City of Austin issued the following announcement on April 9.
Last night the City Council held our first electronic Council meeting. Six of the Council and several staff used Zoom to remotely attend the meeting and it was a huge success. Tom Dankert, Ann Kasel and Don Tomlinson worked very hard and had many practice meetings in order to get it perfect for the Council meeting, and it was.
I have had more input from people about playgrounds than any other topic lately. When the Governor issued his “stay at home” order it included the closure of playgrounds and the City closed the playgrounds. Then the next day additional information was released that did not mention playgrounds or parks. The City had closed the playgrounds based on the Governor’s initial statement but when they were not included in the official statement, we opened them back up. Police Chief David McKichan has told us that his officers are breaking up groups of people whenever they felt social distancing was not being adhered to. He further said that his officers have not witnessed playgrounds as being a big issue and that most people on the playgrounds are one or two people and they were mostly keeping appropriate distances. So for now we will keep our playgrounds open.
Council also approved the go ahead for an extension of our trail system from 4th Street SW along the north side of Turtle Creek to 10th Street SW. The trail will run along the creek through a very nice wooded area. It will not go to 12th Street SW yet. We hope to do the section connecting 12th Street next year. This will open a nice area of town to recreation.
Council also talked about the 4th of July festival. Although no official decisions were made, no one expects a typical festival to go forward. I’m told the Chamber is looking at the possibility of cancelling the parade. We plan on going forward with the fireworks and alternative sites are being considered.
The Council was briefed on our ability to delay property taxes. The County is the government entity that collects taxes. The City cannot delay the payments because the due date is set in State statutes. However, the County may have the ability to delay penalties for delinquent taxes and they are looking into this.
I am going to do an update on this site after all of our Council meetings. I will try to put out as much information as I can through this crisis.
Original source can be found here.
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