Killfloor’s Guide To The 2005 City Elections
Filed under: Politics

The City of Austin Elections are coming up pretty soon (early voting starts April 20), and some fairly important issues are being decided. You’ve got like a week to vote for this shit, so you probably should. Now, just so you don’t go and randomly press buttons (fun though it may be) we’ve put together a little guide of the issues at hand. Sure some of the commentary is a little biased, but we’re much too lazy to give you both sides of an issue (besides, if you don’t agree with us then you know what not to vote for, don’t you). So here’s our fucked up guide to the city elections.

First up are the seats for the City Council. Two of the most important aspect of this race are experience and qualification. Too many city council candidates take the form of the disgruntled soccer mom that runs for office because she wants to change how things are done. They might have great ideas, but the important thing is if they can make them actually happen.

Place One

Andrew Bucknall
Bucknall is one of the two candidates that actually has held a position in city government. This alone would place him as one of the front runners. He’s emerged as our favorite candidate for place one, specifically because of his stances on transportation issues and advocacy for the East Austin community.

Lee Leffingwell
Leffingwell is the other candidate with experience in a public office. Overall, his views are very similar to Bucknall’s, and his support of funding for parks and libraries and experience with transportation issues has contributed to make him a likely winner. Again, our pick is Bucknall, but Leffingwell wouldn’t be a bad choice.

James Paine
As far as qualifications, Paine doesn’t really have much to bring to the table. He is a proponent of public health services, but in such a broad way that it’s hard to tell if he’d be capable of affecting any kind of actual change in this area.

Casey Walker
For some reason we get the feeling that this guy decided to run for city council on a whim. He seems to have good ideas, but he did attend the same high school as the author, so we know just how under-qualified he is.

Scott Williams
Williams has another fairly standard platform of neighborhood involvement and managed growth, but his qualifications don’t stand up to those of some of his running mates.

Steve Adams (write-in)
Some good ideas, although a bit muddled by ambiguity. Also lacks experience with a public position. Plus we’re not sure how much faith we can place in a candidate that can’t even make the filing deadline in time to get his name on the ballot.

Place Three

Margot Clarke
She seems to have what it takes to take on a city council position, and at this point she is the most likely front runner. Clarke’s focus has been on public participation in city affairs and environmental issues. She has a good idea of what she wants to accomplish and how she wants to accomplish it, having already run twice before for the position.

Mandy Dealey
Dealey has run on a platform nearly identical to Clarke’s (or maybe Clarke’s is identical to hers). It is her clear and detailed support, however, for reviving health and human services that places her as our favorite for place three.

Jennifer Kim
Kim is another strong candidate for this position. Her resume is pretty impressive, but when all of the candidates are so similar you really have to look at the details: for example she attended A&M.

Gregg Knaupe
Knaupe, like his running mates, supports increased funding for health services, affordable housing, etc. And to his benefit, he has the best (only?) campaign blog out of all of the other candidates.

Place Four

Wes Benedict
Benedict’s libertarian platform differs slightly from his running mates, but not too much; he basically stands for similar core ideas. But libertarians often have a reputation for being a bit too committed to the idea of “less government” while offering little else as a solution.

Betty Dunkerley
Dunkerley is the incumbent for this council position, and thus posed to win. Whatever your opinion on how she’s done so far (if you even have one) she has the obvious benefit of having served on the council before, and perhaps at one of the most interesting and turbulent times in the city’s history.

Jennifer Gale
Jennifer Gale is one of the more interesting candidates. “She” has been running for every public office in this city for around fifteen years, attending and speaking at nearly every council meeting as well, and picking up surprisingly little in the way of coherent ideologies. But what is perhaps most curious about this particular candidate is the ambiguity concerning the nature of gender (or the lack thereof). Either way what would an Austin ballot be without “her” name on it.

P. Byron Miller
Miller seems to be taking on a role of advocacy for neighborhoods more so than the other candidates. His well-phrased ideas yet curious absence of punctuation in any written statements are both intriguing and beguiling. While perhaps not the best campaigner, he gives an honest and noble assessment of Austin communities. We might as well vote for him because Dunkerley will probably win regardless.

John Wickham
John Wickham is currently the owner of Elysium night club, located on Red River St. His candidacy is more of a statement than anything else, filing for the ballot in response to what he considered council member Dunkerley’s ill regard of “live music venues” in the recent smoking ordinance drafted by the council. More on that next.

Maybe now you are poised to observe the tireless imbroglio that is Austin City Council elections. If so, did you notice how all of the candidates are running on the same platform? At least now you know what that platform is, right?
Now we get to the interesting part. There are two propositions to be voted on in the upcoming election, both of them important.

First off is the Anti-Smoking Initiative. This is a topic of much heated debate, and for a good reason. The proposition would basically enforce a stricter ban on smoking than the one already in place. We would hate to alienate anyone who feels strongly about this topic, so we’ll try to give you the facts. Currently around 46,000 businesses in Austin are completely smoke free. This initiative would make it a point to single out the remaining 211 businesses that allow their patrons to indulge in “smokes” (when children under 18 are not present, as dictated by the current ordinance) and effectively ban smoking in these places as well. 200 of these businesses are bars, nightclubs, and music venues. Since statistics show a slow in bar and restaurant growth in states which have enforced a similar initiative (such as California) the live music industry in Austin (particularly the fledging clubs in the burgeoning Red River district) is generally against the initiative.
You might have detected a bias against the initiative on our part. The author does not smoke, and would actually enjoy the feeling of coming home from a show or bar and not smelling like old ciggarettes, but feels that this initiative is a bit too hasty in action. If, hypothetically, we observe an alarming dropoff in live music business, the effects of the initiative would still take at least two years to reverse. Perhaps continuing education campaigns about smoking is a much better way for our community to start to cut down on cancer sticks. We expect this proposition to bring a good deal of people out to vote.

The second proposition is less of a cause celebre, but just as important. The Austin Community College Annexation Referendum would annex sections of Round Rock, Eanes, and Pflugerville ISDs which are located within Austin city limits into ACC taxing district. This would raise taxes in these districts but at the same time grant students in these areas reduced in-district tuition, while increasing ACC’s funding. Where you stand on this issue laregly reflects on whether or not you live in one of said districts. And many residents of these areas believe that they should be the only ones voting on the referendum, because it concerns only them. We will say, however, that we believe this opinion fails to take into consideration the importance of ACC to the entire city; and ACC is, after all, the core issue involved here.

So there you have it. A caustic little manual to the issues involved in the 2005 City Elections. Remember to go out and vote on May 7. You can actually print this out and bring it with you as a reference if you want. It’s legal (we checked), but still kind of dorky.