost of having EMS come to your house. The average cost is around $800.
The EMS folks cover about 2600 miles, since the EMS department covers the city of Austin as well as Travis County. The department has thirty three units and answers around 110,000 calls per year, or an average of about 350 calls per day. 40% of the EMS staff is female. In a review session with EMS staff, we relearned CPR. BIG NEWS: the state of the art recommends chest compression ONLY, no more breathing into mouth.

All the EMT and fire fighting staff spent time with us. They were consistently friendly, informative, and interested in our questions. A great evening!

Arts and Parks plus Information

It is hard to believe that my time with the City Works Academy is half over. I've learned so much already - and there are five sessions left to keep me on my toes.

Tuesday, October 12th we met at the Dougherty Arts Center on Barton Springs Road. The building itself is rather funky, reflecting an origin as a naval training center. The inside is anything but military. The main entrance leads into a lovely, well-lit art gallery which presents new artists throughout the year. Behind the gallery is a large auditorium where stage events take place. Beyond that you will find classrooms for every sort of artistic activity: painting, sculpture, jewelery making, acting, music and more. The academy students really enjoyed touring the facility to see the range of classes offered - the students were having a great time. Isn't it great that our city offers these artistic learning opportunities?

The Dougherty Arts Center is just one of many facilities managed by the Parks and Recreation Department. The PARD manages 247 parks, 50 miles of paths, five golf courses, 110 tennis courts, fifty one swimming pools including Barton Springs and Deep Eddy, twelve cultural arts centers, twenty recreation centers and four senior centers. Although Barton Springs is a big money maker, the money collected there goes back into the city's general fund rather than to PARD. I think that is a shame, since it is obvious that the department is underfunded and needs more funding than it is getting right now. Fact: the PARD has 581 employees and a budget of over $53 million.

I didn't know that 3-1-1 services evolved from 9-1-1 services after 9/11 2001. The federal government decided to initiate the 3-1-1 service to focus 9-1-1 service on serious emergencies. The City of Austin's 3-1-1 service will give assistance on almost any city service-based non-emergency problem a citizen has. The staff members of 3-1-1 took a different approach to showing us how their job works. Rather than giving us an overview of staffing and funding, we broke up into teams to try and answer some typical questions that come to the department. As it turns out, a simple question can have a complicated answer. Training for the 3-1-1 information ambassadors is intensive and is being constantly updated so that when a citizen calls, they will get the most current answer. The 3-1-1 service center works 24/7 and answers over 1,000,000 calls per year. Most calls are handled in less than three minutes. All calls are recorded and calls are graded (however telephone callers' phone number is not recorded).

The Office of Communications and Public Information is a small department with a big, big job. With a budget of $1.6 million and around 18 employees, the office seeks to keep Austin citizens and employees of the City of Austin informed about our city government. Currently the office is working on a redesign of the web for the City of Austin. The office also handles staffing and programming for Channel 6, relationship with the pubic media (commercial television stations, newspapers etc.), and efforts for citizen involvement in our city - City Works Academy is just one example of this effort.

Meeting the Mayor and City Manager

Olga on second floor balcony - city hall


What an exciting City Works Academy last Tuesday! City Manager Marc Ott gave us a very upbeat and energizing talk on his quest to make Austin the best-managed city in America. I really appreciate his high ideals for our city. He communicates in a passionate, organized, and soft-spoken manner that demands respect. Department heads have echoed his thoughts on managing our city. So I feel good knowing that excellence in city government is the name of the game in Austin.

Mayor Lee Leffingwell emphasized that he and the city council of seven represent the 800,000 citizens of Austin. Austin is unusual in that our city council meetings usually last from 10am to 5:30pm. (In contrast city council meetings in Dallas usually last three hours, said Leffingwell). The city council meets every two weeks. Ten days before each city council meeting the City Manager and City Clerk prepare the agenda for the city council, so the council members can peruse the agenda and make comments. Agenda items come to the Office of the City Manager from the various city departments. Here's a sample of the agenda for October 14, 2010: http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/council_meetings/public_meeting_agenda.cfm?meetingid=226
Take a look!

After our overview from Mayor Leffingwell, he took us on a tour of city hall. I really like the modern architecture of our city hall. The city hall faces Lady Bird Lake and the greenbelt along the lake. The second story balcony overlooks the lake as well as the cityscape - quite beautiful at sunset. A unique feature of city hall is the use of art by local artists. Local artists are selected to hang their works in the city hall for a year. Then the art is replaced that of other artists. I was delighted to see some wonderful filigree glass art by a friend who creates her art at South by Southwest Glass Studio. This was the first time I saw and heard out mayor. I'm not easily impressed but he impressed me: again someone who knows his way around city government. has a good grasp of the issues facing our city, and has - important - a wonderful sense of humor.

Who knows what our City Clerk does? Perhaps you imagine a little person with a pencil in her hand stuck behind a desk in a dark corner somewhere? Well, drop that thought! Our City Clerk, Shirley Gentry, is an energetic, tech saavy lady. Even though her primary job is to provide information to the City Council and City staff, general public, candidates and voters, her job supervising a staff of eighteen and a budget of almost $2 billion. I've already talked about the city council meeting agenda - often a fifty page document. One of her largest tasks is managing the records of our city. I know this job well, having worked in records management for several years. It is the one of the most under-appreciated and essential functions for our city. She also sees that our city website stays up to date. Candidates for municipal elections work through her office.

I'm not sure why the people who deal with budgets and money always talk to us during the last hour of our three hour sessions. By then it is 8:00pm and we are getting a little glassy-eyed from all the information we've already taken in. We head from the city treasurer, Art Alfaro. Be happy. Our city has a A+++ bond rating. We are not having problems servicing the $4.7 billion city debt. We also have a chief financial officer whose job it is to see that the city meets basic accounting practices. The office also manages our city budget process - we have a city budget that is balanced. Austin must be the envy of many cities around the country!

Running Fast to Stay in Place

I have to admit that it is more work to keep up the blog than I expected. The weeks roll around very quickly (especially since my husband and I have been in the last stages of getting our book published). Since I've written last, I've been to one evening and one full day City Works Academy since I last posted - and there is so much to tell you!

First things first - to state the obvious - running our water and electric utilities is a complex and expensive business. I'm overwhelmed by how much I do not understand about generating electricity and getting it into our home; and I'll say the same for water. It seems obvious and simple to turn on a light or a faucet - but it is not so simple to have the technology, know how and physical plants to make that happen. Note: Both the electricity and water departments are required to pay their own way.

One of the most exciting sessions - don't laugh - was to meet at the Austin Water Utility Biosolids Management Plant. It is located at the far southeast end of Austin, past our airport. Here the city recycles biosolids (i.e. poop) composting them with yard trimmings. The resulting mixture is sold commercially as 'Dillo Dirt, an excellent soil conditioner used across the city in lawns and gardens, parks, gold courses, and other areas. The plant is located at Hornsby Bend, one of the prime bird watching areas in central Texas. Here migrating birds stop at all times of year. We learned about the complex process for developing the Dillo Dirt - we can be proud that our city puts out the effort to recycle. As one of the city officials stated: "We are #1 in #2. If you have a chance, go visit the HornsbyBend Biosolids Management Plant. The Audobon Society meets there on the third Saturday of every month at 7:30am. http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/water/downloads/hornsbybendbro.pdf

You will be glad to hear that the head of the Austin Water Utility, Greg Meszaros, is a well-informed and very lively and interesting speaker. Suffice it to say that the AWU is doing everything possible to be the best water utility around. They are working hard to upgrade existing water treatment plants and focus on building a new water treatment plant in north Austin. Recycling and water reclamation are a top focus of the department.

This past Saturday the City Works Academy had an optional day to visit the Austin Convention Center, hear from the head of Bergstrom Airport, and visit the Sandy Point Power Plant (near Hornsby Bend).

The convention center is run by an enthusiastic team of professionals. The center hosts over 160 meets a year; around 40 0f those are larger meetings with a national and regional attendance. Their biggest problem is that there are not enough downtown hotel rooms to handle the number of convention attendees who could come to a conference here. The convention center gets most of their funding from the hotel occupancy tax as well as rental car fees, facility rentals, and contractors. (Note: The hotel occupancy tax contributes to the city, cultural arts, Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau as well as the convention center). Conventions bring over $300 million to the city each year. The center has 239 employees and a budget of $53.4 Million.

Jim Smith, head of the airport, gave us an informal and highly informative presentation. He's an experienced airline industry professional, a non-nonsense New Englander, a gentleman who keeps up with airport trends throughout the US and around the world. Over one billion dollars are invested in our airport. Because of the economy, new gate construction is on hold. However a new parking garage will soon be underway. By 2015 they would like to build eight more gates.
These eight gates will cost over $300 million (the new airport when built cost $350 million!).

I admit, by 2:00pm on Saturday I was pretty well worn out, but I soldiered on to the San Hill Energy Plant. I've decided that I would need to learn and study for a long time to really understand how electricity is generated, transmitted, and priced. The energy to our home can come from four sources: gas ,coal, nuclear, and renewable energy. The average outages in our system are one customer with sixty minutes of outage per year. Austin Energy spends about $10 million per year to trim trees - there are 2300 miles requiring trimming, about 500 miles are trimmed each year. All electricity meters to the home are now automated (did you know that?) And the big news - which should be no surprise if you have been reading the paper - our energy costs are going up. Rates have not been changed since 1994. By October 2012 the new rates will be in place.

Stay Turned - more next week!