​Please Urge the Austin Parks Board to Vote Again to Keep Alcohol Sales Out of Zilker Park: The Austin Parks Board has voted twice recommending against the sale of alcohol at the recently restored Barton Springs concession stand.  For technical reasons the Board is considering the matter for a third time at its meeting tomorrow, Tuesday, evening at 6:00 p.m. at City Hall.  If you can attend this meeting (the Board’s first in-person meeting) to thank the Board for its previous votes and to urge the Board to do it again, please do. 
If you cannot attend, please send an email to Sammi Curless, the Parks Board support person, [email protected], with a copy to Parks Board Chair Dawn Lewis, at [email protected].  Ask Ms. Curless and Chair Lewis to share your message opposing the sale of alcohol at Barton Springs (for public health, safety, and overcrowding reasons or for your own personal reasons) with the entire parks board. You can watch the Parks Board meeting live at 6:00 p.m. here.  Thank you for weighing in; public engagement is working on this one!!  

Last week, advocates of Oak Hill scored a victory in protecting the area’s namesake oak trees. This is the latest development in a federal case filed in 2019 by Save Barton Creek Association and others against the Texas Department of Transportation over the misnamed “Oak Hill Parkway”—a twelve-lane concrete mix-master that would rip through the Oak Hill community and destroy hundreds of the area’s oldest native trees. 
Plaintiffs, represented by SOS attorney Kelly Davis and private attorney Bill Gammon, asked the court to order that TxDOT halt all tree clearing until a ruling on the merits of the case. Although the court declined to go that far, the plaintiffs got the outcome they wanted: the trees are safe, for now. Following a Friday hearing in which U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman instructed TxDOT not to knock down any more “potentially protectable” trees pending a hearing on the merits, TxDOT notified its contractor to cease all tree clearing until the September 2 hearing. Success! Ultimately, a win in this case would send TxDOT back to the drawing board to evaluate alternatives to alleviate traffic in Oak Hill, including a community-supported alternative that could be delivered faster, cheaper, and without the environmental destruction of TxDOT’s currently proposed mega-highway.
Show your support for the cause by adopting a tree in Oak Hill here.