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From pools to 311 calls: Austin's data portal has inaccuracies, audit finds

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:17:51 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- A new report published by the Office of the City Auditor found data provided to the public through Austin's open data portal can be inaccurate, sometimes by hundreds of thousands of records. It pointed to a lack of coordinated oversight and training. The datasets analyzed range from the city map showing which pools are open to information about fatal crashes and 311 calls. The data is intended to keep the public informed, but the city auditor's office said it also informs policy for city departments. "At its base level we're looking at our data and trying to determine whether or not what we're collecting and presenting is going to be important and going to be useful for the community," said Keith Salas, an assistant city auditor. “In the coming months, discussions will take place regarding new training methods and appointing a department to oversee the data portal," Interim City Manager Jesús Garza responded. "We are committed to making sure that the Open Data ...

What are some Zilker parking, shuttle options if the overflow lot closes?

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:17:51 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- On Monday, the Austin Parks and Recreation Department Board voted to recommend closing one of the parking options at Zilker Park. Now, Austin City Council will decide at a later date whether or not to approve that recommendation, which proposes a Sept. 4 closure date.Polo Field, located between Andrew Zilker Road and Barton Springs Road, is currently open on weekends during the summer and some Fridays for special events or activities, according to the Austin Parks and Recreation Department. ICYMI: Parks and Rec Board votes to permanently close Zilker Park overflow lot in September The lot can accommodate approximately 750 spaces and is one of the largest parking options at Zilker Park. However, the board pointed to "extensive environmental degradation" due to parking and pedestrian circulation on the land, per documents.If council does opt to close the overflow lot, what other options remain? Here's a breakdown of available parking lots at or near Zilker Park, as...

City Council approves Ford site changes for University of St. Thomas facilities

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:17:51 GMT

The St. Paul City Council has officially amended the master planning document around the former Ford Motor Co. Twin Cities Assembly Plant site, now home to the Highland Bridge development, to accommodate new sports facilities for the University of St. Thomas.Working with master developer the Ryan Cos., St. Thomas is planning a 1,500-seat baseball field, a 1,000-seat softball field, an indoor training facility and a 330-stall surface parking facility in a southeast corner of the site, west of Cleveland Avenue. The university hopes to transform 13 acres of Canadian Pacific Railway land into a Division I sports destination, though officials have said several years of planning and fundraising are ahead.The council voted unanimously Wednesday to approve related changes to the Ford Site Zoning and Public Realm Master Plan. Councilmember Mitra Jalali was absent.Once contemplated for Highland Bridge, St. Thomas still plans on establishing Division I hockey and basketball facilities on its s...

Downtown Alliance won’t expand improvement district to West Seventh

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:17:51 GMT

St. Paul’s Downtown Improvement District will not expand to include West Seventh Street as the St. Paul City Council on Wednesday opted not to vote on the proposal after a contentious few weeks of talks.Last spring, several West Seventh business owners seemed interested in joining the district, which assesses a fee on property owners in exchange for street clean-up, graffiti removal, and street greeters. But business owners changed their tune after a process that restaurateur Dave Cossetta described as “misleading.”Cosetta’s frustrations centered around lack of clear communication from the Downtown Alliance, the district’s governing body.Cossetta’s Alimentari is among the prominent businesses on West Seventh Street. (Pioneer Press file)“If we had known what we were getting and for what price, I think most of us would have been more open to it,” he said.At a July 18 meeting, several West Seventh Street business owners said they kept the...

Justin Jefferson, T.J. Hockenson downplay contract extensions at Vikings training camp

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:17:51 GMT

It’s no secret that receiver Justin Jefferson and tight end T.J. Hockenson, two major stars on offense, are both in line to sign lucrative contract extensions with the Vikings at some point in the near future.Technically, the 24-year-old Jefferson has two years left on his rookie contract. But because he has been so dominant, it would benefit the Vikings to make him the NFL’s highest-paid receiver sooner rather than later Meanwhile, the 26-year-old Hockenson is in the final year of his rookie contract, so he’s probably looking for some sort of financial commitment soon, too.The biggest thing the Vikings have working in their favor is neither Jefferson nor Hockenson are holding the team’s feet to the fire at the moment. Both players downplayed any thoughts of a contract extension on Wednesday after wrapping up the first day of training camp at TCO Performance Center.“The contract is going to play itself out,” Jefferson said. “I’m just o...

Minneapolis man sentenced for firing shots in Mall of America Nike store

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:17:51 GMT

A man who fired three shots during a fistfight inside the Mall of America’s Nike store last summer was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison.No one was injured in the Aug. 4 shooting, but the gunfire sent mall visitors screaming and running for cover and forced some shoppers to shelter in place for more than 90 minutes. The mall reopened the next day with a beefed-up law enforcement presence.Shamar Alon Ramon Lark (Courtesy of the Bloomington Police Department)Shamar Alon Ramon Lark, 22, of Minneapolis, pleaded guilty last month to felony second-degree assault in connection with the shooting at the Bloomington mall. Two other felony gun charges — intentionally discharging a firearm endangering the safety of others and carrying a pistol in a public place without a permit — were dismissed as part of a plea agreement he reached with Hennepin County prosecutors six days before a trial was set to begin.According to the charges, a fight broke out between six people in t...

Jamelle Bouie: What the Joe Manchin-No Labels fantasy gets wrong about America

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:17:51 GMT

For as long as Americans have had partisan political competition, they have hated partisanship itself.By his second term in office, in the mid-1790s, President George Washington faced organized political opponents in the form of Democratic-Republican societies that had spread throughout the country.“There was the Society for the Preservation of Liberty in Virginia, the Sons of St. Tammany and the Democratic Society in New York, the Constitutional Society in Boston, the Society of Political Inquiries, the German Republican Society and the Democratic Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and similar groups scattered in all the states,” historian Susan Dunn notes in “Jefferson’s Second Revolution: The Election Crisis of 1800 and the Triumph of Republicanism.”In the wake of the Whiskey Rebellion of the early 1790s, Washington blamed these societies for “encouraging dissension and fomenting disorder,” as Dunn puts it. He accused them of spreading their “nefarious doctrines with a view...

Jonathan David Farley: I’m a Harvard and Oxford educated mathematician, and I still needed — and need — affirmative action

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:17:51 GMT

When I was a graduate student at the University of Oxford, I met an English mathematician who told me that he had once visited Harvard, my alma mater. While there, he came across the files of two members of the hockey team, who, he said, had received scores of 400 on the SAT for high school students — the lowest scores possible. (Of course these students were white, since Black people don’t play hockey.) I would not have believed it if he had not told me that this was something he had seen with his own eyes. His story opened mine.The opponents of affirmative action know of such stories, but the only stories that bother them are the ones involving unqualified Black people. So it is a mistake to counter them by refuting their logic, since even they don’t believe what they’re saying. Like the hydra, as soon as we demolish one argument, they’ll invent another.For example, if the opponents of affirmative action really were so concerned with “discrimina...

Noam N. Levey: Medical debt is making Americans angry. Doctors and hospitals ignore this at their peril

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:17:51 GMT

For Emily Boller, it was a $5,000 hospital bill for a simple case of pink eye that took four years to pay off. For Mary Curley, it was the threatening collection letters from a lab that arrived more than 2½ years later, just as her husband lost his job and the family was fighting to save their home.For Cory Day, it was a $1,000 fee he was charged at an emergency room outside Los Angeles, even though he only checked in and then left before being seen. “I feel like the hospital is a predator,” Day said. “This is a place that’s supposed to be looking after you.”The experience offered a stark lesson, he said: “Don’t trust the system.”Reporting on medical debt over the past two years, I’ve spent hundreds of hours on the telephone, in the living rooms, and at the kitchen tables of patients like Day, Curley, and Boller. They are among the 100 million people in America whom we found have been driven into debt by medical and dental bills....

Jace Frederick: 3M Open features enough local connections to maybe, eventually become ‘our’ Open

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:17:51 GMT

The RBC Canadian Open is both a regular PGA Tour event on the schedule and the nation to the north’s national open.What a wild scene it was last month, when Canada’s Nick Taylor fended off Tommy Fleetwood in a playoff to become the first Canadian winner of the event in 69 years. National pride oozed not only out of Taylor, but his fellow countrymen in the field and spectators in the audience.That a regular PGA Tour stop could generate that type of pride, drama and emotion was a special sight to behold.The 3M Open will never quite be that.A state is not a nation. And Minnesota already has a state open, run every summer by the Minnesota Golf Association and Minnesota PGA. But this week’s field of 156 players at TPC Twin Cities features enough local connections that it’s not difficult to envision a scenario in which one of the “locals” is in position to contend in Sunday’s final round and receives a large backing from the crowd.Perhaps that is ...