As expected, the council heard competing visions of the best future use of the property which the city bought last year. The entire property extends from Main to Water Street, and the city has long planned to use most of the site for parking improvements. The 110 feet closest to Main is too narrow to use for parking, according to City Manager Mike Talbot.

The site was formerly home to the Texas Mercantile craft and antique outlet. That building burned in 2003 and was never rebuilt.

Speaking on behalf of the Bastrop Main Street Advisory Board, Steve DeWire laid out a vision for a downtown plaza and visitor comfort station on the site, including rest rooms, landscaping and shade trees. Such a public space would attract visitors to stay longer in the area and boost downtown sales, he argued.

He estimated the initial cost at $259,000 plus some $4,400 annual maintenance expense, chiefly rest room upkeep.

The Bastrop Economic Development Corp. offered a different vision. The board is ready to work with the council to redevelop the space for commercial use, returning the property to the tax roll and generating salex tax income, said BEDC President Joe Newman.

For instance BEDC could buy the site from the city for market value and then negotiate with potential developers with far more flexibility than state law permits the city to offer, said Newman.

More than one potential developer is awaiting a city decision, he said.

At the end of public testimony, Council Member Joe Beal said he still has little evidence about the likely economic impact of either choice.

Mayor Terry Orr noted that grant funding could help pay for a public use project, and the site “looks like a festival space to me.”

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The change was recommended earlier this year by a charter review committee headed by Council Member Ken Kesselus. The study panel was named by the mayor and other council members.

The council, however, declined to ask voters to consider adding two additional members to the city governing board, saying there appears to be little public support for such a measure now.

As currently proposed, the charter change would limit the mayor and council members to two consecutive three-year terms. Those officers would be forced to wait a year before seeking re-election.

The Texas Constitution will force additional changes in current city election rules if voters endorse three-year council terms, said city attorney J.C. Brown. The chief change will require that council members and the mayor be elected by majority vote instead of the plurality currently required. That could force run-off elections in some cases, said Brown.

In a related measure the council agreed to ask voters to decide if a sitting council member should be required to resign in order to run for the mayor’s seat. At the same time a mayor would be required to step aside in order to seek a council seat.

Other charter changes to go before voters include changing the title of the presiding officers of the Planning and Zoning commission from “chairman” and “vice chairman” to “chair” and “vice chair.” The mayor would also become the city’s “chief presiding officer” instead of the city’s “chief executive officer.”

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Buc-ee’s founder Beaver Aplin offered two arguments to justify the rebate request. First, he said, his bank needs the assurance of sales tax rebates as security for the construction loan, estimated at $6.8 million for the store at Texas 95 and Texas 71. Aplin also argued that some street and utility work required by city rules will provide benefits to adjoining property owners as well as his project.

Aplin asked for the city’s 1.5 percent sales tax on store sales to be reimbursed to Bec-ee’s for 10 years. That represents the share of the state’s 8.25 percent salex tax which currently goes to the city and the Bastrop Economic Development Corp. He is not seeking relief from local property and other taxes.

The rebate, if approved, could amount to some $150,000 a year. Aplin said his proposed store will not really compete with other local convenience stores because it’s a different class of operation.

Council Member Joe Beal asked for a formal written abatement proposal from Aplin before the council considers the request further.

Council Member Julie Hart said she encourages local retail competition as long as “it’s on a level playing fied,” suggesting that a sales tax rebate for Buc-ee’s might tilt the advantage.

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Also on the to-do list is some $320,000 to replace existing street lights on Main Street between Farm Street and the 800 block of Main. That suggestion, from City Manager Mike Talbot, was greeted with enthusiasm by the board which has long contemplated such a project but expected the price to be much higher, possibly more than $1 million.

The board agreed to decide later how to finance the projects, either with new borrowing, cash reserves or current operating funds. That decision can be postponed, the board decided.

Any BEDC spending plan for the coming fiscal year must also be approved by the Bastrop City Council sometime in the next two months.

Last year the BEDC board also proposed expanding the industrial park, but the city council finally approved only funds for final engineering for the project.

The Main Street lighting effort would replace current street lights with antique-style lighting along the three-block section of the historic commercial district, said Talbot. As presently envisioned, the work also includes replacing underground electric lines in order to support additional holiday lighting displays which have long been sought by downtown merchants.

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Chavez was released from the Bastrop County Jail on $225,000 bail last June 12. The alleged incident, involving a teen and sting operations aimed at alcohol sales by local retailers, took place May 30, 2009, according to investigators. The grand jury indictments, which are not evidence of guilt, name Chavez on charges of sexually assaulting the girl as well as official oppression,that is, acting “under color of his employment as a public servant, namely as a law enforcement agent for the Texas Alcohol Beverage Commission.”

Following the arrest of Chavez, TABC officials announced a state wide review and overhaul of rules for sting operations involving field agents and and underage informants working with them.

No trial date has been set.

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Last week 423rd District Judge Chris Duggan in Bastrop ruled that Haley Bellard can be tried as an adult for her alleged role in her mother’s death. On May 25 the state grand jury for Bastrop County returned an indictment against the teen, in effect sending the case to trial . An indictment indicates that grand jurors decided there is enough evidence to warrant a trial. The action also serves as formal notice of a felony charge against a defendant. An indictment is not evidence of guilt in any case.

Since Duggan’s ruling earlier this month, Haley Bellard has been held in the Bastrop County Jail under $100,000 bail. Previously she had been held in a juvenile facility in Seguin.

Also charged in the death of Tracy Bellard is 18-year-old Joseph Douglas. He is in the Bastrop County Jail under $750,000 bail. Criminal investigators believe Tracy Bellard was shot to death in her McDade home last Aug. 14 after she tried to break up a romantic relationshiip between her daughter and Douglas.

Prosecutors said it could be another year before the case comes to trial.

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Judy Ing died in a collision at Texas 95 and Hoffman Road Saturday morning. The vehicle she was driving was struck broadside by a pickup headed north on Texas 95 as she entered the intersection from Hoffman Road, said Police Chief David Board. Earlier in the morning she had gone to an area home to feed the cats of a couple who were out of town for the weekend, according to close friends.

The other driver involved in the mishap, whose named was not immediately available, was taken to Lakeside Hospital with injuries which were not considered life threatening, said Board.

Ing, a photographer, writer and graphic designer, was retired from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Research Center near Smithville. For many years she was a stalwart and leader in both the Bastrop County Audubon Society chapter and the Bastrop County Environmental Network. At various times she worked with or directed periodical publications for both organizations.

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• Springnet 227 – SMCAustin – Brian Massey, Melanie Wise, more – Austin, Texas Social Media Club met at Bazaarvoice on 5/18/10 and http://spring.net asked Melanie Wise @mwise1, Brian Massey, Amy Lemen, and “B” the question “What did you learn at Austin Social Media Clubs session on Social Media and Higher Education?” Brian Massey is well known as the “Conversion Scientist” and Melanie Wise is looking for a marketing position. Hire her!
• Springnet 227 – SMCAustin – Brian Massey, Melanie Wise, more – Austin, Texas Social Media Club met at Bazaarvoice on 5/18/10 and http://spring.net asked Melanie Wise @mwise1, Brian Massey, Amy Lemen, and “B” the question “What did you learn at Austin Social Media Clubs session on Social Media and Higher Education?” Brian Massey is well known as the “Conversion Scientist” and Melanie Wise is looking for a marketing position. Hire her!
• Springnet 227 – SMCAustin – Brian Massey, Melanie Wise, more – Austin, Texas Social Media Club met at Bazaarvoice on 5/18/10 and http://spring.net asked Melanie Wise @mwise1, Brian Massey, Amy Lemen, and “B” the question “What did you learn at Austin Social Media Clubs session on Social Media and Higher Education?” Brian Massey is well known as the “Conversion Scientist” and Melanie Wise is looking for a marketing position. Hire her!
• Springnet 227 – SMCAustin – Brian Massey, Melanie Wise, more – Austin, Texas Social Media Club met at Bazaarvoice on 5/18/10 and http://spring.net asked Melanie Wise @mwise1, Brian Massey, Amy Lemen, and “B” the question “What did you learn at Austin Social Media Clubs session on Social Media and Higher Education?” Brian Massey is well known as the “Conversion Scientist” and Melanie Wise is looking for a marketing position. Hire her!
• Springnet 227 – SMCAustin – Brian Massey, Melanie Wise, more – Austin, Texas Social Media Club met at Bazaarvoice on 5/18/10 and http://spring.net asked Melanie Wise @mwise1, Brian Massey, Amy Lemen, and “B” the question “What did you learn at Austin Social Media Clubs session on Social Media and Higher Education?” Brian Massey is well known as the “Conversion Scientist” and Melanie Wise is looking for a marketing position. Hire her!
• Trapped in Big Bend canyon, Austinite fights to survive – story of survival in the South Texas desert
• Run Ricky Run – Ricky Williams reveals himself in documentary – My video and article about Ricky Williams documentary “Run Ricky Run” at the Bob Bullock Texas History Museum on Friday, April 30, 2010. Ricky dropped out of football to study Ayervedic medicine and yoga in Grass Valley, CA but now he’s returned to football and moving back to Austin.

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Hailey Bellard had been held in a juvenile detention facility since she and her 18-year-old boyfriend, Joseph Douglas, were questioned in August 2009 about the disappearance of Tracy Bellard, who worked at the family restaurant, Mimi G’s, on FM 1441 north of Bastrop. Douglas, also charged with murder, remains in jail under $500,000 bail.

District Attorney Bryan Goertz said he will seek a grand jury indictment against Hailey Bellard next week. Grand jury action is required to send any felony case to trial.

Criminal investigators believe Tracy Bellard was shot to death at her McDade home after she repeatedly tried to interfere with a romantic relationship between her daughter, 14 at the time, and Douglas.

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In recent weeks, Council Member Kenneth Kesselus has been leading a panel of former officials and other residents in a detailed review of the 2002 city charter with a view to suggesting possible amendments to the city council. Only the council can put particular changes before voters in a future referendum, said Kesselus.

The crowd at the hearing liked some of the committee’s tentative suggestions–retaining the current limit of six years continuous service on the council and the mayor’s office, for one. Another topic also struck a responsive chord–extending council terms to three years instead of the present two years.

Other possible changes which drew comments included adding a sixth council member to the present five and a provision allowing the mayor to vote on all issues coming before the council. Presently the mayor can only vote to break a tie.

The sharpest division of opinion arose over whether to call for council members to be elected from single-member geographic districts. Presently all five council members and the mayor are elected from the city at large. A number of those attending the hearing vigorously called for single-member districts. Members of the charter review committee were reluctant to endorse such a move, citing both technical difficulties and other considerations, especially before results of the 2010 US Census are released.

One line of argument suggested that it might be difficult to draw districts of roughly equal population which would not also diminish the potential for Hispanic and African-American residents to be elected to council seats, as required by the US Voting Rights Act and related court decisions. For more than two decades under the at-large election system the city council has included almost continuously both at least one African-American and one Hispanic representative.

Single-member district proponents noted that every member of the present city council lives in an area bounded on the west by the Colorado River and on the north and east by the Union Pacific Railroad. Areas including Tahitian Village, Riverside Grove and Hunters Crossing are not represented on the present council.

Kesselus said the study committee will draft its recommendations in time for the council to review their work and call for a November referendum.

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The vacant property fronting Main Street could become a downtown attraction with benches, shade trees and public restrooms, said designer Dan Hays-Clark. He said a rough cost estimate for the development might be $250,000. Main Street board member Steve DeWire, who manages the Lost Pines resort west of town, said the suggestion deserves further study.

Council Member Ken Kesselus said the site is also a point of interest for private developers. “I need to hear from others” before any decision on the future of the property, he said.

Council Member Julie Hart said the council should “look at other options, too” before endorsing the Main Street board suggestion.

Private interests in acquiring and developing the property were not identified. Mayor Terry Orr said he’s interested in the Main Street board suggestion but will hold a public hearing on the issue before any council vote. The city acquired the property last fall, chiefly to secure additional downtown parking and utility rights of way. The property extends from Main to Water Street.

Main Street Program Manager Nancy Wood said future planning efforts for the site should include how to pay for proposed improvements and ongoing maintenance costs.

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The winning candidates include former Bastrop city councilman John Creamer, Bastrop Planning and Zoning Commission member Christy Kossser and veteran political activist Vic Gonzalez.

The Bastrop County Water Control and Improvement District No. 2, which covers the 7,000-lot Tahitian Village subdivision from the southeast sector of Bastrop into adjoining parts of Bastrop County to the Colorado River, oversees water, sewer and road improvement services in the area.

The insurgent campaign raised questions about recent administrative oversight of the district’s affairs as well as road and street improvement plans and execution.

Holdover board members include Bastrop surveyor Dale Olson and businessman Stan Wellso.

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Linda Apostalo won 1,195 votes to swamp Gary Jefferson’s 413 votes for the Place 6 school board seat formerly held by Sophia Williams, who did not seek re-election this year.

In Place 5, however, incumbent Glenn Peterson narrowly won re-election with 837 votes, nine ballots ahead of challenger Carol Armstrong, a Bastrop accountant.

A three-way race for the Place 7 seat was almost as close. Incumbent trustee Jim Mills won 653 votes, just over 38 percent of the total, to lead challengers Kelly Bender (503 votes) and Jim Clark (547 votes).

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Incumbent Joe Beal was handily re-elected to a second two-year term with 436 votes, almost 62 percent of the total turnout. Challenger Bob Parmelee had made a name for himself over the past year as an activist in the so-called tea party movement. His campaign appealed to voters who felt “over-taxed and under-represented” in city affairs.
Parmelee, who lives in the Tahitian Village subdivision on Bastrop’s southeast side, also noted in campaign materials that currently the mayor and all five sitting council members live in the city’s historic central core on the east bank of the Colorado River.

Mayor Terry Orr and Council Member Julie Hart were also elected to second terms in office May 8. Neither had opponents this year.

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Main Street Manager Nancy Wood asked Mayor Terry Orr to put off the presentation after some of the planned speakers left the session because it had gone on so long. Orr said he will reschedule a time, earlier in a future council meeting, to hear the Main Street group’s suggestions.

Tuesday’s council session began at 6 p.m. and lasted until past 9:30 p.m.

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In September last year the city paid $230,000 for the burned out lot at 923 Main St., mostly for the rear part of the property which extends to Water Street between Water Street Mill Works and The Bastrop Advertiser. The council has had its eye on the property for roughly 10 years because it was deemed key to improving downtown parking and traffic flow in the so-called Alley D in the 900 block between Main and Water Street. City voters approved borrowing to pay for such improvements in 2003.

Buildings which had occupied the Main Street frontage of the property since the 19th century were destroyed by fires in 1980 and again in 2003. Since then the historic street scape has exhibited a notable gap–a cement slab surrounded on three sides by historic brick walls–immediately north of what is now Baxters on Main, a restaurant.

When the city approved buying the property last year, some council members suggested that the Main Street frontage could be resold to a private developer for some commercial use, especially since some of them had been snooping out opportunities there for several years but had been unable to make a deal with the owner.

The current debate is sparked by a rival vision for the property. On Tuesday when the city council meets at 6 p.m. at City Hall, Main Street Project manager Nancy Wood will outline a suggestion to make the vacant area into a public plaza to attract and comfort downtown visitors and other shoppers with benches, shade and public restrooms. The site could also play a role in public festivities, supporters suggest.

Last week Mayor Terry Orr declared that he will resist any move for a council decision on the issue until after a full and open public hearing which has not been scheduled. Interest in the site from private developers remains active, said Council Member Ken Kesselus in an interview last week.

Also last week the Bastrop Economic Development Corp. board declined to take up the issue, though the topic was on its agenda for discussion and possible action. The board agreed to delay any consideration of what future the site might have until the city council has signaled the direction it wants to take.

The politics of a decision may be complicated, but the issue at stake or easy to grasp. Will the city be better served by developing the vacant space on Main Street as a public amenity or by selling it for private development to boost the property tax roll and stimulate new commercial activity?

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In September last year the city paid $230,000 for the burned out lot at 923 Main St., mostly for the rear part of the property which extends to Water Street between Water Street Mill Works and The Bastrop Advertiser. The council has had its eye on the property for roughly 10 years because it was deemed key to improving downtown parking and traffic flow in the so-called Alley D in the 900 block between Main and Water Street. City voters approved borrowing to pay for such improvements in 2003.

Buildings which had occupied the Main Street frontage of the property since the 19th century were destroyed by fires in 1980 and again in 2003. Since then the historic street scape has exhibited a notable gap–a cement slab surrounded on three sides by historic brick walls–immediately north of what is now Baxters on Main, a restaurant.

When the city approved buying the property last year, some council members suggested that the Main Street frontage could be resold to a private developer for some commercial use, especially since some of them had been snooping out opportunities there for several years but had been unable to make a deal with the owner.

The current debate is sparked by a rival vision for the property. On Tuesday when the city council meets at 6 p.m. at City Hall, Main Street Project manager Nancy Wood will outline a suggestion to make the vacant area into a public plaza to attract and comfort downtown visitors and other shoppers with benches, shade and public restrooms. The site could also play a role in public festivities, supporters suggest.

Last week Mayor Terry Orr declared that he will resist any move for a council decision on the issue until after a full and open public hearing which has not been scheduled. Interest in the site from private developers remains active, said Council Member Ken Kesselus in an interview last week.

Also last week the Bastrop Economic Development Corp. board declined to take up the issue, though the topic was on its agenda for discussion and possible action. The board agreed to delay any consideration of what future the site might have until the city council has signaled the direction it wants to take.

The politics of a decision may be complicated, but the issue at stake or easy to grasp. Will the city be better served by developing the vacant space on Main Street as a public amenity or by selling it for private development to boost the property tax roll and stimulate new commercial activity?

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The plan is to issue certificates of obligation, a form of bond debt obligation which does not require prior voter approval. More than half the total, some $5.5 million, is earmarked for the county’s four road and bridge precincts. Specific projects are not identified in public documents immediately available for review.

The next largest project is a proposed $4 million office building on Jackson Street to house operations of the tax assessor’s office and the county’s development services department. The county already owns the site on the east of Jackson near the county jail and Bastrop Central Appraisal District offices. Construction could begin later this year, an official said.

The tax assessor presently operates out of the Courthouse Annex at 804 Pecan St. in Bastrop. Development Services is housed in the former Kershaw & Jenkins law offices at 802 Water St. across the street from the main Courthouse complex.

The remaining bond funds will go for technology improvements, mostly emergency service and jail communications, as well as a communications tower site in the Rosanky area.

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• How hard is it for an intelligent person to get a job in Austin, Texas? –
• How hard is it for an intelligent person to get a job in Austin, Texas? – JacquelinesLife talks to the Examiner at the Social Media Lunch put on by Adomatica and Calendars.com
• Texas Coworking interviews Kristin Diable – interview with a great new singer at SXSW
• http://blip.tv/file/3298000 – @laniar talks about social media and building your own social network with her husband Benn Rosales. http://twitter.com/laniar This video can also be seen on http://spring.net
• Texas Coworking celebrates Boagworld 200 Friday 4 am! – Texas Coworking Video Conference Event: Boagworld 200.

  At 200 E 6th Street 301 (third floor), Austin, TX, 78701. http://texascoworking.com

  Friday Feb 12, 2010 starting at 4 am till 4 pm with Happy Hour after at BD Rileys pub downstairs from Tex

• Google Sidewiki is PR Game Changer | PR Blog News – Here?s how Google spins it: What if everyone, from a local expert to a renowned doctor, had an easy way of sharing their insights with you about any page on the web? What if you could add your own insights for others who are passing through? In other words – what if Google can turn everybody into a content producer and then rank and control all that content?

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Amplification: Guild officials will briefly outline their plans for redeveloping the Clardy site on Chestnut Street as part of the event, according to fundraising chair Karol Rice. See the previous post on this site.

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Steve Cartwright is opening a small barbecue restaurant in part of the Star Mart convenience store at Chestnut and Haysel Street. Remodeling work is underway and the opening is planned for early May.

Cartwright operated a popular barbecue restaurant in the 900 block of Main Street beginning in the late 1980s and later built and sold the current Cartwright BBQ on Texas 71. A non compete clause in the sales agreement for that enterprise is expiring, he said in an interview this week. He plans to open his new venture with a basic barbecue menu, a few tables and takeout service, he said.

Meanwhile, immediately across Chestnut to the north, Clyde Clardy said he has agreed to sell the site and its metal-clad 19th century building of 12,000 square feet to a local arts group which hopes to redevelop the the property as an art center with studios, teaching space and display galleries. Presently used as an auto repair facility, the main building dates to the 1890s or earlier and was formerly used to house a cotton gin, cotton seed storage and still later a grain storage facility beside the rail depot.

Clardy, who has owned the property since 1970, said the transaction has up to a year to close. He would not comment on the agreed sales price, put by one unconfirmed source at $400,000.

The non profit Bastrop Fine Arts Guild has been raising funds for a few years with the goal of establishing a downtown gallery and related arts facilities. The group will hold its major annual fund raising gala, An Artful Afternoon, on April 17 in Bastrop.

Owners of other Chestnut Street properties, including the Star Mart and the former coin operated laundry at Chestnut and Hill Street, also report being approached in recent weeks by property shoppers interested in the area and its redevelopment potential.

The Bastrop Economic Development Corp. is paying for utility, sidewalk and landscaping upgrades along Chestnut from Water Street to the railroad. That work could be finished as early as June.

City voters approved building a new city hall in 2003 and work began early this year. The building should be finished and occupied before year’s end. The convention center, which will be largely paid for with hotel room rent taxes, is expected to open early in 2011.

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Today the same jury sentenced Tarver to 32 years in prison, based in part on his prior arrest and conviction history dating back to 1998.

Edwin Williams, 29, pleaded guilty last week to his part in the heist in return for a 30-year prison term as part of an agreement with prosecutors. Another co-defendant in the case, Nathaniel Pellerin, 20, testified against Tarver last week, apparently under a separate plea agreement with prosecuting attirneys. Pellerin has not formally been tried or sentenced for his role in the case.

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The indictment, handed up by a state grand jury in Bastrop, orders Kenneth Douglas to stand trial for driving drunk on June 18 last year with Haley Bellard, then 14, as a passenger. Both Haley Bellard, now 15, and 18-year-old Joseph Douglas are in custody on murder charges in the death of Tracy Bellard last August at her McDade home.

Investigators have alleged Tracy Bellard was shot to death and her body later transported to a site near Smithville where it was burned in a brush pile. Tracy Bellard was widely known in the Bastrop area in connection with her work at the family restaurant, Mimi G’s, on FM 1441 north of Bastrop. She had repeatedly attempted to thwart a romantic relationship between her daughter and Joseph Douglas, according to police and court records.

Officials close to the case have declined to comment on possible connections between the Kenneth Douglas indictment and the murder prosecution of Joseph Douglas and Haley Bellard. Prosecutors are seeking to have the case against Haley Bellard handled under adult criminal rules instead of juvenile law. A hearing on that move has not been scheduled in 423rd District Court.

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He was also owner of the DD exotic game and hunting preserve south of Smithville in the Rosanky area and a publicity-shy figure in the Smithville community.

The company he founded in 1968, Enterprise Products Partners LP , and took public in 1998 owned some 48,000 miles of oil, gas and petrochemical product pipelines in the U.S. as well as 25 natural gas processing plants, according to the AP report. The cause of death was not immediately announced by the company.

His wealth, estimated at $9 billion, put Duncan among the 100 richest U.S. residents, by some accounts.

The Rosanky exotic game ranch was apparently an outgrowth of one of his personal passions, big game hunting. The “Double D” spread included herds of large game animals from North America, Africa and Asia which were carefully managed for hunting by Duncan customers and guests. The lavish grounds include a luxurious hunting lodge, fishing lake, and meat processing facilities.

In 2002 Duncan attracted wide attention after being suspected of illegally shooting sheep and moose from a helicopter while on a hunting expedition in Russia. He was never formally charged with a crime in connection with the incident. He insisted that he and others on the trip did not know the activity was illegal.

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The current statewide water planning process calls for determining a number of basic factors including what is called managed available groundwater (MAG) and desired future conditions for aquifers (DFC). The Lost Pines board, which oversees groundwater resources in Bastrop and Lee County, cannot by itself determine those numbers, and when that work will be complete is not clear to officials.

Lost Pines officials imposed a moratorium on new drilling into the Simsboro aquifer last month amid growing pressure from private water interests to boost allowable pumping sharply and soon. District officials fear they may have already issued drilling permits for more water than is likely to be available over the next 50 years without depleting the aquifer.

Extending the ban was denounced by officials of a water marketing group, End-Op, which hopes to complete a deal to sell up to 56,000 acre feet of water a year to the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority for use in the San Marcos area or further south. As much or more Simsboro water is also being sought in Lee and Bastrop County by other interests, including the Brazos River Authority.

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Dustin Dickman and Dennis Leetch were arrested late in Januray in connection with the death of Michael VanDyke, 23, who had been working as a cook at the Old Frontier restaurant in Paige before his disappearance about the middle of December. Sheriff’s department investigators believe the two assaulted VanDyke outside the Paige area residence he shared with Dickman and Dickman’s girlfriend, who has not been charged in the case.

Investigators also believe that VanDyke was initially buried in a shallow grave near the residence but later moved to a rural site near San Marcos where the body was burned, possibly beyond identification, over a period of perhaps 36 hours.

Dickman and Leetch are both being held in the Bastrop County Jail under $500,000 bail each. An indictment by grand jurors sends the case to trial but is not evidence of guilt.

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On Tuesday the city council approved hanging signs for two events on the 1923 structure next month. But later in the meeting the council also approved on first reading a new law which will, if given final clearance, ban hanging similar notices in the future. The ban has been pushed by the city’s Historic Landmark Commission and the Parks Board.

The bridge is listed on The National Register of Historic Places and became part of Bastrop’s park system after it was donated to the city once a new concrete span was completed on Chestnut/Loop 150 by the Texas Department of Transportation.

The council asked City Manager Mike Talbot to identify alternative high traffic sites where future community event announcements can be located in the city. Talbot said he will try to develop recommendations by late April for council consideration. The present bridge carries about 16,000 vehicles a day, said Talbot.

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Operated by the non-profit Lost Pines Golf Club for decades under a contract with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Judge Benton Eskew told the council the organization is running a deficit and, without some city assistance, could be forced to shut down rather than sign a new contract for continued operation. “Right now we can’t make ends meet,” said Eskew. The current contract is up for renewal in August, he said.

Eskew is judge of the Bastrop County Court at Law.

Golf club officials will negotiate for new contract terms, but Eskew urged the council to consider some form of assistance to help close an operating deficit he estimated at $24,000 to $30,000 a year. The course also badly needs some maintenance work, he said.

“It’s no country club,” said Eskew. “It’s blue collar,” appealing both to “kids and seniors.”

At Monday’s council workshop session, where no decisions were made, council members offered various tentative suggestions. “Let us grind on this,” Mayor Terry Orr told Eskew and other backers. “I don’t have an answer (right now), but the golf course is a major asset (for Bastrop).”

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The 1986 former Cap Metro bus will come from Williamson County, which no longer needs the vehicle, said Mike Fisher, the county’s emergency management coordinator. His office already has the radio and related equipment needed to outfit the unit, said Fisher.

The price will be covered by seized drug money held by the county sheriff’s office. The bus “still has some useful life in it,” Fisher told commissioners.

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Two incumbents will be on the ballot, but one current board member is not seeking another term in office.

For the Place 5 seat, Trustee Glenn Peterson is standing for re-election. He is being challenged by Carol Armstrong.

In Place 6, veteran Board Member Sophia Willisams declined running for another term. Gary Jefferson and Linda Apostalo both want the post.

For the Place 7 seat, incumbent Jim Mills is facing two contenders, Kelly Bender and Jim Clark who has sought election twice in the past.

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The filing deadline was 5 p.m. yesterday, and after 4 p.m. Tahitian Village resident Bob Parmelee appeared at City Hall on Main Street to file for a place on the May council ballot.

Previously only Beal, Mayor Terry Orr and Council Member Julie Hart had filed for places on the ballot. All three were first elected to office in 2008.

Over the past year Parmelee has emerged as an outspoken participant in various so-called Tea Party politicanl events in Bastrop and Travis County. Last fall he was ejected from Kerr Community Center in Bastrop for being disruptive during a gathering which featured US Congressman Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat.

Beal is a former general manager of the Lower Colorado River Authority. Previously he served on Bastrop’s Planning and Zoning Commission.

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The report by Texas AgriLife Extension Service agent Rachel Bauer estimated total production in the county at $46.9 million for 2008. That total fell to $26.2 million in 2009, she said.

In 2006, before the onset of a multi-year drought, the total production was valued at $63.2 million.

Bastrop County’s biggest products, hay and cattle, also took the biggest hits, according to Bauer’s figures. Hay production, valued at $5.7 million in 2006, sank to $2.3 million last year.

Beef cattle production, which reached some $34 million in 2006, fell to an estimated $24.9 million in 2008 and sank to $16.7 million in 2009 as producers thinned or sold off herds while grass and water disappeared during the dry period.

Pecan production, which topped $3 million in 2007, dipped to less than $1 million in 2009. Vegetables were valued at $1.9 million in 2007 but fell to $837,000 last year.

A few minor production categories showed increases, however. Bauer estimated the value of hogs in 2006 at $45,000, a number which had more than doubled to $99,000 by 2009. Hunting, recreation and timber production also either held steady or showed small gains since 2007, according to the report.

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Democratic ballots were fully counted and winners determined by about 10:30 p.m., with party voters favoring the two incumbents who had primary opponents.

Republican poll watchers were still waiting for the final ballots to be counted at 11 p.m. Some GOP polling places ran out of printed ballots and voters were forced to fill out makeshift ballots which were then transferred to a form which could be counted by an optical scanner, officials said.

Incumbent GOP County Commissioner Clara Beckett in Pct. 2 seemed headed to an easy renomination over challenger Adam Meuth. With some votes still out, Beckett held a 1047 to 431 vote lead.

The race was much closer between Republican Pct. 4 Commissioner candidates seeking to challenge Democrat Lee Dildy in the November general election. David “Rocky” Palmquist held a narrow 342 to 321 lead over rival Ron Jay, with results from one voting box still to be reported. The winner will face the veteran Democrat in November.

Dildy overcame a challenge from Michael Flowers for the Democratic nomination, 502 to 444, with all ballots counted.

In the contest which has drawn the most candidate interest this year–for Pct. 1 justice of the Peace–Democratic incumbent Bill Weddle turned back challenger Dickie Henderson, 503 to 325.

On the Republican side in Pct. 1, Justice of the Peace hopeful Donna VanGilder apparently won a four-way race without a runoff. With one voting box still to be reported, Van Gilder had 708 votes (54.7 percent) with a large lead over other GOP candidates including Vann Pressley with 279, J.W. Snell with 221 and Sue Fruge with 84.

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Corbett said she will not hold court during party primary elections in Texas on March 2, which is also Texas Independence Day.

Daniel Lee Holmes is accused of altering or destroying a quantity of methamphetamine to prevent its use as evidence in a drug possession investigation. The alleged offense took place March 16, 2007.

Holmes is being defended by Bastrop lawyer Van Presley, who is also a candidate in Tuesday’s GOP party primary. Presley is seeking the party’s nomination for the Pct. 1 Justice of the Peace slot. He has three primary opponents. Two other candidates are seeking the Democratic nomination for the post.

The Holmes trial is expected to conclude later this week.

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Lt. Eddie L. Matthews, 45, was taken into custody about 8:45 a.m. Friday and ordered held under $100,000 bail. Jail records show that Matthews was released at 3:21 p.m. after a local bail bond company posted a bond the same day.

Pickering scheduled a media briefing on the case for 2 p.m. Friday, but the session did not begin until almost 2:30 p.m. It lasted about 30 minutes.

Matthews, a 16-year veteran of the sheriff’s department, was in charge of the patrol division prior to his arrest. He was immediately suspended from duty pending an internal departmental probe, said Pickering. Matthews is accused of repeated assaults on the girl beginning last year.

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Lt. Eddie L. Matthews, 45, was arrested at 8:45 a.m. Friday and ordered held in the Bastrop County Jail under $100,000 bail, according to public records and a statement by Sheriff Terry Pickering. A 16-year veteran of the sheriff’s department, Matthews was also suspended with pay pending an internal sheriff’s department investigation, said Pickering. Matthews had been in charge of the sheriff’s department uniformed services sections, including the patrol division, according to the sheriff.

The investigation began Feb. 25 when an Elgin police detective contacted Texas Ranger Brent Barina about child sexual assault allegations against Matthews, according to a court document. Barina subsequently met with state Child Protective Services officials, interviewed the girl’s mother and arranged for the child to be interviewed at the Children’s Advocacy Center in Bastrop. Matthews was also interviewed and denied any inappropriate conduct, according to Barina.

The child said she had been repeatedly molested and assaulted by Matthews since October 2009, according to a sworn statement by Barina.

In a press statement Friday, Sheriff Pickering said the alleged offenses did not arise from the officer’s law enforcement duties, and the alleged victim “was not a stranger” to Matthews.

The formal charge against Matthews is “Continuing Sexual Abuse of a Child,” an offense which carries a penalty, upon conviction, of 25 years to life in prison without parole.

Bastrop County employment records show that Matthews worked for the sheriff’s department from January 1993 to July 2204, then was rehired in January 2005. Pickering said Matthews had received a number of commendations for his job performance during his time with the department.

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In a dramatic turnaround from recent polling patterns, voters in the Republican primary are outnumbering their Democratic counterparts by a margin of almost two to one. Through Feb. 25, 1495 ballots in Bastrop County had been cast in the GOP primary. Through the same period only 844 votes had been cast in the Democratic primary.

Today was the last day for early voting in the primaries. Election day is Tuesday, March 2.

Four years ago, when Texas staged its last election for governor, Bastrop County’s early voting primary turnout reached only 611 Republican ballots and 832 on the Democratic side.

GOP primary interest is centered on a heated contested for the governorship as well as contests for the party’s nomination for county commissioners in Pct. 2 and Pct. 4, not to mention four Republicans seeking to challenge the incumbent Democrat, Bill Weddle, for the Pct. 1 Justice of the Peace bench.

Weddle also has a Democratic opponent, Dickie Henderson, and Pct. 4 Commissioner Lee Dildy is facing a Democratic Party challenger, Michael Flowers, as well.

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School will begin at 9:45 a.m. Wednesday for students in grades Pre-K to 4. Students in grades 5 to 12 will begin classes at 10;30 a.m., according to an announcement emailed from BISD offices at 9:20 p.m. Tuesday.

As rain, sleet and snow dusted the Bastrop area during the day Tuesday, emergency management officials worried about the possibility of icy bridges and roads if temperatures fell below freezing overnight.

The Bastrop City Council called off its 6 p.m. meeting Tuesday because of weather conditions.

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Bastrop school officials said all events scheduled for Tuesday evening have been called off. They will monitor conditions overnight and decide early Wednesday whether or not to cancel classes for the day, said BISD communications director Donald Williams.

By mid afternoon Tuesday some roads in northern Bastrop County, including U.S. 290, had begun icing over in places, forcing some lane closures, said Peter Hicks in the Bastrop County Office of Emergency Management. The chief worry, however, is what happens overnight as temperatures fall, possibly into the upper 20s, said Hicks.

Some forecasts hint that overnight lows could reach 28 degrees F, cold enough to freeze moisture on bridges and roadways after a rainy day, said Hicks. Anyone considering a drive late Tuesday or early Wednesday should take notice of overnight temperatures and the possibility of icy roads, he added.

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Michael Vandyke, 23, had been employed as a cook at a Paige restaurant before his disappearance about Dec. 15 last year. On Dec. 30 relatives reported him missing to Bastrop County law enforcement. His body has never been found, but a roommate and another friend are both being held in the Bastrop County Jail on murder charges.

Dustin Dickman, 24, and Dennis Leetch, 25, are behind bars under $500,000 bail each. Dickman and his girlfriend shared a residence with Vandyke near Paige. According to a court document, Dickman told investigators that he and Leetch assaulted Vandyke early on Dec. 16 “to teach him a lesson on how to treat family and friends.”

The documents do not suggest what might have prompted this instructional session.

Investigators believe Vandyke died after Leetch knocked him to the ground with a beer bottle and was kicked both by Dickman and Leetch before being struck repeatedly in the head with a block of wood by each man. Dickman was arrested Jan. 25 after being interrogated by investigators. Leetch was arrested Jan. 29 in San Marcos and talked with investigators as well, according to court records.

According to court documents Leetch also told investigators that Vandyke was initially buried in a shallow grave near the Paige residence Vandyke shared with Dickman and his girlfriend, was exhumed early in January and taken to a rural site near San Marcos in Hays County. The body was placed in an metal tool box designed for the bed of a pickup truck, doused with gasoline and burned for “approximately 1 1/2 days” or roughly 36 hours, one document says.

Afterward the “ashes” went into “an old BBQ pit” and were discarded in a trash dumpster at a San Marcos apartment complex, the documents suggest.

Investigators told a judge they found a site near San Marcos where they believe Vandyke’s body had been burned . They later recovered from a separate rural location the tool box which may have been used to incenerate the corpse.

Sheriff’s Department investigator Mike Daniel said Vandyke’s remains are likely long buried in a solid waste landfill but that the tool box and other items recovered during the investigation are being examined for trace evidence by the Texas Department of Public Safety crime laboratory in Austin.

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The undertaking is especially important at this juncture, perhaps, because our most senior council members have not yet been in office two years, the others less than a year. So, yes, they might profitably spend some time together thinking through what they most need to focus on and why.

Yet keeping the council’s collective eye on a unifying and distant dream of the future is proving problematic, for two reasons at least. One is temperament. Council members Ken Kesselus and Kay McAnally seem most comfortable with forming overarching visions to help shape near-term goals, activities and plans. Perhaps the sharpest contrast is with Mayor Terry Orr and Council member Joe Beal, both engineers by training. Just looking around town, they see lots of issues which need addressing sooner rather than later. Council member Julie Hart seems temperamentally more aligned with Orr and Beal.

Sharpening this divide, perhaps, is that Orr, Beal and Hart are all facing re-election in less than three months, and at least in some cases they’ve clearly been hearing from likely voters who have causes to plead. The last day to file for a place on the May city ballot to challenge any one of them is March 8.

And to be fair, every Bastrop council since at least 1985 has been pushed and pulled by the competing demands of thinking and planning for the long term vitality of the community versus handling the press of more mundane tasks like fixing the potholes, draining the swamp, cleaning up the trash, deciding on construction plans and permits, etc., etc. For proof, just look at any regular council business meeting agenda.

The city manager and all his department directors face the same problem because each day has only 24 hours and all of them must stop to eat and sleep at least occasionally. So it’s small wonder that a few vital planning and visioning issues so far seem to have slipped under the council’s long range radar horizon.

I’ll touch on only two such topics briefly here with a promise to return to both later. A controversial tree protection law for the city and its extra-territorial jurisdiction was recently scuttled by the council without so much as a public hearing. As the council in recent weeks has discussed planning issues of import, I think I have yet to hear the phrase “tree protection.” This from a city which proclaims itself “Heart of the Lost Pines” and whose character, appearance and attractiveness are significantly defined by the natural landscape? Hello! Anybody home?

And I can’t see how to divorce the tree issue from the broader topic of how the city needs to manage its giant and crucial ETJ for future generations. Now that Bastrop has been named a destination of distinction by the National Truse for Historic Preservation, can any council reasonably ignore the opportunity afforded by its (limited) control over areas between the city and Austin to enhance Bastrop’s allure?

Anyone not concerned about future unpleasant possibilities should take a fresh look at the four corners of the Texas 95 intersection with Texas 71 in Bastrop. How many more acres of trees should the city allow to be cleared away to be decorated by additional billboards and flashing advertising signs along Texas 71 between Bastrop and Garfield? That landscape and prime development corridor is already heavily degraded, in case anyone didn’t notice.

How the city handles such issues will help define Bastrop for decades. Hello! Anyone home?

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The 12-member jury was selected Jan. 8, and prosecution testimony in the case began the next morning.

A mistrial ruling means that a new trial must be scheduled and a new jury seated to hear the case. Duggan did not immediately set a new trial date.

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So far none of the three, first elected in 2008, has an opponent.

Candidates have until March 8 to file for a place on this year’s ballot, said Valdez.

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Former school trustee Karen Halladay has signed up to challenge incumbent Glenn Peterson who is seeking re-election to the Place 5 seat.

In Place 6 Linda Apostalo will be on the May ballot.

Incumbent trustee Jim Mills is seeking re-election to Place 7.

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State District Judge Chris Duggan is presiding over the trial in 423rd District Court. Larry Jones died from injuries sustained following a drug-related confrontation, including wounds inflicted by a pick ax, according to sheriff’s department investigators. The dispute began in a rural wooded area west of Bastrop frequented by transients and other homeless persons, officials believe.

Among the panel of potential jurors was Pct. 4 County Commissioner Lee Dildy, who did not attend a meeting of county commissioners Monday as a result of his jury service.

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The sheriff said his current budget can absorb the first year’s lease or lease/purchase payment of some $170,000, but he told commissioners he needs their agreement to fund the final three years of a payment plan contract. Pct. 2 Commissioner Clara Beckett urged Pickering to work with County Auditor Lisa Smith on current year budget revisions to allow the initial year’s payment.

The sheriff said the new in-car video equipment linked to laptop computers will make patrol operations more efficient and effective. The scanty video equipment now in use is outdated, he said.

Pct. 1 Commissioner Willie Pina and Pct. 4 Commissioner Lee Dildy did not attend Monday’s meeting.

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The present terms of Mayor Terry Orr and Council Member Julie Hart also end this year unless they win new terms in the May city elections. So far Beal is the only announced candidate.

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Despite a flurry of publicity and investigation over the following weeks, no one has ever been charged, arrested or tried for the crime. Wharton was a leading organizer in efforts to stymie lignite strip mining plans first at Camp Swift, in Fayette County and later at the Steiner Ranch north of Bastrop. She was a founding member of the Central Texas Lignite Watch, the mother or grandmother of subsequent environmental organizations in Bastrop and neighboring counties. She was also a founding member of the Sayersville Historical Association focused on the rural community where she lived between Bastrop and Elgin on the banks of Big Sandy Creek.

The initial investigation into the murder was hampered by inter-agency rivalries during the 1984 primary election race for Bastrop County sheriff. In the late 1980s former sheriff Con Kiersey occasionally talked about reviving the investigation, but nothing occurred as a result. Still later Chief Deputy Sheriff Ronnie Duncan did reopen the case, but the only result was to clear a few possible suspects who had been the subject of early interest.

When Chief Deputy Charlie Littleton replaced Duncan in the sheriff’s department last year, he promised to look into the Wharton murder again. Littleton said recently that the only ongoing effort to solve the case is a regular check of DNA evidence preserved at the time against a growing data base of similar evidence gathered by law enforcement agencies in the years since. A Texas Ranger remains assigned to follow any new information, said Littleton.

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However two other men are already in jail for the death of 23-year-old Michael Van Dyke. Investigators believe Van Dyke was beaten to death at his Paige home late last year. Charged in the case are Dustin Dickman, 24, and Dennis Leetch, 25. Apparently Van Dyke has not been seen since about Dec. 15. On Dec. 27 relatives alerted authorities that he was missing.

At first investigators suspected that the victim’s body had been dumped in a stock pond or some similar body of water. However they now believe his body may have been burned at a site in Hays County, according to sources who asked not to be identified. Investigators spent Tuesday morning drafting an application for a warrant to search the suspected site for evidence.
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Susan Moore, convicted of intoxication manslaughter and intoxication assault last week by a jury in Bastrop, will serve up to nine years in prison and then begin a 10-year term on probation, ruled 423rd District Judge Chris Duggan.

Prosecutors said Moore had a blood alcohol level more than twice the legal limit for drivers following the accident.

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The funds will pay for completion of work on a new 15,000-square-foot city hall and a 26,000-square-foot civic center, utility and landscape improvements along Chestnut Street and some $1.2 million in electric utility upgrades, said City Manager Mike Talbot. In 2008 the council issued some bonds to begin the Chestnut Street, city hall and convention center projects.

Earlier this month the council approved the lowest qualified bids for city hall and convention center construction. The Chestnut Street work is about half done and should be completed this summer, said Talbot. The new city hall should be finished by year’s end and the convention center early in 2011. The electric system upgrades should be completed within a year, said Talbot.

Bastrop Power & Light customers will see any added costs reflected in electric rates. Convention center costs will come from hotel room rental taxes and the Chestnut Street work will be covered by a half cent sales tax which goes to the Bastrop Economic Development Corp. Cost of the new city hall, approved by voters in 2003, will show up in the debt service segment of city property tax bills.

Citing Standard & Poor’s bond rating report, Council Member Joe Beal said the city’s financial management team has “saved us a lot of money” in interest costs over the next 30 years.

Council Member Julie Hart agreed, saying “I’m excited to see these (interest) rates.”

Susan Moore faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted on the manslaughter charge. She is also eligible for probation because she has no prior felony convictions. She pleaded not guilty to the charges in court Tuesday.

Evidence will show that Moore had more than twice the legal blood alcohol level in her system when her vehicle slammed into an auto headed in the opposite direction shortly before 5 p.m. on Texas 71 just west of Bastrop on Sept. 20, 2007, killing an Irish tourist and severely maiming another passenger, said Assistant District Attorney Greg Gilleland in his opening statement to the jury Tuesday afternoon. The accident victims “didn’t have a chance,” he said. Moore “wasn’t driving friendly,” Gilleland added.

In his own opening statement, defense attorney Neal Pfeiffer told the jury that other evidence will show reasonable doubt that Moore’s blood alcohol level at the time of the accident was more than the legal limit for intoxication. “Alcohol did not cause or contribute to this accident,” he said. “(Moore) is not guilty.”

According to investigators, Moore had left her job at Hill’s Cafe in Austin about 4 p.m. on the fatal day and was driving home when the accident occurred.

Reported dead at the scene was 47-year-old Bradley Goble who was driving east on Texas 71 when his vehicle crossed the median and struck another auto, according to a Department of Public Safety report.

Coffee reportedly told his staff he is leaving the city’s employ for other opportunities. By day’s end the Elgin Courier web site had posted the text of what it said was Coffee’s letter of resignation to the city council.

Tensions between the city manager, the council and mayor have been growing for more than a year. Some critics have pointed to the city’s allegedly weakened financial position during Coffee’s tenure. Others have questioned his handling of some personnel management issues and administrative changes involving the city’s economic development functions, parks and recreation programs and the controversial purchase of an 80-acre site on Elgin’s west side for future economic development near US 290 and the Capitol Metro rail line between Austin and Giddings.

Coffee came to Elgin under something of a cloud, since his license to practice law in Texas was suspended near the same time by the State Bar of Texas. A dispute over service to a client from whom he had accepted a fee was the source of the complaint, according to public records. Before being hired in Elgin, Coffee had never held a post in municipal government.

One veteran observer of Elgin politics, who asked not to be identified, said conflicts among city council members involving the city manager had become “a tired act” which needed resolution.

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Gaeke Construction Co. of Giddings will undertake the new city hall construction for a base bid of $1,587, 617. Furniture, fixtures, technology equipment and additional off-site utility and drainage requirements will push the final price tag to just over $2.8 million or $500,000 less than planning estimates.

The final cost for a 26,000-square-foot convention center across the street from the new city hall will reach $5.1 million. The bid will go to Collier Construction Co. of Brenham. The total expense, including some $320,000 in street, drainage and utility improvements to Farm Street, will be just over $496,000 below planning estimates.

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The council saw the final bid tabulations for the first time Jan 12 and asked for a week to review the results and consider which extra bid items it wants to add to the projects. Already agreed are almost $400,000 improvements to Farm Street on the north boundary of the civic center site.

Bids for both projects total roughly $7.8 million, some $1 million less than the original project budget. Apparent low bidders are Gaeke Construction of Giddings (city hall) and Collier Construction of Brenham (convention center). Gaeke offered to complete the work in 270 calendar days. Collier said the convention center will be finished in 365 days.

After the draft regulations were recommended for council approval last month by the Planning and Zoning Commission, City Hall was flooded with phone calls and emails denouncing the measure, and council members began voicing reservations.

One of the critics who addressed the council, Georgia Parmalee, said the rules as proposed were excessive. “We can take care of our own trees with a little (city) guidance,” she said.

New tree preservation rules were proposed after a public outcry last year when commercial lots at three corners of the Texas 71 intersection with Texas 95 in Bastrop were largely stripped of trees and the formerly rolling terrain was leveled.

Council Members Julie Hart and Kay Garcia McAnally praised critics of the proposal for their civic engagement.

Mayor Terry Orr said he supports “some form of tree ordinance” but argued that the time is not right to pursue the issue, especially with the city planning director’s position vacant. Former planning director Stacy Snell resigned last month to accept a position in New Braunfels.

Trees were also the topic of two other items on Tuesday’s city council agenda. In one case the council approved a proposal by the Riverside Grove Homeowners Association to pay for and plant 72 shade trees in public rights of way in the subdivision over the next three years.

On a separate issue the council endorsed Talbot’s suggestion to ask a tree expert to investigate and make recommendations about a concern by downtown building owner Kay Wesson that a tree in the sidewalk near the intersection of Main and Pine Street is damaging her building at 901 Main St. The arborist is already giving advice about tree preservation measures during a landscaping and utility relocation project now underway on
Chestnut Street east of Water Street, said Talbot.

Even with the additional work, civic center construction will remain well within its projected budget, Talbot said. Final bid tabulations for building the civic center and a new city hall are still being reviewed, but the total cost will be roughly $1 million less than the $8.8 million planning estimate, Talbot told the council at their Monday session.

The council expects to discuss selecting the winning bid or bids when it meets at 6 p.m. Jan. 12 at City Hall. Bids were opened last week.

A section of Farm Street between Gills Branch and the Union Pacific rail line is slated for the upgrades after residents along the street complained about potholes, narrow pavement, heavy traffic and a lack of sidewalks in the neighborhood. The comments came as the council discussed rezoning the civic center site which faces Chestnut Street. Council Member Bill Peterson, who has been studying the city’s capital improvement needs, called the Farm Street work “a top priority” among possible projects.

Farm Street marks the northern boundary of the convention center project with a parking lot entry/exit. The street is already a main east-west route between Texas 95 and Fisherman’s Park, said Peterson. Mina Elementary School and the Bastrop school district’s central administration offices are also on Farm Street, adding to the traffic load, said Mayor Terry Orr.

KIeinschmidt, a Republican, was first elected to the House in 2008. He has no GOP primary opponent this year as he seeks a second term Jacobs put her name on the Democratic primary ballot Jan. 4. She does not have a Democratic opponent in the March 2 party primary.

District 17 includes Bastrop, Lee, Burleson, Fayette and Colorado County.

Jacobs heads Bastrop Cattle Co. which raises and markets organic beef. She was also a lead organizer of the 1832 Farmers Market in Bastrop. She has prior experience in politics and public affairs. She challenged Ronnie McDonald for re-election as Bastrop County Judge but subsequently helped guide one of his priority projects to completion, the Opportunity Bastrop County master plan for economic and community development.

In an interview this week, Jacobs said her campaign themes will include education and job creation, agriculture as “a 21st century industry,” and groundwater conservation for local development needs. Local residents “should be in control of our own future,” she said.

Kleinschmidt has already sold or leased water production rights to his own property in Lee County to water marketing interests looking to export groundwater to growing urban areas, said Jacobs. “We should keep our own water and kids” rather than exporting them to urban centers, she said.

Pct. 2 County Commissioner Clara Beckett drew a GOP primary opponent in the person of Adam Meuth. There is no Democratic candidate for the post.

At the same time Lee Dildy, the veteran Pct. 4 county commissioner who is seeking re-election, got a Democratic primary opponent even as two Republicans prepared to face off in the GOP primary for the job. Michael Flowers will challenge Dildy for the Democratic nod.

Also seeking the Pct. 4 commissioner’s post are Ron Jay and David “Rocky” Palmquist in the GOP primary.

And two new Republican candidates stepped forward to seek their party’s favor in the race for the Pct. 1 Justice of the Peace contest. At the filing deadline James “JW” Snell and Sue Ann Fruge joined Donna Van Gilder and Van Pressley as GOP contenders in the primary.

On the Democratic side, incumbent Bill Weddle is seeking re-election. His primary opponent is Donald “Dickie” Henderson.

Republicans also have challengers in races for three other county wide offices where Democrats incumbents are seeking re-election. Sarah Loucks put her name on the GOP ballot to oppose incumbent District Court Clerk Cathy Smith, a Democrat, and Republican Jason Leddie will oppose Democratic incumbent County Clerk Rose Pietsch in the November general election.

Republican Laurie Ingram had previously announced her bid to unseat Kathy Schroeder as county treasurer. Schroeder is seeking re-election as a Democrat.

Two Republicans are unopposed for new terms in county wide elective offices, District Attorney Bryan Goertz and County Surveyor Michael Olson.

On the Democratic side, neither County Judge Ronnie McDonald nor County Court at Law Judge Benton Eskew have opponents for re-election this year. At the same time three Democratic justice court judges are also unopposed for new terms, Raymah Davis in Pct. 2, Katherine Hanna in Pct. 3 and Larry Dunne in Pct. 4.

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 Jimmy’s Well Service of Bastrop, Texas brought their water drilling rig to our land at 1191 Shiloh Road, Cedar Creek, TX 78612  and drilled a 380′ water well that came in at an awesome flow of 60 gallons per minute (gpm).  Normally wells come in around 15-30 gpm so this was an exceptional result.

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• Mellow Johnny’s Tour de France watching party – Fans of Lance Armstrong watch the Mt Ventoux stage at Lance’s own Mellow Johnny’s bike shop on Fourth Street in Austin, TX. They applaud his third place finish in the 2009 Tour de France. More at http://touroftexas.com/blog/ and http://spring.net/blog/
• Mellow Johnny’s Tour de France watching party – Fans of Lance Armstrong watch the Mt Ventoux stage at Lance’s own Mellow Johnny’s bike shop on Fourth Street in Austin, TX. They applaud his third place finish in the 2009 Tour de France. More at http://touroftexas.com/blog/ and http://spring.net/blog/ on yahoo video
• Mellow Johnny’s Tour de France watching party – Fans of Lance Armstrong watch the Mt Ventoux stage at Lance’s own Mellow Johnny’s bike shop on Fourth Street in Austin, TX. They applaud his third place finish in the 2009 Tour de France. More at http://touroftexas.com/blog/ and http://spring.net/blog/
• Baffle! inc. » is_tree ? the function WordPress is missing (one of the many) – Thanks to the brilliant mind of Anthony Cole I figured out my own custom function, said ?is_tree($p_id)?. This checks to see if the current page is in the direct tree (child, grandchild, etc) of the post that has the ID of $pid.
• feedly: a magazine-like start page – feedly weaves your favorite content into a fun, magazine-like start page.
  based on Google Reader and Twitter.
• Incoming! for the iPhone – “Incoming!” can operate over Edge, 3G, and WiFi. It works by re-routing the call through the internet, converting your outgoing calls into incoming calls. You can connect other phones together, pick who’s phone will ring first, or if you want everyone’s phone to ring at the same time. You can also do instant 9-way conference calling on your iPhone making business meetings on the go a snap! Features include a visual favourites list, visual call history, built-in address book, and support for both PC and Mac.

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• ICSI Netalyzr – analyze your network connection, very detailed and comprehensive, web based
• How to install the Windows 7 Release Candidate – Windows 7 Release Candidate: Installation instructions
• Twitter Lists – twitter lists, resources and how tos
• 10 Ways to Change the World Through Social Media – Our children will inherit a world profoundly changed by the combination of technology and humanity that is social media. They?ll take for granted that their voices can be heard and that a social movement can be launched from their laptop. And they?ll take for granted that they are connected and interconnected with hundreds of millions of people at any given moment.
• Live social actions map | im doing my part.org – live twitter map of social actions around the world, a very useful toll for social activists who put on events like twestival

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My Name is E

The E device can be used at conventions, trade shows, and meetings, in metropolitian areas like Austin and on college campuses like the University of Texas.  There are over 1.2 million conventions, trade shows and events in the US every year.

What is the E device? In its current incarnation, E is small white, sleek looking device much like an ipod nano or USB storage device. With E, you can share your contact information and social networks in one simple gesture.

Connector allows you to safely transfer an online business card and your set of social networks in a simple gesture like a fist pump or a high five. Tap two Connectors together and you’re connected. Synchonize Connector by using the built-in USB plug with your PC or Mac. It is ideal for networking at large events and conferences.

During the week that Paul Geurts is visiting Austin, we will be meeting with venture investors, potential partners, customers and forming a team to distribute and promote E throught the US and North America.

There is no setup with connector, it can be used immediately out of the box. It’s equipped with a lithium polymer battery which allows you to use it for 72 hours on a 2 hour charge. It holds two of your E Business Cards (one for personal and one for professional) and connects to RFID tags as well as other Connectors and iphones. It gives you intuitive feedback through LED lighting.  The RFID tag feature opens it up the world of “choice based advertising” and integrates these connections in to your social network activity stream.  It connects you to objects and to the environment as well as to people.

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• 8 Steps For Building Community On Twitter: Tips For Membership Organizations – Here?s a quick eight-step rundown of how to set up a Twitter account for your ?.org?. This isn?t the only way, of course. But if you are starting from scratch, this is what we?re finding works the best.
• TwitterForBusyPeople – Friends At a Glance – twitter at a glance for busy people … great mouseover action
• Texas Social Media Award Winners – I won an award! I made it in to the top 25 Social Media Award winners in Texas
• Free Twitter Designer – great tool to design your twitter background, I need this!
• Super Screenshot! – web app that makes a screen shot of any web page you choose and it can be any size

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The list was pared down from 125 nominees. The actual awards show where all the award winners will get *trophies* is on March 15 from 6 to 9 pm at Ballet Austin, 501 W 3rd St, with tickets going for $15.00.

These are the Texas Social Media Award Winners.

They winners are:

HENRY ADASO

• http://therapup.net
• http://twitter.com/rizoh
• http://digg.com/users/rizoh

JOSHUA BAER

• http://twitter.com/joshuabaer
• http://twitter.com/otherinbox
• http://austinpreneur.com/

PERRY BELCHER

• http://www.perrybelcher.com
• http://www.winningatsocialmedia.com
• http://twitter.com/perrybelcher

MIKE CHAPMAN

• http://twitter.com/MikeChapman
• http://budurl.com/aryu
• http://www.mlfnow.org/site/PageServer

J.R. COHEN

• http://www.thecoffeegroundz.com/
• http://twitter.com/coffeegroundz
• http://budurl.com/v5f7

MICHAEL COTE

• http://www.twitter.com/cote/
• http://www.peopleoverprocess.com/
• http://www.drunkandretired.com/

JENN DEERING DAVIS

• http://cheaptweet.com/
• http://appozitegeist.appozite.com/
• http://twitter.com/jdeeringdavis

SAM DECKER

• http://decker.typepad.com
• http://www.bazaarblog.com
• http://twitter.com/samdecker

LORI FALCON

• http://acowboyswife.com
• http://mywoodenspoon.com
• http://twitter.com/acowboyswife

KYLE FLAHERTY

• http://www.engageinpr.com
• http://www.breakingpointlabs.com
• http://twitter.com/kyleflaherty

MATT GLAZER

• http://www.BurntOrangeReport.com
• http://www.TexBlogPAC.org
• http://twitter.com/MattGlazer

LISA GODDARD

• http://twitter.com/lisa_goddard
• http://austinfoodbank.wordpress.com/
• http://budurl.com/znxe

MICHELLE GREER

• http://nerdaboutaustin.com
• http://www.michellesblog.net
• http://www.claimid.com/michellegreer

DAVID GUENTHNER

• http://budurl.com/l36q
• http://www.texaspolicy.com/policycast.php
• http://twitter.com/DavidGuenthner

KAMI HUYSE

• http://overtonecomm.blogspot.com
• http://twitter.com/kamichat
• http://www.linkedin.com/in/myprpro

CALI LEWIS

• http://www.geekbrief.tv
• http://www.twitter.com/calilewis
• http://facebook.calilewis.me

DAVID J. NEFF

• http://www.fispace.org
• http://www.sharinghope.tv
• http://www.daveiam.com

ERICA O’GRADY

• http://reinventingerica.com/
• http://twitter.com/ericaogrady
• http://peanutbuttermedia.com/

BRYAN PERSON

• http://BryanPerson.com/
• http://www.SocialMediaBreakfast.com/
• http://twitter.com/BryanPerson

CONNIE REECE

• http://budurl.com/wapo
• http://everydotconnects.com
• http://budurl.com/gpsv

BENN AND LANI ROSALES

• http://nmlab.com
• http://twitter.com/agentgenius
• http://twitter.com/laniar

DWIGHT SILVERMAN

• http://blogs.chron.com/techblog
• http://twitter.com/dsilverman
• http://www.chron.com/computing

AARON STROUT

• http://blog.stroutmeister.com
• http://twitter.com/aaronstrout
• http://brightkite.com/people/aaronstrout

PAUL TERRY WALHUS

• http://spring.net
• http://austincast.com/blog
• http://twitter.com/springnet

MICHAEL WILLIAMS

• http://williamsfortexas.blip.tv/
• http://twitter.com/michaelwilliams
• http://budurl.com/8y54

It’s a great list and I’m honored to be listed on it.  Michelle Greer has been really helpful to me and I hope I’ve been helpful to her.  She recently had the major role in pulling off the “Twestival” that raised 10 grand for world water causes.    I had the privilege of interviewing Cali Lewis as she breezed in and out of last year’s SXSW.  Below is that interview with Cali.

Michael Cote made the list, he really was the person that got me going on twitter and his “DrunkandRetired” podcast rocks, it’s the best podcast coming out of Austin, Texas.  Erica O’Grady is super, she really did an awesome job at the recent Mashable event in Austin and the Camp connected with it.  Last summer I got to co-moderate a session with Connie Reece at the SEMforSMB conference and did an hour long video with her on Youtube and all over with her on social networking.   Lani Rosales has given me a lot of great advice and she’s a riot.  I hope to get to know all the other award winners better, they’re an awesome group of people.

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AUSTIN, Texas (Feb 11, 2009) — OrgSync, Inc (OrgSync.com) is excited to announce its successful campaign to raise $1500 for Charity: Water using social media. On Tuesday, February 3, 2009, OrgSync’s team launched a social media campaign to raise awareness for the importance of clean, safe drinking water around the world. The team of 25 employees used Twitter, Facebook Newsfeeds and their company blog to rally the public behind the cause. OrgSync’s goal was to raise $1500 to donate to Charity: Water during the Austin Twestival event on February 12. Michelle Greer, well known Austin media figure and coordinator for Austin Twestival, says “Big problems like the lack of clean drinking water won’t get solved over night by the few. They will get solved by the many donating in bits and pieces towards a common goal. OrgSync pooled their resources and ended up being one of our top sponsors and I hope more companies follow this approach towards charitable giving.”

Over 175 cities around the world will be uniting on Thursday, February 12, 2009 to increase awareness and raise money for those in need of clean, safe drinking water. “This is a great cause and an opportunity to unite our Austin community with cities across the world to create social good. As a leader I am passionate about leveraging my understanding of social media to help create awareness and provide people the opportunity to give back,” said Fortenberry.

The OrgSync team was successful at meeting its goal of raising $1566 in 24 hours and is excited to contribute 100% of it to Charity: Water. Andrew Katz, Director of Community Relations feels, “It’s very important for our team to give back and get involved in the Austin Community. We feel that by being visibly active in the community, we can be positive role models for our students and clients to do the same!” OrgSync’s successful campaign proves how important online communication and networking is for increasing awareness and uniting individuals for a greater good.

About OrgSync
OrgSync is a co-curricular management tool that helps colleges and universities communicate more effectively across their entire campus. OrgSync offers a hosted service that provides the tools needed by campuses to easily organize, assess, track, and manage students and student organizations. OrgSync is currently helping over 100 campuses manage their student co-curricular management, leadership development and communication needs. OrgSync is headquartered in Austin, TX with satellite offices in Dallas, TX, Miami, FL, and Tucson, AZ. For more information about OrgSync, visit OrgSync.com. To schedule an interview with CEO Eric Fortenberry, contact Nicole Andreas at (512) 238-8534 or nicole@orgsync.com.

Resources

OrgSync, Inc

Charity: Water

Austin Twestival

Related Links

online communication

co-curricular management

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Water Shortage Worldwide – twestival.com and Dr Faye from Paul Walhus on Vimeo.

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A donation of just $10 can provide someone in Africa clean drinking water for 12 years. Collectively, we can initiate substantial change for developing nations. Here are are a variety of ways you can make this happen:

- Get Tickets: http://www.amiando.com/twestivalaustin.html
- Donate: http://www.charitywater.org/twestival (Select Austin)
- Update your Facebook and Twitter statuses: Include a link to http://www.austintwestival.com
- Sponsor the event: Companies can learn about opportunities here – http://tinyurl.com/aom2hp
- Donate an item for the silent auction: Email snaxxx@gmail.com

Join over 100 cities across the globe and take part in this unprecedented event.

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Twestival resources are downloadable below, for the media and websites to spread the word about the event and charity: water, where all proceeds are being donated.

Please use the tag #twestival in blogs and other social media, so we can find your posts more easily, which will be tracked on Delicious – head here to see the latest coverage and what global sources are saying

Contact twestival@googlemail.com or @jazcummins for interviews, further quotes, etc.

Twestival is 100% volunteer organised, but we will try and get back to you as soon as we can.

Downloads

• About Twestival [42k pdf]
• charity: water media pack [110.2M zip] – charity: water videos, logos and pictures.
• Twestival badges [265k zip] – Badges in png format for websites to link to the Twestival site.
• Twestival global press release [67k pdf]
• Twestival media pack [3.2M zip] – Twestival logos in eps format and in a pdf document.

Resources

• charity: water event kit.

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Twestival resources are downloadable below, for the media and websites to spread the word about the event and charity: water, where all proceeds are being donated.

Please use the tag #twestival in blogs and other social media, so we can find your posts more easily, which will be tracked on Delicious – head here to see the latest coverage and what global sources are saying

Contact twestival@googlemail.com or @jazcummins for interviews, further quotes, etc.

Twestival is 100% volunteer organised, but we will try and get back to you as soon as we can.

Downloads

• About Twestival [42k pdf]
• charity: water media pack [110.2M zip] – charity: water videos, logos and pictures.
• Twestival badges [265k zip] – Badges in png format for websites to link to the Twestival site.
• Twestival global press release [67k pdf]
• Twestival media pack [3.2M zip] – Twestival logos in eps format and in a pdf document.

Resources

• charity: water event kit.

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• SOCIAL NETWORKING GOD: 350+ Social Networking Sites – collection of over 350 social networking sites
• How to Make an Animated Avatar on Twitter | Tiffany Dow?s Internet Marketing Blog – It’s pretty cool, for about 10 seconds then it becomes tiresome. Sure fire way to lose a lot of twitter followers.
• Reply Notifier – sends your twitter @ replies to your email inbox
• TechFuga – All the top Tech news – Techfuga – Techmeme Digg HackerNews Reddit TechCrunch Arstechnica Slashdot GoogleNews YahooNews CNET News
• My Team Is Better Than Your Team – The Transitive Property of College Football – Why Texas would beat Florida.

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• 70 top tips to generate blog traffic – 75 traffic generation techniques that I learned while blogging
• Display RSS Feeds – everything you need to display rss on your web page. Just plug in an rss feed and most of these will gen up code you can use on your web page or blog
• Tweetree – Home – Tweetree, a site that takes your Twitter account and tweaks it, just might be the reason you close that desktop client and return to the browser for your Twitter cravings. – mashable
• austinlifestyles’ favorites – Slideshow of my favorite pictures of Austin, Texas on flickr
• Austin Texas favorites on Flickr – My Austin, Texas favorite pictures from flickr . . . some pretty amazing stuff… recommended: run this as a slide show

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• The Daily Beast – Tina Brown (formerly New Yorker editor) daily politics, culture and media
• CMS Showcase: 31 Remarkable Drupal Powered Websites – Six Revisions – From personal blogs and brochure sites, to fully-featured social networking sites, portals, news sites, and e-commerce websites, Drupal has proven itself as the most robust platform currently available in the content management system market.
• tweetworks – With groups and discussions, TweetWorks helps you get the most out of Twitter. How it works?
• iTweet 2 : Web – web interface to twitter, nice job
• 10 Great Thunderbird Addons You Must Have | MakeUseOf.com – More than a year back, Aibek wrote a great list of 35 must-have thunderbird addons. Since then, a lot of great addons have been created and some of the older addons have also evolved to become better ones.

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Following that, take a look at the minutes from the last meeting attached to this message. We will vote to accept or amend them Thursday.

Next, a message from Steve Box about local/regional water issues. Very important! Please consider following the links and writing/calling the appropriate folks to let them know your take on the situation.

We will likely have an issues committee next year that will focus on this sort of thing, and other local, state, and national issues. They may prepare regular updates on a variety of topics. I can’t repeatedly feature one issue over another, so please sign up for these updates from Environmental Stewardship yourself. As I looked below I see I didn’t forward this in time…..the meeting we were to target happened on the 9^th. I’m sure it will still help to contact them, however. Nothing is settled in a single meeting (unless it is something being railroaded through at the last minute by our fearless “leader” Geo W. Bush).

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Blue Water Hearing on December 9, 2008

A company that buys and sells groundwater, Blue Water Systems, is attempting to take the water that supports our quality of life in the Lost Pines region and ship it off to our western neighbors without regard to the damage that might result in Bastrop, Lee, and other counties.  On December 9, Post Oak Savannah Groundwater Conservation District (GCD), the District that is responsible for groundwater in Milam and Burleson counties, will consider Blue Water’s request to pump and transport up to 71,000 acre-feet of water per year … a volume that is so large it impacts the counties in our district.  Environmental Stewardship has investigated this request and opposes the application. Click here for the full story.

At issue is whether the Post Oak Savannah GCD will side with Blue Water and allow irreparable harm to the ecology of our counties or will they uphold the duty granted them by the Texas Constitution and Texas Water Code … “to conserve, preserve, protect and recharge the groundwater resources.”

Post Oak Savannah GCD has not met the criteria established in the Texas Water Code that would allow it to authorize such a permit. As one of five districts responsible for protecting groundwater in our region, it has not adequately considered the impact that authorizing such a permit would have both within its own district, and on the surrounding area, including Bastrop and Lee counties. Click here for full text of our letter to Post Oak Savannah GCD.

Make your view known by calling or writing Post Oak Savannah GCD’s Board of Directors at 512-455-9900, 800-231-8196, fax 512-455-9909, posgcd@tconline.net before 5:30 on December 9, 2008. Click here for hearing notice. Click her for SAMPLE LETTER.

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Lyn Bender just sent me a cryptic email about some kind of cryptic event Saturday morning.  If I can talk Dot in to going to Nia Saturday morning and do the ride share thing we might have a go.  It would be nice, Lynn, to have a localtion and maybe a couple of details.

Just got off the skype with rjnagy and he’s still resistant to twitter.  Doesn’t he know this is futile?

We had a great wordpress meetup recently at http://conjunctured.com with Any Skelton or skeltoac everywhere.

While I am typing this I am talking to a delightful Spring rep, Josey, from the Phillipines who just set up my pda phone which I’m going to use for a backup for my iphone.  She was really, really nice.  I wish all support calls were like this!

I’m building a “social network” for Austin, Texas and also working on a green home site.  If you want to beta test or have input on the Austin Social Network, go to http://austinlifestyles.com and sign up for the beta.  If you’re actually in Austin, Texas we’re going to have some cool events coming up for our beta testers like pizza parties, basketball games, guest speakers, presentations, etc. It’s going to be a hoot!

ptw out

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• Going Green – Environmental Issues and Global Warming News – Green Living Tips – consumers guide to the green revolution
• Salon.com – Breaking news, opinion, politics, entertainment, sports and culture. – news source and cultural commentary, affiliated with the WELL
• Digg – All News, Videos, & Images – Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by users
• Daily Kos: State of the Nation – Daily Kos has grown in those five years to the premier political community in the United States, with daily traffic between 2-4 million visits. Markos Moulitsas — a.k.a. “kos” — created Daily Kos on May 26, 2002
• Balsamiq Mockups Examples | Balsamiq – cool little mockup program to sketch out websites
• Profilactic.com – springnet’s lifestream – profilactic collects all your social network content, blog posts, etc in one place

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• Whatever – interesting, funny daily blog – Whatever – Taunting the Tauntable since 1998 John Scalzi, Proprietor
• Gmail – Inbox- walhus@gmail.com – my gmail inbox
• Delicious – delicious main page
• near:”Austin, Texas” within:50mi – Twitter Search – Austin, Texas realtime twitter search within 50 miles of Austin, Texas 50 results
• Facebook | Home – facebooks live realtime feed, watch it refresh continually in realtime
• Home – FriendFeed – Real-time – friendfeed on steroids, real time view of your friends updates
• Plaxo – Home – plaxo would get a good review from me if it didn’t continually scramble up my contacts. Plaxo is a mess. It could be great if they fixed it.
• springnet’s daily Bookmarks on Delicious – sites to look at on a daily basis … for a more narrow selection see http://del.icio.us/springnet/primo for the best daily sites
• Facebook | Home – number one social network with tons of cool apps, you could almost make it your blog if it were more public
• iGoogle – google’s start page you can personalize with widgets and content
• Twitter Search – best twitter search, let’s you search by geographic area in advanced search
• Reva Bhalla on CNN –
• Reva Bhalla – This Austin international security expert has made some of the most intelligent comments on the situation in Mumbai India with the terror attacks on the Taj Mahal Hotel and other sites
• Swaine’s World – Michael Swaine added me as a friend on facebook and I was amazed to find that he lives in Grants Pass, Oregon and has written some remarkable books like “Fire in the Valley”

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If I’d been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door,
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty-four?

oo oo oo oo oo oo oo oooo
You’ll be older too, (ah ah ah ah ah)
And if you say the word,
I could stay with you.

I could be handy mending a fuse
When your lights have gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
[ Find more Lyrics at www.mp3lyrics.org/aK ]
Sunday mornings go for a ride.

Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty-four?

Every summer we can rent a cottage
In the Isle of Wight, if it’s not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee
Vera, Chuck, and Dave

Send me a postcard, drop me a line,
Stating point of view.
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, Wasting Away.

Give me your answer, fill in a form
Mine for evermore
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty-four?

Whoo!

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• Goodreads | people online now – goodreads is a social networking community for readers of good books, this page shows you who’s online
• Tweet Grid – neat twitter search, create your own search grid or matrix and then you can watch multiple searches
• SystemExplorer Homepage – great monitoring and diagnostic tool for Windows XP or Windows Vista machine
• TouchGraph | Products: Facebook Browser – incredible facebook visualization, really amazing
• PrimePress Theme for WordPress – This is quickly becoming my favorite wordpress theme, I used it on http://austen. com/blog and just now on http://touroftexas.com/blog/ . . . it’s truly awesome!

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• 10 of the Best Social Media Tools for PR Professionals and Journalists – 10 of the Best Social Media Tools for PR Professionals and Journalists
• My Creative Team Wiki / Media People Using Twitter – most complete list of media people using twitter
• Where is Your Username registered – Lets you check a potential user name for social network sites
• Being Peter Kim: A List of Social Media Marketing Examples – applying game mechanics to understand participation, thinking about users vs. customers, and deconstructing ego traps in PR campaigns. This analysis makes me wonder if social media marketing matters and if so, does it scale.
• Social Media / Business Marketing Links | The Global Social Media Network – Social Media Marketing – business marketing and social media marketing links

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US Senate
Cornyn  13458
Noriega  11086

US Rep, Dist 10
McCaul  3518
Doherty  4018

US Rep, Dist 25
Morovich  6745
Doggett  10287

Railroad Commissioner
Michael Williams  11521
Mark Thompson  11710

State Rep, Dist 17
Kleinschmidt  12960
Dippel  11352

423rd District Judge
Van Gilder  10453
Duggan  14697

Sheriff
Pickering  12841
Smith  12560

County Commissioner, Pct 1
Willie Piña 3908
Dock Jackson  3702

County Commissioner, Pct 3
Loucks 2601
Klaus  3215

President – Barak Obama (D)
US Senate – John Cornyn (R)
US Rep, Dist 10 – Michael McCaul (R)
US Rep, Dist 25 – Lloyd Dogget (D)
Railroad Commissioner – Michael Williams (R)

Chief Justice, Tx Supreme Court – Wallace Jefferson (R)
Tx Supreme Court, Place 7 – Dale Wainwright (R)
Tx Supreme Court, Place 8 – Phil Johnson (R)
Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 3 – Tom Price (R)
Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 4 – Paul Womack (R)
Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 9 – Cathy Cochran (R)

State Rep, District 17 – Tim Kleinschmidt (R)

Chief Justice, 3rd Court of Appeals – Woddie Jones (D) (replacing
incumbent Republican Ken Law)
21st District Judge – Terry Flenniken (D) (unopposed)
335th District Judge – Reva Towslee Corbett (R) (unopposed)
423rd District Judge – Chris Duggan (D) (replacing Republican
Charlotte Hinds, whom Derek Van Gilder defeated in the primary)

Sheriff – Terry Pickering (R)

County Tax Assessor-Collector – Linda Harmon (D)

County Commissioner, Precinct 1 – Willie Piña (R)
County Commissioner, Precinct 3 – John Klaus (D)

Constable, Precinct 1 – Dan Hall (R) (unopposed)
Constable, Precinct 2 – Gus Meduna (D) (unopposed)
Constable, Precinct 3 – Matt Henderson (D) (unopposed)
Constable, Precinct 4 – Roy Pruneda (D) (unopposed)

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Read this if you care about the future of your water supply in Bastrop County. This affects everyone, not just builders.

BASTROP COUNTY DENIED WATER NEEDED FOR GROWTH

Letter to the Editor by Steve Box, Environmental Stewardship

Wednesday September 17, 2008, will be noted in history as the first official vote by the Lost Pines Groundwater Conservation District to deny a water permit application in Bastrop County because of high volume water pumping activities by its neighboring Post Oak Savannah Groundwater Conservation District. AQUA Water Supply Corporation applied for permits for seven (7) wells to be drilled in the County to meet the projected needs of our communities in the next 50 years.

After study by the District’s groundwater hydrologist using State mandated modeling techniques and permitted values from neighboring Districts, it became very clear that the water permits already issued by Post Oak Savannah for the Porter’s well field in Burleson County draw down the aquifers in Lee and Bastrop Counties to below conditions that are desirable and sustainable into the future.

As a result, the Board of Directors of the Lost Pines District voted to grant only three of the seven wells AQUA needs to meet the water needs of the residential and business developments in their service area. Besides the AQUA water application, there are applications for additional water on file by other applicants that will likely be denied also. These are huge deficits to our future water needs and have huge implications regarding the future water supplies for our region.

For some time now I’ve been watching the water wars develop right here in our back yard and Wednesday they hit home sooner than expected. To give a quick overview, the planning region in the Brazos River basin north of Bastrop County which supplies Williamson County north of Austin has planned for many years, despite protests from the Lost Pines District, to pump high volumes of water out of Lee, Burleson, Brazos, Milam and Robertson Counties in order to provide the future water needs of their region.

Post Oak Savannah has responded to the water marketers by selling them huge volumes of groundwater in excess of what is available on a sustainable basis (pumping = recharge) which then draws on the aquifers of neighboring counties like ours. And they are profiteering from this to the tune of about $75,000 per month even though not a drop of water is being pumped yet. Even though AQUA water has current needs for water to service local subdivisions the water marketers are tying up the water that would be available for our use while they don’t even have significant customers or the means to pump or transport the water.

Meanwhile, the Lost Pines District has had to modify its management plan to accommodate this high volume pumping by greatly lowering the future levels of our aquifers to levels they originally considered undesirable – an action that threatens our water supply and environment.

It is time for the people and officials of Bastrop County to be fully informed of what is happening and be given the opportunity to weigh in on the issues. I am told that many of the shallow exempt wells in the county, along with many springs, seeps and base flow to the Colorado River, are threatened by these actions.

If you too are concerned, you should write or call the Lost Pines Groundwater Conservation District and ask that the district hold a public meeting to fully inform the citizens of our community about the implications of these issues to the citizens of Bastrop County. Request that the District take a firm stand against the actions of these other districts by insisting that the groundwater supplies of the Carrizo-Wilcox and associated aquifers of the region be protected in a manner that sustains the water available for Bastrop and surrounding counties far into the future. For more information you may also contact Steve Box at 512-300-6609 Steve.Box@att.net or go to Environmental-Stewardship.org

Lost Pines Groundwater Conservation District contact information: Joe Cooper, General Manager, P.O Box 1027, Smithville, TX 78957, (512) 360-5088, e-mail lpgcd@lostpineswater.org or www.lostpineswater.org

Steve Box
P.O. BOX 1423
BASTROP, TX 78602
512-300-6609

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Bastrop, Texas candidates forum for the November 2008 election. Candidates appeared for Sheriff, Bastrop County Commissioner, and District Court Judge.

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Stay tuned for the 2nd video in this series in a few days. Also, we’ll be submitting this to BCAT – Bastrop Community Access TV.

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pingback austincast.com/blog bastropbuilder.com/blog compuslides.com/blog gameslides.com/blog magickpapers.com/blog shopslides.com/blog touroftexas.com/blog spring.net/blog socobuzz.com/blog web2.0slides.com/blog webgirlvillage.com/blog wholetech.com/blog wmeyers.com/blog workontheweb.com/blog

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• Irssi – Community Ubuntu Documentation – Irssi is an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client. It is a text-based client as it lacks a graphical user interface (gui) such as XChat, Chatzilla and others.
• Fitbit – Automatically Track Your Fitness and Sleep – Did I get enough exercise today? How many calories did I burn? Am I getting good quality sleep? How many steps and miles did I walk today? The Fitbit Tracker helps you answer these questions.
• Gnip API v1.3 – The Gnip API provides notification of activities (events) occurring in a variety of services and, whenever possible, a guid that identifies the activity itself vis a vis the service it was created on. Activity examples include a user “tweet” (twitter), a user “dugg” (digg), a user creating a blog post, etc.
• CrunchBase, The Free Tech Company Database – CrunchBase is the free database of technology companies, people, and investors that anyone can edit.
• ONLINE BUSINESS TOOLBOX: 230+ Tools for Running a Business Online – A great roundup of business tools for running a business, all web based. I found some good stuff here.

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• How to Change the World: Looking for Mr. Goodtweet: How to Pick Up Followers on Twitter – Looking for Mr. Goodtweet: How to Pick Up Followers on Twitter
• Op-Ed Columnist – How to Fix a Flat – NYTimes.com – Any car company that gets taxpayer money must demonstrate a plan for transforming every vehicle in its fleet to a hybrid-electric engine with flex-fuel capability, so its entire fleet can also run on next generation cellulosic ethanol.
• monitter : real time, live twitter monitor | free live twitter embed widget – monitter? what is it? Simple. It’s a twitter monitor, it lets you “monitter” the twitter world for a set of 3 keywords and watch what people are saying. Cool huh?
• 30+ Great Web Tools You Might not Know Yet but Should | SEOptimise – social media, web design & development, search, SEO and analytics, e-commerce, blogging and Internet tools are not yet widely known main stream tools
• Social Networking Sites | Social Networks Directory – search engine for finding social networks, impressed with results I got

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There was an abundant potluck, drinks of all kinds, music, and plenty of shade (important in Texas). Some of the people you’ll see in the video include Chris Duggan (running for Bastrop District Judge), Rick Noriega (running for US Senate), Wayne Smith (running for Bastrop Sheriff), Susan Shelton (Democratic strategist), Mitzi VanSant (the party host), Larry Joe Doherty (running for US Congress), Linda Yanez (running for Judge statewide), Susan Strawn and many others. Best celebrity sitings since Brad and Angie left town.

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• Tweetmeme – 15:20 PM, October 9th, 2008 GB – less structured way to keep track of what links are buzzing on twitter categories links in to blog, image, video and audio posts
• Twitscoop – Search twitter, see what’s hot right now – What’s hot on twitter right now
• Twitturly – Real-time Link Tracking on Twitter – top trends on twitter, use this to stay ahead of the curve and tracks links
• Twubble – suggests new twitter friends based on your current twitter friends
• Tweet Scan – Tweet Scan is a real-time search engine for Twitter and identi.ca. Tweet Scan indexes all public messages on both services so you can find the conversations, people, and tweets/dents you want. You can search by keyword or author with results available via email(Twitter only for now), RSS, and Twhirl.
• GroupTweet – GroupTweet allows Malcolm and the gang to send messages via Twitter that are instantly broadcasted privately to only the team members.
• Rogue Amoeba – Nicecast: Broadcast any audio on Mac OS X – Nicecast is the easiest way to broadcast music from OS X. Broadcast to the world, or just across your house. Nicecast can help you create your own internet radio station or allow you to listen to your iTunes Music Library from anywhere in the world!
• 100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes | Developer’s Toolbox | Smashing Magazine – some excellent wordpress themes

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• Eventbrite – TechCrunch Austin Ventures Meet-Up – TechCrunch is heading South for a Meet-Up in Austin, Texas with the team from Austin Ventures (http://www.austinventures.com/). We are landing in town on Thursday, September 25 just in time for the Austin City Limits (http://www.aclfestival.com/default.aspx) music festival. We do have a handful of three day ACL passes to give away to sponsors and attendees, and will be announcing details of music festival give aways in the coming weeks.
• Rudder – The New Free Online Money Management, Budget Planning And Personal Finance Software – product that looks forward and determines how much you can spend today and still pay all your bills
• Gustav Information Center – good social network resource along with http://search.twitter.com/search?q=Gustav for tracking Gustav news and resources
• Schedule Future-Dated Twitter Tweets » TweetLater.com – Keep your Twitter stream ticking over with new tweets even when you’re not in front of your computer. Or, use it as your personal reminder system. Send automated thank you notes to new followers, automatically follow new followers,
  if you choose to do so.
• (6) near:”Austin, Texas” within:50mi – Twitter Search – realtime search results for twitter tweets near Austin, Texas. Twitters official advanced search.
• SocialGO – Social Network Maker – Create your own Social Network for FREE
• Mashable Summermash Austin interview with Will Pate – spring.net – Spring.net interviewed Will Pate. Will cohosts CommandN a very popular video podcast with Amber Macarthur out of Toronto, Canada. He founded Raincity Studios which recently bought Bryte. Will ?can?t talk? about some upcoming ventures, but he does talk broadly about his future direction.

  Spring.net did over 30 interviews at the Summermash Party in Austin at Buffalo Billiards on the night of July 30, 2008 and also videod the entire daytime Socialmedia Camp at the Thistle Cafe on West Sixth Street in Austin. The evening party featured an open bar, food, and a packed second floor. Brian Massey said ?It took a bunch of people from San Franciso to round up some of Austin?s best bloggers and developers in one place.?

  We?ll be releasing the full 5 hour session of the Mashable Social Media Camp on one hour installments and we?ll also be releasing all of the 30 plus interviews over the next 2-3 weeks.

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The first video in the series features Susan Shelton, a leading Democratic strategist who gives us an overview of how the Democrats will gain control of Texas in the upcoming elections.

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Audio Podcast of the Candidates meetup

Bastrop Chamber of Commerce Political Forum

Tue, Feb 26 2008 in Bastrop, 4:00 pm to 6:45 pm

Sponsored by the Bastrop Chamber of Commerce Governmental Affairs Committee. At First National Bank, 489 Hwy 71 W. Voters were able to come meet and hear from candidates for local, state-wide and federal offices.

BastropBuilder.com has contacted Cable Channel 10 in Bastrop and Bastrop Access TV has agreed to carry this video and the video from the Democratic meetup in Elgin from Sunday February 24. Check back on this website for dates and times.

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Sponsored by Independent Texans

Sunday, June 8, 10 am to 5 pm

This event was held at the Aqua Water Coop, 415 Old Austin Highway, Bastrop, Texas Call us at 512-535-0989 or 512-657-2089 – click on any of the links below to see videos of the event, there are 21 10-minute videos in all, published to several video sharing websites such as Youtube.

12:30 Stopping Stinko Sweetheart Deals

Brian Rodgers & Paul Walhus for Stop Domain Subsidies

1 Brian Rodgers – Stop Domain Subsidies 1 of 3
YouTube, MySpace, Metacafe, Google, AOL Video, Blip.tv, Veoh, Stupid Videos and Howcast

2 Brian Rodgers – Stop Domain Subsidies 2 of 3
YouTube, MySpace, Metacafe, Google, AOL Video, Blip.tv, Veoh, Stupid Videos and Howcast

3 Brian Rodgers – Stop Domain Subsidies 3 of 3
YouTube, MySpace, Metacafe, Google, AOL Video, Blip.tv, Veoh, Stupid Videos and Howcast

4 Paul Walhus – Stop Domain Subsidies 1 of 1
YouTube, Yahoo, Metacafe, Google, AOL Video, Blip.tv, Veoh, Stupid Videos, Sclipo and Howcast

1:30 Voter Contact: Where the Rubber Meets the Road!

Nancy Robbins, Ron Paul activist

5 Nancy Robbins, Phone Banking Campaigns part 1 of 4
YouTube, Yahoo, Metacafe, Google, AOL Video, Blip.tv, Veoh, Stupid Videos, Sclipo and Howcast

6 Nancy Robbins, Phone Banking Campaigns part 2 of 4
YouTube, Yahoo, MySpace, Metacafe, Google, AOL Video, Blip.tv, Veoh, Stupid Videos, Sclipo and Howcast

7 Nancy Robbins, Phone Banking Campaigns part 3 of 4
Metacafe, Google, Blip.tv, Veoh, Stupid Videos, Sclipo and Howcast

8 Nancy Robbins, Phone Banking Campaigns part 4 of 4
MySpace, Google, Blip.tv, Veoh, Stupid Videos, Sclipo and Howcast

10:30 How Ron Paul Made the Revolution

Chuck Young, Ron Paul activist

9 Chuck Young talks about the Ron Paul Paul campaign 1 of 4
MySpace, Metacafe, Google, Veoh, Stupid Videos, Sclipo and Howcast

10 Chuck Young talks about the Ron Paul Paul campaign 2 of 4
MySpace, Metacafe, Google, Blip.tv, Veoh, Stupid Videos, Sclipo and Howcast

11 Chuck Young talks about the Ron Paul Paul campaign 3 of 4
Metacafe, Google, Blip.tv, Veoh, Stupid Videos, Sclipo and Howcast

12 Chuck Young talks about the Ron Paul campaign 4 of 4
MySpace, Metacafe, Google, Blip.tv, Veoh, Stupid Videos and Howcast

2:30 How to Protest Perry

Merry Anne Bright & Jan Tracy, Piney Woods Alliance

3 Piney Woods 1 of 2
Yahoo, Metacafe, Google, Blip.tv, Veoh, Stupid Videos and Howcast

14 Piney Woods 2 of 2
YouTube, Yahoo, MySpace, Metacafe, Google, Blip.tv, Veoh, Stupid Videos and Howcast

2:45 Taking Power: Electoral and Electrical

David Schraub (on solar farming) & Jere Locke (on Climate 1Sky)

15 Solar Farming 1 of 3
MySpace, Metacafe, Google, Blip.tv, Veoh, Stupid Videos, Sclipo and Howcast
16 Solar Farming 2 of 3
Yahoo, MySpace, Metacafe, Google, Blip.tv, Veoh, Stupid Videos, Sclipo and Howcast

17 Solar Farming 3 of 3
YouTube, Yahoo, MySpace, Metacafe, Google, Blip.tv, Veoh, Stupid Videos, Sclipo and Howcast

8 Global Warming 1 of 4
MySpace, Metacafe, Google, Blip.tv, Veoh, Stupid Videos and Howcast

19 Global Warming 2 of 4
Google, Blip.tv, Veoh, Stupid Videos and Howcast

20 Global Warming 3 of 4
MySpace, Metacafe, Google, Blip.tv, Veoh, Stupid Videos and Howcast

21 Global Warming 4 of 4
Yahoo, MySpace, Metacafe, Google, Blip.tv, Veoh, Stupid Videos and Howcast

3:45 Winning Elections to Protect Your Water Rights

Marie Day, Lavaca County Taxpayers, Inc.

4:30 State Independent Convention Planning, September 6

10 Political Independence: What’s Obama, Kucinich and Paul got to do with it?!

Linda Curtis, Independent Texans

11:00 How Youth Organizes (for Arlan Foster), Arlan Foster, HD 18 Candidate

Eric Price & Clayton Scott, and other high school student activists

12:00 How Citizen’s Lobby Congress & the Texas Legislature

Ann Del Llano, Esq., Capitol City Solutions

Judith McGeary, Esq., Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance

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• chrisbrogan.com – one of the best social media and marketing sites on the web. It’s a must daily read if you’re a social network addict, like me.
• Social media camp at the Thistle Cafe 300 W 6th street in Austin – social media camp at the Thistle Cafe on 6th street the same day as the Mashable event.
• Austin 3.0 – If one were to look at the slew of Tech events happening this week, you?d think we were gearing up for SXSWi. Instead, it?s 104 degrees outside, and it?s just another eventful week in Texas; it?s time for our mid-summer stretching exercise.
• AgencyTool Web Design Dashboard – best web design, development, marketing and website maintenance resource I’ve every seen. Excellent! Five Stars. *****
• Web 2.0 Mashup: Best of the Internet Today –

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• Ad Revenue Sharing Communities & Forums | Social Web Tools – social communitys that share revenue with their users
• Leveraging Social Media by springnet – Connie Reece and Paul Terry Walhus present “Leveraging Social Media” at SEOforSMB in Austin Texas on July 17, 2008.
• Deanna Zandt randomdeanna / Linkwad – Short-n-sweet Deanna Zandt is a media technologist and consultant to key progressive media organizations including AlterNet and the Hightower Lowdown, and hosts TechGrrl Tips on GRITtv with Laura Flanders. Interview at http://austincast.com/blog/
• | LivingSocial – recommended by MichelleMMM on del.icio.us
• 50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing | chrisbrogan.com – 50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing
• How to Be Interesting | Copyblogger – Be wrong: The world is full of people trying to do the right things. It?s become so common that many of us are bored by it. We long for someone that is willing to do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, be the wrong thing

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• Five Ways to Build Your SMB Via Social Media Marketing : Online Marketing for Marketers – 5 primary strategies for building small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) via social media marketing. This post is a summary of my presentation, for those that couldn?t make it to Austin.
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Services Portland Oregon | Anvil Media, Inc. – Search Engine Marketing for High Performance Companies Anvil Media, Inc. (Anvil) is a search engine marketing (SEM) agency specializing in search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) management, search engine marketing public relations (SEM PR)
• http://seesmic.com/#/video/iXR1hYyDEF/watch – boiling down the basics of SEO
• The Definition of Social Media Marketing: How to Find the Best Social Media Consultant » techipedia | tamar weinberg – The main characteristic [social media marketers] need to have is a genuine curiosity/interest in social media, particularly on how it influences human relationships and business practices.
• Search Engine Optimization for Small Business – SEO Blog: Search Engine Optimization and Search Marketing :: Get Page One – And the co-founder of our humble SEO company, Brian Rutledge, will be talking about search engine optimization for small business at the SEM for SMB conference in Austin, TX. More on that later!
• Video SEO for SMB?s: What Does Standing Out Online Really Mean? – consumers typically visit an average of nearly five Web sites (4.8 actually) before deciding which attorney to select. When lawyers added video to their respective Web sites, however, this number decreased fairly substantially, to 1.8.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – seo blog aggregation. Guy Kawasaki’s alltop seo page. SEOmoz, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Roundtable, SEO Book, Search Engine Journal, Matt Cutts, SEO Noobs, Google News Inside, SEO Blackhat, SEO by the Sea, Search Engine Watch, Stepforth SEO, etc

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• ContentRobot | Blogging & WordPress Experts – awesome wordpress site with plugins and themes
• FlyCamOne2 Micro Video Camera for RC Aircraft from Hobby Lobby! – FlyCamOne2 Micro Video Camera for RC Aircraft from Hobby Lobby!
• Josh Highland : Internet Superstar – classic social lifestream webpage, a guy who lives in Redlands, CA
• TweetDumpr – This is a hideous tool that can be used to export your entire Twitter timeline to a CSV file, readable by any spreadsheet application (Excel, Numbers, etc.). Exported data includes the tweet plus a timestamp of when it was sent.
• Technology Review: Social Networking Is Not a Business* – In less than two years it has created the underlying structure for more than 20,000 social-networking sites–”mini-Facebooks” with an aggregate of 300 million page views per month. You’ve probably never heard of it.

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Listal is a social networking site where you can find people who share your tastes in movies, books, music or games.  Lists and collections are shared via a simple url like (in my case) http://springnet.listal.com and they give you widgets to plug in to your blog or website.

The site stands out for it’s tight integration of tagging, friends, finding others, forums and messaging.  The “explore” feature is hot, it lets you scan through reviews of movies, tv shows, books, games, dvds, and music. 

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• bub.blicio.us – social networking blog, really smart content
• Summize Conversational Search – another killer app du jour for twitter, conversational search
• All I Ate Today – clever little food app somehow connected to twitter
• austinlifestyles’ bookmarks on del.icio.us –
• Derbyshire Writer?s Guild - – Crysty Shih is now heading this major fanfic site for jane Austen aficianados
• Social Media Club Austin – You’ll find a number of social media types hanging out at Cafe Caffeine as part of the Jelly! Austin co-working scene. Come join us.

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• Qik On IPhone: Qik Video Streaming Finally Comes to iPhone – Wow! When I was interviewing the geekalicious Cali Lewis at SXSW I asked her what she was most excited about and she started bouncing up and down and shouting to Neail. Qik! Qik! Bring me Qik. Quick!
• Summarized SEO Tips from SMX Advanced – Part 2 – Search Engine Guide Blog – The SEO panel provided a few examples of the great widgets and applications they use to make their life easier. Here are a few, including my own favorites: * SERPH: track the ?buzz? of yourself and your competitors using this handy social search
• Future Jets Owner Gary Vaynerchuk Brings Thunder to Austin ? Damon Clinkscales – @damon Fortunately, I brought my Flip Ultra and I captured 60 minutes of pure Gary for your viewing pleasure. Keeping with the tradition of WineLibrary TV, these videos are unedited.
• Not An MBA » fiercely independent – InnovationCamp #1 is two weeks from today! Being a first, there will inevitably be loose ends, chaos, and some pesky problems on the day. Without risk, though, there is no reward? @juliegomoll
• Austin Coworking – An interview with Drew Jones – LaunchPad Coworking Blog – Drew: Austin is the perfect community, and GSD&M Idea City is an awesome space for Innovation Camp. Julie and I share a GenX/Boomer fascination with the creative energy that is out there among designers young and old. June 28 @juliegomoll

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• Themes – Tumble-hybrid Deuce is a cleaned up version of the original Tumble-hybrid theme. Please follow the directions outlined in the original Tumble-hybrid post to install and use this theme.
• The Life of an Internet Bedouin ? Damon Clinkscales – Future Jets Owner Gary Vaynerchuk Brings Thunder to Austin “I?ve been tracking Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibrary TV ever since the day that Dan Benjamin told me about the sale of Corkd to this sorta zany character with a wine show on the web.” – Damon Clin
• springnet > Tweeterboard : Conversation Analytics for Twitter – dashboard, gets love, gives love, box score, links
• LaunchPad Coworking ? Coworking in Austin, Texas – Austin Launchpad coworking gets green light from the City to build. Sept 2008 is start date. @juliegomoll
• Alltop, all the top stories – Guy Kawasakis daily news aggregator

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• PR 2.0 – As much as media and blogger relations drive traffic and increase your user base, we can?t overlook the importance of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, DIGG, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Diigo, FriendFeed, Ning, Mixx, Bebo, Ge
• Uniting Austin’s Startup Community | Startup District – Austin’s startup district forming and creating a coworking space in East Austin, Texas
• One Egg, One Hundred Baskets: Social Media Leverage – Social Leveraging squeeze goodness out of the tools that are free strategy acts as platform wrangler drags big names of social media, networking and aggregation together. create one page/blog post that hits on social aggregator ften different directions.
• WiiiZZZ – What has been listened to and shared today no Twitter . . .
• Tim’s Quicktime VR Panoramas : QTVR – @timpatterson picked a digital camera, an inexpensive Fuji FinePix A205, and decided to get back to creating Quicktime VR panoramas for fun and he has a Google Map of all my QTVR locations in Austin!

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• Movavi Online Video Converter – Free Online Video Converter No software to install. No ads to interrupt.
• Pixel Qi – About Us – Dr. Mary Lou Jepsen was previously the founding chief technology officer of One Laptop Per Child. Notably Mary Lou invented the laptop’s sunlight-readable display
• Xo Laptop 2.0: OLPC XO Laptop 2.0 Has Dual Touchscreens, Looks Amazing and Future-y – At OLPC’s Global Country workshop today, founder Nick Negroponte unveiled the next-gen XO Laptop, and it totally blows the original away. Wow! Dual touch screen!
• Tag Galaxy – Holy Cow! This is such a cool flickr visualization, a spinning globe that shows whatever tag you pick
• Internet Marketing and Social Media: Dosh Dosh – One of the best ways to promote your website or business is to work together with others . . . twitter @doshdosh
• Bare Bones Software : PRODUCTS : YOJIMBO – Yojimbo makes keeping all the small (or even large) bits of information that pour in every day organized and accessible. It?s so simple, there is no learning curve. Yojimbo?s mechanism for collecting, storing and finding information is so natural and

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• MediaWiki – MediaWiki – MediaWiki is a free software wiki package originally written for Wikipedia. It is now used by several other projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and by many other wikis, including this website, the home of MediaWiki.
• Tweet Clouds – # 78612 # add # american # amp # app # application # apps # april # archive # austin # austincast.com/blog # austintexas # belmont # best # big # bike # blog # bookmarks # broadcasting # catching # cedar # channel # chat # check # coffee # come # communit
• optimal experience – This guy has some great ideas like an “Austin startup district and a wordpress fest in the park. And he walks to Will Wynn randomly.
• End of Silence – Austin blog with a great Austin linkroll
• http://yesyes.penalicio.us/ – really inspiring “about me” page @yesyes on twitter
• Digital Voodoo — Social Media strategy and intelligence applied to marketing. – Strategy + Tactics – Dave Evans network of best-of-class partners helps define and implement new applications built around a socially-aware launch strategy that you can measure. twitter @evansdave
• Do-it-yourself SEO and SEO Project Management | SoloSEO – @mdjensen ’s seo page. Michael is from St George Utah and is an entrepreneur and twitter tool maker. SoloSEO.com CityMarketer.com AppliedContent.com TweetBeep.com LiveTwitting.com for events like SXSW and TweetAnswers.com
• Bare Feet Studios – @roxannedarling Bare Feet Studios LLC is a small, curious, tech-savvy company based in Honolulu, Hawai?i, owned by Roxanne Darling and Shane Robinson. We participate in and advise on New Media and the Social Web to connect people and solve problems.

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• Disqus | Hello, springnet! – Boost your blog community by installing the DISQUS comment system Disqus makes your comments more interactive for readers and easier to manage for you ? all while connecting your community with other blogs. “no one needs you” – Leo
• Blogging 2.0 and Professional Blogging – The reality is that Web 2.0 is finally catching up to blogging. The walled gardens of singular blogs are making way to social interaction across multiple platforms. @shey thanks to tim shey for the pointer to this on his blog
• Remote Access and Desktop Control Software for Your Computer – Over 40 million devices connected worldwide for remote support, access & backup. cross platform remote access. recommended.
• The 70 coolest free applications in existence – Seopher.com – some of the best free apps and online services on the net for web developers. great list. recommended. from Steven York’s blog about making money online, blogging, marketing, seo and web development
• Read The Words – My Recordings – most text to speech is awkward, this web app is really natural sounding and lets you make recordings, save them and embed them on your website. Really cool. Recommended

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• how to grab all the free media publicity you could ever want. Thousands of media email addresses here at All the Secrets newsletter’s free publicity resource centre – websites that help mail out your press releases
• ShowYourself Widget – ShowYourself is a simple to make, easy, free and fun utility to help establish your identity across the web. Have a Flickr account and a Facebook and AIM? Combine all your profiles on the web into one attractive widget that you can put on your blog, your
• Work Happy Now! – Maximizing your work happiness should be the theme of your working life. Happiness creates success. When you stop putting in the hours and start extracting joy from work, you’ll be successful.
• Web Site Design and Marketing | hosting, domain names, e-commerce, pay-per-click – You have come to the right place to learn about web site design, domain names, Internet marketing, custom programming and social media.
• Battlestar Wiki – Battlestar Wiki, An encyclopedia of the Battlestar Galactica sagas. ? 3,273 articles in English ? Warning: Spoilers are to be expected. See our Spoiler Policy for details. Ridiculously detailed and thorough!

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• The Most Popular Twitter Apps According to the Blogosphere – ReadWriteWeb – which Twitter clients are getting the most buzz on blogs. The result is a list of the most popular 3rd-party Twitter-apps according to the blogosphere. @steverubel This is a guest post from Anton Johansson, a business developer at the Swedish startup Twi
• Symbian World – twitter @ewanspence sybian blogs aggreggated on this site
• Miss Geeky – @mseckington on twitter and her blog Melinda Seckington on gmail, twitter, flickr, facebook, youtube, del.icio.us, etc. etc. blog has great links and possibly a Battlestar Galactica fan like me
• Twitter-peoples – welcome to my e-world, dive right in! ? Steve Lawson: Bass 2.0 ? the soundtrack to the day you wish you?d had – @solbassstevethe soundtrack to the day you wish you?d had, great background sound and pretty sure it’s podsafe
• Free Wordpress Themes, Free Wordpress Templates, View & Download – free WordPress theme called ?AdsPress?. The theme is ready to use with Google Adsense and the advertisement blocks are perfectly placed (tested & tried) for giving you the maximum revenue out of your websites.

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• Jennifer Slegg – Search Engine Marketing Consultant – @jenstar jennifer offers tips on SEO marketing and I’m trying to get her to return my follow on twitter
• Whatever – nominated for both Best Novel (for The Last Colony) and Best Fan Writer, which I think is pretty neat. This guy should be nominated for the best blog, if you ask me. – ptw
• NETTUTS – Web development tutorials and links – Spoonfed Web Tutorials – NETTUTS is a blog/tutorial site aimed at web designers. We run tutorials on technologies, skills and techniques to improve how you design and build websites. We cover HTML, CSS, Javascript, CMS?s, Simpler Development Examples in PHP and Ruby on Rails, a
• NETTUTS – Web development tutorials and links – How to Build a Maintainable Site using CushyCMS and Twitter – In this tutorial we’re going to build a simple one-page site and then in less than 5 minutes, get it setup with a Twitter feed for daily updates and with CushyCMS for general content. If you haven’t seen it, Cushy is a completely free and extremely simple
• Useful Podcasts For Designers And Developers | Developer’s Toolbox | Smashing Magazine – collection of podcasts that are either directly about web design, or would be helpful to a web designer
• 100+ Open Courseware Collections for Aspiring Web Devs – Web Hosting Unleashed – free tutorials and collections from top universities and well-respected websites to train you in areas like web design, graphics and imaging, programming and coding, multimedia, connecting with your audience, and even learning freelancing and entrepreneur
• Twitter Friend Adder Firefox Plugin – You will then need to login to your account find the persons friends you would like to communicate with right click on there profile and there should be an option stating ?Grab this Users Friends? hit that and the plugin should start working.
• Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Social Media, Web Marketing – strategy, twitter addict, cms maven, conference hopper
• Create your own crowds :: Crowdstatus.com – Crowdstatus is made up of twitter crowds, each crowd contains people and each twitter person in the crowd has a status. This means that you can see what everyones current status is in a crowd.
• TwitterFone: Send Messages to Twitter with Voice – send messages to twitter with your voice on your cell phone. Sweet.

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