Monday: Update

An update: For those of you who want to contact state representatives about HB 4536, the sale of Texas State Cemetery Annex, the people to contact are: 

• Representative Elliott Naishtat (District 49; capital phone: 463-0668; www.house.state.tx.us/members/dist49/naishtat.php)
  
• Representative Valinda Bolton (District 47; capital phone: 463-0652; www.house.state.tx.us/members/dist47/bolton.php ; Ms. Bolton is on the House Land and Resource Management committee that is dealing with the bill)
  
• State Senator Kirk Watson also represents our part of the world, but the bill has not yet reached the Senate floor.  (District 14; capital phone: 463-0114; www.senate.state.tx.us/75r/senate/members/dist14.htm)
  

From what I can tell, HB 4536 will reach the House floor this Wednesday, April 1, between 8:00 and noon, in Room E2.012 in the Capitol building. Again, if you want to updates on the bill from the Legislature's Web site, you can sign up for alerts at MyTLO (My Texas Legislature Online), available at www.capitol.state.tx.us

Also, Laura LaValle, a regular and long-time Dog Parker with her dog Fiona, has contacted a friend who is a lobbyist. If you are interested in learning more about her efforts, again, please e-mail me and will forward her contact information and e-mails on the topic. 

By the way, courtesy of Carl Helmshoth, below is the description of our beloved Dog Park land that appears in the most recent General Land and Office report. (I've corrected the misspellings, natch; all itals are mine):

"This site is [c]urrently a vacant property and is underutilized as a proposed state cemetery. It is under the management and control of the Texas Cemetery Commission with a restriction designated by the Legislature for state cemetery use only. [ . . . ] The surrounding properties include uses as residential and commercial development, medical, government, and business offices, the Austin Memorial Park Cemetery, and Camp Mabry. 

"The appraisal indicates the highest and best use for this property is to develop the site as a single residential tract. The tract is located in a highly desirable residential and mix[ed]-use area in Austin. It is estimated the site will not be needed as a cemetery in less tha[n] 30 years[,] with some estimates at twice as long. This site was presented in the 2007 Report to the Governor and was approved with conditions being the removal of the statutory restriction for cemetery use."

The description appears on p. 97-98 of the Report. If you'd like the link to the entire report, please let me know. 

--zia

Monday Bloody Monday

Sorry I'm late with a post this morning. I spent the weekend as a yard warrior and can barely move 80 percent of my muscles. Poor dogs. Every time I turned around, one of them—whom I will not name—was lying in a patch of freshly weeded and seeded dirt, and got yelled at as a result. The other I accidently (seriously, I wasn't aiming) sprayed with the hose, and she was deeply offended. 

So here's the deal. Over the weekend, Dog Parkers were alerted to a serious issue that could permanently alter our park experience. A state legislator—not from Austin—is supporting a bill to sell the state land that makes up roughly half of the park area. Based on what we know about this legislator's connections to real estate developers, the land is likely to be sold for development, which will not only put our park at risk but also the neighborhoods next to it, which are prone to flooding during heavy rains. The legal eagles at the park have been all over this—both the proposed bill and the sudden push to the lege, but I need more time to process it. If you are not a member of our listserv and would like to see the entire discussion of late, please send me your e-mail (in a blog comment, which I won't publish, or directly to busyzia@gmail.com), and I'll send you very easy instructions for joining. I will also send you the entire e-mail exchange from this weekend.

In the meantime, here is the link to the bill as it stands: http://www.legis.state.tx.us/BillLookup/History.aspx?LegSess=81R&Bill+HB4536

I believe that the bill will be introduced to the lege this Wednesday, so it is important for us to act quickly and contact the appropriate state and local pols. I will get that information together, too. 

Sigh. Mondays. --zia

The Quotable Dog

"The old dog barks backward without getting up.

I can remember when he was a pup." 

—from Robert Frost's "The Span of Life" (1936)

In memory of Sue Hill's Kilmer 

(Art: "Hounds at Rest"  by unknown artist, 19th century British School, from William Secord Gallery, inc., found at www.dogpainting.com)