Solid Waste

                                                 Solid Waste Services  Mural

      Our session on the evening of November 9th continued to give us new insights into city operations. We first heard from staff members in the Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services Department.  Most of us do not think about disease prevention. City government takes disease prevention quite seriously and approaches containing disease from many angles: inoculation programs for children and families (shots for tots, flu vaccine inoculation events), animal control, wellness clinics, food inspection services, rodent and mosquito control, enforcing the smoking ordinances, and public pool inspections. The department also manages the office of vital records, recording all county-wide births, deaths and fetal deaths. This department also helps us gain statistical information about birth, death and disease in our city.

     The department often works with other city departments on emergency preparedness. Their largest recent challenge was the response to disease prevention and control during hurricane Katrina where thousands of residents were housed in our convention center and other locations throughout Austin.




       The second part of the evening was spent learning about solid waste operations. Austin has a goal of eventually becoming a zero waste city. Right now we are at about 35% of our garbage being recycled. Soon apartments and condominiums will be part of the Austin recycling program. If you find your large grey garbage can is staying emptier and emptier, you can call 3-1-1 to ask for a smaller green garbage can. The city will come out an change your cans for you - AND - your monthly fee for garbage pick up will be reduced.


     Later we walked over to the hazardous waste recycling facility to see how operations there take place. The manager is an enthusiastic proponent of this service. The city recycles most of the materials brought to the center. Interestingly, the city has a pilot program to recycle latex paint.  The two colors coming out of this effort are a limestone white and balcones brown. Both paints are available for free to citizens who want to pick it up at the hazardous waste facility (4108 Todd Lane, off of Ben White, a couple of blocks past I35).

     An addendum: City Manager Mark Ott spent 24 hours last spring as a homeless person. You can view a video where Mr. Ott talks about his experience. shows, in my opinion, I think he shows that he is a thoughtful and unusual city manager. The video can be found at statesman.com/opinion

Police! (and Municipal Courts)

Both city departments we visited this past week pulled out all the stops to show off their services.  We visited the main Municipal Court and the main Police Department located next to each other between 7th and 8th streets, directly next to I35. In the next two years, the Municipal Court (which has outgrown the space available) will be moving to the corner of I35 and St. Johns. There the court will have more space for operations as well as parking for visitors and clients of the court. The Police Department will then take over the space vacated by the Municipal Court.

Judge Evelyn McKee is the presiding judge for the Municipal court. She is an obviously experienced, gracious, and no-nonsense judge. She and her Court Clerk, Rebecca Stark, took us through a set of multiple choice questions to help us learn about how the court works.

In summary: the bulk of the cases the court handles are traffic cases. However there are some city ordinance, state code violation and civil cases taken to this court. There are close to 500,000 cases filed annually. The Municipal Court collected about $34,000,000  in fines during the last fiscal year. The Austin police department is not the only department to bring cases to municipal court. Other entities bringing cases to the Municipal Court include DPS, Parks and Recreation, Animal Control, Austin Fire Department, Water Conservation, AISD police department, and TABC.

Austin has a community Court which handles close to 1,000 cases per month. The court covers most of downtown. It is a specialty court that handles "Quality of life offenses" - i.e. homeless people and partiers. The court focuses on low-level offenses by repeat offenders, mainly: public intoxication, minor in possession of alcohol, and leaving human waste on sidewalks, streets, and alleys.
The offenders will get help, if necessary from on-staff social workers. Offenders perform up to 260,000 hours community service each year.

The Austin Police Department is probably one of the most visible of all city departments. The chief, Art Acevedo, is well-known from his appearances on the evening news and in the local newspaper. 
He and his main staff were on hand to meet with us. His chief of staff told us that the building that currently houses the police department was originally designed as the new public library. When the city decided that they needed a new police station more than a new public library, the library design was handed over to the police department. Thus we have a police department with a huge atrium - which takes up much needed space for offices!

The department underwent a large reorganization in 2009. Now there are four police bureaus: Headquarters, Central, North and South. Statistics provided by the police department state that Austin is the fifth safest city in the United States. Projections are that the Austin population grows 2.25% each year. Thus Austin may have a population of over 1 million by 2025. Since 2000 the Austin population has grown 18% and calls for police service have increased by 61%.

Chief Acevedo spoke to us at length and with passion about his desire to improve the police department. One initiative underway is to have all police officers carry the same weapon. The new weapon will be a 40 caliber Smith and Wesson Military and Police gun. (I went to McBride's on Saturday and was told by the salesman/ex-police officer that the S&W is a solid, reliable, and mid-range cost weapon.) Chief Acevedo would also like to see more weapons training for his officers. He is considering applying for stimulus money for a mobile target range. He answered Academy students' questions comfortably and with the panache of an experienced flack catcher.

We spent the last part of the evening outside visiting with police personnel. The mounted police (a man and a woman) brought two of their ten horses. The SWAT team (quite muscular) were there with their assault vehicles - one from the 1970s and a brand new vehicle with all modern bells and whistles. We were able to sit inside a police cruiser and see how the on board video and computer work. All in all an impressive display.

Emergency!

We only have three sessions left in the City Works Academy - and I'm ready to start all over again. I have learned so much - and have so much more to understand. I know that city government is complicated, but until I became a member of City Works, I think I was much like most citizens - if the garbage pick up in my neighborhood works and the street is in good shape, I do not consider goes into making our city work. Now I know differently. I know that there are many city employees who are well-trained and committed to doing their best to make Austin a great place to live.

The session we attended this past Tuesday was an excellent case in point. We were invited to the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. This facility is essentially at the corner of Old Manor Road and East 51st Street - tucked away behind a large security gate. The building itself is less than five years old and contains the latest technologies. The people who work at the facility are responsible for all the management of all man-made and natural disasters. The 9-1-1 operators are based in this building along with other staff members when needed to be available (Fire, Police, EMS, Cap Metro, LCRA, Watershed Protection, TxDot and more). Staff members  at the Emergency Operations Center monitor weather reports, traffic conditions, and any other sources of information which could help the city in case of an emergency. GIS (Geographical Information Systems) play a large part in the Emergency Operations Center's ability to predict weather situations.

The center has developed software  that takes weather-related real time data and is able to feed this data into localized maps for on the ground conditions. Did you know that the city has a predictive floodplain database? An Emergency  Notification System (so you can be automatically notified if there is a real emergency in your area)? If you do not have a land line, you can call 3-1-1 and they will tell you how to register your cell phone (only for this purpose). I was amazed to learn that the city has many rain gauges that transmit water data wirelessly so the EOC can find out "ground truth" to supplement radar information. Over 100 wireless rain gauges are maintained throughout the city of Austin. Take a look the next time you are near a major Austin stream. Many streams subject to sudden flooding have gate arms to prevent cars from drowning in swift waters. The city, in conjunction with communities surrounding Austin has implemented a two-way radio system that allows police, fire, and EMS to communicate seamlessly in case of an emergency. This system has more that 14,000 radios. (Remember that part of the disaster on 9/11 was based on the fact that in NYC radio, fire, and EMS all had different radios and frequencies).

So the next time you see the city jump into action when there is a big natural or man-made emergency, realize that there is a sophisticated communications center with a highly trained staff ready to jump into action.