Comment on a colleague’s work #2

In Big Tex Rules' post, Its a Bow`t Time, they discussed how as of March 18th Austins City Council member unanimously voted to pass a no kill plan for its Town lake Animal Shelter downtown. This is my response to what they had to say:

I'm glad to hear that Austin is instating a no kill plan. It's good that they're easing into it, things like this take time. They need to be able to account for additional space and money the need to take care of these animals. I had no idea Austin was taking an average of 8,873 animals' lives each year. I'm not an animal person at all, I actually like animals to stay as far away from me as possible and that still bothers me. I just hope this plan works out. "Animals are innocent and deserve to live." You absolutely right, just because they are animals doesn't mean that we have the right to kill them, if they were humans this would most certainly not be happening.

As for you suggestion of a requirement that all first time pet owners take a class, I think it's asking a little too much. It wouldn't be possible to make sure everyone take such a class and you have to remember that some pet owners get their first pet from people selling puppies and kittens in cars in parking lots. It's a nice idea but I don't see it happening. The good thing is that there is unlimited of information online. First time owners can get advice and learn anything they need on the computer. Things are starting to look up for these shelter animals.

Original editorial or commentary #2

The public has majorly distrusted Austin’s transit agency, Capital Metro, for sometime now. Austin and its surrounding areas for a metropolitan are of 1.6 million people, they definitely need a good public transit service. Austin doesn’t trust it yet it needs it. Something needs to be corrected in this equation or the two are going to have problems with each other.

Austin’ major problem is that they view the Capital Metro as incompetent. They are not handling money very well; in fact they are handling the money carelessly. The agency used to have plenty of money in their budget account. Somehow they went from $200 million to $4 million in fall 2009. The drastic drop is too much to explain just by declines in sales tax revenue. The audit on Capital Metro exposed the reason for this drop and the reason for other things that didn’t add up from the knowledge the public has received from the agency.

The agency has kept the public in the dark on a lot of things that they are doing, which is why many things don’t add up. One such thing the audit showed the public is that they have been paying some retired working more than triple the cost they should be receiving as pension each month. Another thing the audit has proved is that Capital Metro spent more money than was need, and planned, on the MetroRail project. Not only were they not cost efficient in creating this rail transit; they aren’t producing the money for it as they should. They aren’t charging seniors or people with disabilities fares to ride and they make up about 30% of the people commuting on the rail and they don’t want to.

All that being said, Capital Metro has a new governing board that is taking ownership for their mistakes. The agency is working on correcting this problem. They spending money on the things they should be and earning back the public’s trust. According to an article by the Statesman, money has “increased to $16 million since he took over — and restoring fiscal management and public trust, he said.” Things with Capital Metro have taken a turn for the better and they need to continue to do so because Austin need to able to trust them because they need w well working public transit system.