Monday Morning Report
October 15, 2007

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Mark your calendars:  On November 28^th, 4:00 pm, we’ll be co-hosting our Austin General Membership meeting with the Capital Area Transportation Coalition at the Austin Club.  Guest speaker will be TxDOT Commissioner Ned Holmes.  Stay tuned for more details in the upcoming weeks.

Corridor Council San Antonio Vice-Chairman Richard Perez has been named as the new President and CEO of the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce. Congratulations, Richard! (And by the way, David Hendricks of the Express-News has some ideas for things that you should be doing. Read them here.)

The Austin-San Antonio Intermunicipal Commuter Rail District Board meeting scheduled for 11/2 has been CANCELLED.  The next regularly scheduled Board meeting is Friday, December 7^th  in San Antonio at the Capital Area Council of Governments conference room.  More meetings information here.

Audio links to the Council's Digital Convergence Initiative presentation at Innotech earlier this month are now available here and here. Thanks to Jon Lebkowsky for setting this up.

Infrastructure

Fast-growing Kyle has a new director of planning. Shira Rodgers, previously Development Planner for Cedar Park, will work with residents and community groups, prepare updates to the city's Comprehensive Plan, and deal with permit reviews. Details here. 

Discussions of that proposed 40-mile eastern loop around New Braunfels in Comal County is prompting the usual round of stories about displaced farmers, cemeteries, and urbanization. Meetings last week have narrowed some of the options. Local details here.

Hutto city council members voted earlier this month to award a $1.7 million contract to Landmark Structures I, L.P. for the construction of a 1 million gallon elevated composite storage tank, the city's fourth water tower.

The fight over water rights in Caldwell County is getting uglier. Efforts by developers to buy and resell water from rural parts of the county to new developments along SH 130 and Buda, San Marcos, and other Central Texas cities has moved into the state legislature. Details.

San Marcos Mayor Susan Narvaiz will present a formal “State of the City” address at 7 pm this Wednesday at the Activity Center, 501 E. Hopkins. The public is invited to attend. For details, go here.

Ben Wear, of the Austin American-Statesman, has started a new transportation blog at Statesman.com called “Getting There”. He also has a story up this morning about potential opposition to the five Austin-area toll roads approved by the CAMPO board last week - and attempts to 'retire' six elected officials who voted for them. Details here.

Economic Development

The economic impact of San Antonio's health-care and bioscience industry has more than doubled in the past decade, according to a study released last week by the city's Chamber of Commerce. The health sector's impact grew by 7.7 percent to $15.3 billion last year, and the total number of health-care and bioscience jobs grew by 5,591 to 112,762 compared with the year before. Details here. 

The Good Guys Win One: Congratulations to the San Antonio Food Bank, named by Second Harvest as the Food Bank Program of the Year for various innovative efforts like providing ready to eat food for poor kids on Friday so that they can eat over the weekend. Read more about this great group here.

The Capital Area Transportation Coalition (CATC), co-hosted with the Real Estate Council of Austin is sponsoring their Third Distinguished Transportation Speaker Series:  Mobility, Land Use and the Capital Area featuring Sam Staley, author of The Road More Traveled: Why the Congestion Crisis Matters More Than You Think and What We Can Do About It.   The event will be Wednesday, October 24, 2007 at the Four Seasons Hotel.  Please RSVP to catc@catransco.org or call 512-587-6625.  More details here.

The city of Hutto, Atlantic Coast Developers and Glenmont Capital Management have agreed to transform 466 acres at the intersections of the new Texas 130 toll road, FM 685 and Highway 79 into a center of retail and residential development for the city. More details now available here.

Looking for a new career? The New York Times ran an article over the weekend about an Austin-based computer forensic expert who consults for lawyers and law enforcement officials and claims that there are multiple new career opportunities in the field that offer starting salaries of $50-80,000 a year. Details here.

Armida Technologies of San Antonio along with BlueWave Security of Austin are combining technologies using video verification, surveillance and wireless access control. BlueWave Security will market the product through its 1,000 dealers nationwide. The product will be available in 2008. Details here.

Communities

October is National Domestic Violence Awareness month. Domestic Violence Awareness Month evolved from the first Day of Unity observed in October, 1981 by the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. The intent was to connect battered women’s advocates across the nation who were working to end violence against women and their children. The Day of Unity soon became a special week when a range of activities were conducted at the local, state, and national levels. Informational links of interest:  Domestic Violence.org, Help Guide, National Coalition Against Domestic Violence

Thought for the week:

“There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.”

  –Josh Billings (1818-1885)

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© 2007 Austin-San Antonio Corridor Council