"Let's call this song exactly what it is…."
-Aretha Franklin

It brings me joy to see the extraordinary mosaic art wall at East Eleventh and Waller streets whenever I'm leaving the block or coming home. It is a comforting and very public symbol of Central East Austin's African-American cultural legacy, one that I think we desperately need as our neighborhood is metamorphosing into something that inspires mixed emotions. The process of gentrification is well underway in my neighborhood. Some days I like what I see; others, I wonder-with some foreboding-what lies ahead.

Before I go on, there are a few things I should let you know. I have only lived in Central East Austin for about twenty-five years, so I'm not from here. But when I moved here to attend the University of Texas, I submerged myself in East Austin's culture and community. For about seven years I wrote a column about Austin's black art scene in the daily newspaper and got to know a bit about how art, artists and culture are braided within the fabric of our lives. I've worked for the Villager and Nokoa newspapers, both of which are owned by African Americans. I was part of the original staff at KAZI-FM, a community radio station whose primary audience is African Americans. I tutored at Huston-Tillotson College, worked on projects with the Austin Area Urban League, NAACP, Austin Eastside Story Foundation, the George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center, the summer concert series Jump On It!, and the now defunct Black Arts Alliance, whose absence is a wrenching loss to Austin's art scene. I buried my son's umbilical cord under the pecan tree at the old Hamilton house on the corner of San Bernard and Cotton streets and was on a first-name speaking basis with some of the flamboyant folks who considered Eleventh Street the premiere promenade back in the day. I have seen the neighborhood wallowing in the ashes of its former glory and watched it begin to ascend again in a surge of vibrancy.

Five years ago, I married Byron Marshall, a former first assistant city manager of Austin who was and still is the president and chief executive officer of the Austin Revitalization Authority (ARA), the private, nonprofit development corporation responsible for most of the changes you see when you drive up East Eleventh Street. I sat in on those early ARA meetings and watched as he and ARA Chair Charles Urdy, a former Austin Mayor Pro Tem, worked patiently for years to bring consensus to the various neighborhood groups who-convinced they had been lied to, disregarded and disrespected by the City of Austin for decades in its disastrous efforts at urban renewal-no longer believed that positive change was possible whenever the local government was involved. I saw black and brown folks, who could have achieved positive results by forming coalitions, alliances and mutual agendas the past several years, lunge for each other's jugulars.

"Dissension between African Americans and Latinos is almost as old as Austin," said former Mayor Gus Garcia. He says that the two racial groups had been deliberatively manipulated by the power structure since the nineteen-twenties, when policymakers set it up so that Hispanics were moved south of East Seventh Street and African Americans were moved north of Seventh. He says that we're still experiencing the effects of those policies. "Absolutely, that's a factor. And when you see it happening in the circumstances when it is to our benefit to work together, what can you do but sit there and bleed? It doesn't have to be that way; we can proceed on points of common interest and work together for the good of the entire community. ARA was a catalyst for positive change in East Austin. We can build from there."

Scores of books have been written about gentrification, a process that has arguably been around since humans first came together in cities in northern Africa. During the mid and late eighteen hundreds, power brokers in a number of European cities, including London, Amsterdam, Hamburg and Paris, experimented with urban planning. In Paris, a member of Napoleon III's court redesigned the central city, displacing thousands of poor Parisians and gutting their neighborhoods. The now famous grand boulevards that showcase the city's well known monuments were installed and strict guidelines applied to new construction along the boulevards. The residences that were built there became the most exclusive in the city.

In American cities across the nation, from Harlem in New York to the Mission District in San Francisco, the same process is taking place; people with money and political clout are moving into neighborhoods that once were either multi-ethnic or primarily communities of color-usually close to the central business district downtown-and displacing the original inhabitants. What that generally means to a community of color is that white folks buy land cheaply, build or renovate big, nice houses, and then proceed to take over the grass-roots organizations that represent the indigenous folks and push through their own agendas. Because these transplants are often more educated and more politically connected, they usually succeed and the entire flavor of the neighborhood changes. It's hard, after a few years, to find even remnants of the positive cultural connections that existed before the neighborhood got trendy. On top of all that, property taxes rise-often faster than the original inhabitants can afford-and many longtime residents end up having to leave their homes and communities.

Gentrification is basically a process of displacement. And it is, without a doubt, a highly visible and volatile process.

Here in my Central East Austin neighborhood, the ARA is charged with, among other things, modulating the inevitable gentrification process by minimizing the negative impacts as much as possible.

"It's a balancing act," Byron Marshall says. "We're trying to reignite the economic and cultural life of this community without displacing the majority of the people who have lived and worked here for years. At the same time, if people whose families were either from this neighborhood or from neighborhoods like it around the country want to move back 'home,' we want them to be able to afford to do that. We also encourage people with higher incomes to join us because we recognize the importance of a mixed-income neighborhood to improving schools and the quality of services in the area.

"We are definitely working to prevent what happened in Clarksville," Marshall says, referring to the trendy West Austin neighborhood where only a very few founding black families still remain to hold the ancestral memories of the first freedom town west of the Mississippi.

But my husband could have been talking about any of the African-American neighborhoods that were scattered throughout Austin in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Masontown, Kincheonville, Wheatville, or even the East Sixth Street downtown business district, once dominated by black entrepreneurs.

"Make me wanna holler, the way they do my life…."
-Marvin Gaye

Displacement, whether by the bulldozer of urban renewal or by market forces, is the most hated aspect of gentrification, because it is essentially an act of force. It denies self-determination to an existing community. In Austin, that process was not only developed but also sanctioned by the city fathers. In the nineteen-twenties, the City of Austin commissioned urban planners to develop a plan to move African Americans and Latinos east of East Avenue, which is now I-35, and refused to provide services for them west of the avenue. Segregated schools and parks for blacks and browns were built only on the east side of town. City leaders wholeheartedly endorsed redlining, the lending institutions' widely practiced policy of excluding and underserving black and brown communities. For all these reasons, no matter how much money you made, if you were black or brown you could only live comfortably on the eastside.

"Aside from all of the negative things associated with segregation, it had the positive effect of helping to create a thriving community," said Charles Urdy, who grew up in East Austin. "What you had was doctors and educators and entrepreneurs…people from all walks of life, living in your neighborhood. There were role models everywhere, people who were an example of how to live…and how not to."

Urdy said that later in Austin, as in virtually every inner city across the nation, desegregation and disinvestment caused these communities to crumble. "Well, you had your more affluent black folk moving north and west. Some, like myself, moved northeast. The central part of East Austin became associated with segregation. And as we moved out, land speculators bought up the property and became, essentially, slumlords. Central East Austin became mostly a place where poor folk lived."

Displacement usually doesn't happen without a fight. Activists like the late Spencer Nobles Jr.; his wife, Ora Lee Taylor Nobles; and many others pushed for public investment and fair play in the acquisition practices of the city and the University of Texas. They protested redlining. Their efforts and achievements slowed the process of displacement that started in the nineteen-seventies and -eighties as outside landlords bought up more and more property.

In many ways, East Austin hit rock bottom in those years. Abandoned and gutted buildings along East Eleventh and East Twelfth streets barely hinted at the vibrant businesses and neighborhoods that once thrived. Crime rates crept higher as heroin, crack and other drugs hit the streets. Prostitution flourished openly. The perception of crime soared, fueled by media that chose to cover isolated incidents of violence rather than the underlying causes that lay in decisions made west of I-35.

"People moving out, people moving in…."
-The Temptations

Fast forward to the nineteen-nineties when there was a subtle change underway. It was barely noticeable at first, but became more and more obvious. The neighborhoods were evolving.

"There were always white folks in East Austin but they were more of your hippie type who mostly kept to themselves," said Dorothy Turner, an accomplished East Austin activist who grew up in a little house off East Sixteenth Street. She says East Austin between Seventh Street and Manor Road was always tri-ethnic-mostly black, brown and a few whites-and the three groups got along reasonably well, mostly by respecting each other's boundaries.

But in the nineties, perhaps attracted by the romance of urban culture, cheap housing, and convenience, a few whites began buying homes in traditionally black and brown neighborhoods. As in other cities, these new neighbors tended to blend in well. They were primarily young, artistic, single and well educated. They became advocates for their neighborhoods, never suspecting that they would become the bridge that would invite richer folks to come in and buy up the bigger homes that families were struggling to keep up or were eager to sell so they could move out to Round Rock or Pflugerville.

"It was important to me that I live in a diverse neighborhood in Central Austin, where I could walk, bus or ride my bike and not be completely dependent on my car," said Valerie Thatcher, a graphic artist who moved into the neighborhood in 1999. "I wanted to live where I felt an authentic sense of Austin, with all its culture, history, creativity and energy. It is truly a gift to have found such a great place to live in Austin."

Thatcher, who is white, moved into one of the affordable homes built by the Anderson Community Development Corporation in partnership with the City of Austin, and is now my neighbor and friend. What is ironic about it is that were it not for then Council Member Eric Mitchell-someone whose political tactics Thatcher vehemently disagreed with-the homes we enjoy so much would never have been built.

"These homes were a piece of a much larger puzzle that was our vision of bringing the community back to life," said the fiery Mitchell, arguably one of the more outspoken and controversial figures in Austin's recent history. As an Austin council member, Mitchell was either revered or reviled by all who knew him or had even heard of him.

"Eric was a catalyst for change in East Austin," said Charles Urdy, who chose not to run for reelection in 1994 and was succeeded on the Austin City Council by Mitchell. Although the groundwork had been carefully put in place by a consortium of activists, Urdy said, it was Mitchell-with his confrontational politics that refused to accept the status quo-who pushed through projects like the Millennium Youth Entertainment Center, Austin East Side Story, Anderson Community Development Corporation, and the ARA.

"From the beginning, it was a community effort that brought people who were living and working in East Austin together to come up with a plan to determine the future of the area," Mitchell said.

Often, Mitchell bruised egos in getting things done. "We wanted more than the same old political rhetoric and I have always been one to tell it like I see it," Mitchell said. "As far as we've come, there's still a long way to go and as far as I'm concerned, if black folks-brown folks too, but especially black folks because these are our neighborhoods-get marginalized out of the process, then we failed the community."

"They smiling in your face, all the time they want to take your place…."
-The O'Jays

In theory at least, the old and new residents should all be able to get along. And to a great extent we do. But what is happening in East Austin (as in many other cities) is that the newcomers proceed to take over the grass-roots organizations that represent the indigenous folks (or form separate organizations that supplant them) and begin pushing their own agendas.

Tommy Wyatt, who for more than thirty years has published the Villager, an East Austin-based newspaper, has seen it happen over and over through the years. He says that the city-which he feels is doing too little, too late-condones this coopting of neighborhood organizations. Not content to leave destiny to newcomers, Wyatt, along with a number of other business and community folk, formed the East Eleventh Street Village Association to come up with a plan for its redevelopment.

The group repeatedly brought projects before the Austin City Council that the community supported. "Council didn't want to commit money in the area to upgrade the infrastructure to support any development. When GAIN (Guadalupe Association for an Improved Neighborhood)-which was formed by politically connected white folks to circumvent the original Guadalupe Neighborhood Association, who were mostly longtime Latino neighbors-went before the Council claiming to represent the majority opinion of the neighborhood, that was Council's excuse to delay investment even longer."

Wyatt says he sees the same thing happening with OCEAN (the Organization of Central East Austin Neighborhoods), an organization originally comprised of several longtime neighborhood associations but now made up of a very different group of folks.

"These are some of the very same politically connected white folks who opposed ARA and then tried to take it over," Wyatt said. "They form these organizations as they need to, to do what they want to do. Let's face it, they work hard to get the politicians they support elected and, in turn, the politicians support what they are told is the neighborhood's agenda."

Mark Rogers, project director of the Guadalupe Neighborhood Development Corporation (GNDC), which builds affordable homes in the area, is a former president and current secretary of GAIN. Rogers, who represents GNDC on the ARA board, says he wishes he had the power that Wyatt attributes to whites. He agrees with much of what Wyatt says, but thinks the issue is more complex.

"There needs to be a twelve-step program for white gentrifiers like me," Rogers says. "Let me tell you what it's like to grow up a middle-class white person in America. When you're a middle-class white guy like me, you grow up thinking the system is on your side. You believe that the police are there to protect you; that the City Council works for you; and if you don't like something you can change it. So Tommy (Wyatt) is right. White people who move into this area feel they can make changes using a system that works for them. I will say there is a disturbingly disproportionate number of white people influencing neighborhood associations over here. But they are very often the ones who don't mind giving up their Saturdays to come to meetings and work on a project to push it through."

The system does not work the same way for African Americans, middle class or not. The black folks who established the older neighborhood organizations and who fought to control their neighborhood's destiny worked tirelessly in the evenings, on weekends, every spare moment they could find. "If it was just a matter of hard work," my grandmother used to say, "black folks would rule the world."

Despite their hard work, very often the longtime East Austin residents didn't have the financial or political clout to make things happen as they had wanted. After years of this kind of back-and-forth struggle, the entire flavor of the neighborhood was bound to change. This is no surprise, for without a strong, unwavering commitment to envision and then build a future based on the lessons and experience of the past, it becomes difficult to find even remnants of the positive cultural connections that existed before the neighborhoods got trendy.

"Now we demand a change to do things for ourself. Say it loud…!
-James Brown

Case in point regarding East Austin's cultural legacy: A request for proposals was sent out for artists to bid on creating three works of public art at the newly renovated and expanded George Washington Carver Museum. There were no stipulations on who could bid in this open process for a publicly funded project; the competition was open to any artist. Nevertheless these works were supposed to reflect the cultural history of the neighborhood. Several artists responded, including both black and white artists from other cities. Three white artists were chosen and subsequently one of them was dismayed by the community's outrage. She only wanted to do her art and never considered the political implications or the community sentiment that the artists' color should be a factor.

A local artist, Carla Nickerson (who did not bid on the project but was instrumental in spearheading the community's efforts in getting the selection overturned, so that two of the selected artists were replaced by blacks) explained her position.

"I admire Asian culture, I can identify with it and it moves me. I go to Asian movies, eat the food, collect some of the art," said Nickerson, who is black. "But if a project like this came up in the Asian community, it would never occur to me as an artist to bid on it and possibly deprive an Asian artist of the opportunity to create art that reflects his or her own cultural heritage. It would never occur to me to coopt it. Where else in Austin does that happen? Not in the Latino community. Not in the Asian community, nor in the Middle Eastern community."

Was Nickerson saying that she didn't want white artists to do their thing in East Austin?

"No, but some places are or should be sacred in the community. The Carver Museum is the cultural repository of the community's heritage. It should be someone who is of that heritage selected to portray it. To do otherwise is disrespectful."

And respect is a key element in making any relationship work, especially as it is going through changes.

Larry Jackson, another longtime community activist, said, "If you consider yourself socially conscious at all, then the thing to do when you move into a traditional community like East Austin, is to take the time to learn the history and listen to what the people who have lived here more than five or ten years want for their neighborhood. In my opinion, you ought to come to the neighborhood meetings and listen and not try and influence the process according to your own agenda."

Jackson is a board member of ARA and the executive director of Austin Eastside Story, a youth program that has exposed thousands of children of color to travel, culture and expanded education opportunities.

Byron Marshall said, "ARA's mission and vision is expressed by our commitment to respect, restore and revitalize the area. You can't stop the process of gentrification once it gets underway but we can manage it according to our own vision for our community and many aspects of it are very positive. Who wouldn't want to see reduced crime, new investment in buildings and infrastructure, and increased economic activity in their neighborhoods?" Marshall is acutely aware that lower income and older residents must be respected and protected. "ARA's commitment is that we will work to see that the benefits of these changes, that are so often enjoyed by the new arrivals, do not come at the expense of established residents and business owners who would otherwise find themselves economically and socially marginalized."

Herman Lessard, ARA's former board chair and outgoing president of the Austin Area Urban League, says that despite it's contentious beginnings, despite the seemingly slow progress (which is actually ahead of the timetable set for it by the community), and despite the naysayers, ARA is actually fulfilling the vision that the community had for it from the beginning.

"It was never a question of whether Central East Austin was going to be developed, and to some extent gentrified. This area is too close to the heart of this city and it was just a matter of time before that happened," Lessard said. What was up for grabs was who was going to develop it. "What we said when we formed ARA was Austin's African-American community should shape and develop its own future."

"It's been a long, long time coming, but a change gon' come…."
-Sam Cooke

It's an ambitious vision, fraught with pitfalls every step of the way-from outside the neighborhood and within-but ARA is moving forward with its community-sanctioned plan to thwart the negative effects of gentrification in a number of ways, including building housing for both low- and moderate-income families.

Another approach that might be used to soften the effects of gentrification as Central East Austin rises from the ashes is to form a community land trust. This is structured so that residents and business people own or rent the buildings they live or work in, and a community land trust-a nonprofit neighborhood membership organization like the ARA-owns the land under the buildings. In this model, restrictions would be placed on the price or rental of dwellings. For example, if a resident owns a house or apartment sitting on community-owned land and wants to sell it within a specified period of time, it must be offered back to the community land trust at a restricted price. Permanent price restrictions can ensure that the housing will always be affordable.

Austin City Manager Toby Futrell, who is responsible for implementing any policies that the Austin City Council may establish to soften the impact of gentrification, is grappling with both the heartrending realities and the cold calculating facts of the issue.

"The essence of the proposal put forth by Austin Council Members Danny Thomas and Raul Alvarez (see accompanying article, "CPR for East Austin") is that we can mitigate the negatives of gentrification by designating an area that you know is a prime target for gentrification-in this case, Central East Austin-and set it up so that if any new business or development gets any incentives, the city must dedicate a portion to the residents in the area that they can then use to help pay the rent or mortgage, utility bills, and make repairs. That should help free up money to pay property taxes," she said. "We're drawing on the work that has already been done by the community; we just have to trial-test and tweak to determine the best formula."

Futrell says she thinks the council members' proposal is a great tool, but more solutions are needed. "And we'll need the entire toolbox just to effectively address the negatives of gentrification. The ultimate solution is a legislative change in the state and federal tax laws. It's a huge, complex issue, but we are truly committed to doing what we can."

She says the ideal scenario is that as businesses come into East Austin and the area prospers, they will bring more and better-paying jobs to the residents, so that when the economic boat rises on the commercial side, the longtime residents get lifted too. But reality is rarely ideal and cities all across the country, if they are not stagnating, are wrestling with these issues. "I've heard people say that gentrification is a necessary evil in a city that is moving forward, but we have to find a way to rebuild communities without displacing people."

It may be possible to first offer affordable homes in Central East Austin to those who are longtime renters or who have a cultural connection to the area, but laws that were originally put in place to protect black and brown communities are double-edged.

Paul Hilgers, director of the City of Austin's Neighborhood Housing and Community Development Department, said, "We're looking at ways to identify and reach our target market, with the goal of maintaining the neighborhood's diversity."

His department's offices, along with the Austin Housing Finance Corporation (AHFC) and the AHFC's Community Lending Office, recently moved into the new Street-Jones Building located on East Eleventh Street, a move Hilgers says demonstrates the city's commitment to the area.

"The City of Austin is more committed to addressing and creatively trying to solve the issue of gentrification than any other city I know of, but what happens on East Eleventh and Twelfth streets should not be the city's decision; it has to be community driven," Hilgers said. Perhaps realizing that his position reflects two points of view, he added, "We're constantly calibrating the right role for the city in a very complicated situation."

East Austin activist Susana Almanza, executive director of PODER (People Organized in Defense of the Earth and her Resources) and a former planning commissioner for the City of Austin, says there's plenty the city, along with the county and state, can do to address gentrification. She considers the proposal brought forth last month by Council Members Thomas and Alvarez (the latter a former member of PODER) to spur development in the area, while attempting to retain longtime residents by offering tax incentives and abatements, to be a starting place but not a total solution.

"It really doesn't get at the issue, which is squeezing people with limited incomes out of an area where they have lived for years, generations," Almanza said. "If you really want a diverse, mixed-income community, you have to start helping people at thirty percent of the median income, which is $23,000 for a family of five. Instead, the city is focusing on building for those at sixty-five to eighty percent of median. They have bought up so many of the vacant lots in the area, they could address the needs of renters, who are also being forced out."

"Keep your head to the sky…."
-Earth, Wind & Fire

Ultimately, each person has to look within to find and fight for a solution that will work for them and the communities they care for.

Tommy Wyatt said, "If we're honest about it, middle-class black folks relinquished this neighborhood voluntarily. After those first urban renewal projects in the nineteen-fifties (bitterly called 'Negro removal programs' by those who lived through them) nobody forced us to sell our homes and move. We chose to branch out around the city. And when we did, we established diverse neighborhoods in the northeast, northwest, and far South Austin, as well as Pflugerville and Round Rock. Remember, we didn't choose to live in East Austin in the first place, we were forced to."

But, Wyatt says, if you're black, then no matter where you choose to live, inside or outside the city, we are still a community. And the very heart of Austin's African-American community and culture beats along the East Eleventh and Twelfth street arteries.

The complex issues surrounding gentrification have caused explosive conflicts in many American cities, often along racial and economic fault lines, and Austin has experienced its share of eruptions. But everyone benefits if newcomers take the time to educate themselves about and respect the values held by the community they've chosen to live in; if policymakers and socially conscious developers continue to invest in the area out of an understanding that they have a debt to pay because of deliberately harmful past policies; and if the traditional residents of these neighborhoods can be inspired to take a renewed interest (beyond weekend visits to church and the beauty shop) in coming back home to the historic East End and getting involved in the economic development, cultural, and educational issues here.

So, yes, the public art commissioned by the ARA at East Eleventh and Waller streets as a cultural monument to the community inspires my spirit. Our ancestors are speaking to us through that wall, so listen.

Rhapsody, the jubilantly optimistic tile mosaic by John Yancey, depicts the essence of the community it celebrates as a kind of quilt, fluid and musical. On the other side of the wall is Sankofa, the mixed-media mosaic by Rejina Thomas. Sankofa is a West African, Adinkra word that counsels the wisdom of learning from the past to build a better future. What could be more relevant? It is our community scrapbook, reminding us of all we need to know to get where we need to go.

These profoundly insightful works of art by black artists, who live or work in the area, highlight not only the cultural heritage of the community as reflected in our music, our churches and our families, but also are unabashedly African in iconography and juicy vibrancy. These works are a bold statement that we were here, we are here now, and we're here to stay.

Some women have husbands who fix things around the house…. You may e-mail Anoa at amonsho@goodlifemag.com.

Defining Terms

East End-The historic neighborhood whose nexus is at East Twelfth and Chicon streets. The longtime residents of this neighborhood have graciously extended their neighborhood's name to include the entire community surrounding the East Eleventh and East Twelfth street corridors between I-35 and Airport Boulevard.

Gentrify, -fied, -fying-To convert (an aging area in a city) into a more affluent middle-class neighborhood, as by remodeling dwellings, resulting in increased property values and in displacement of the poor. -Webster's Dictionary of the American Language.

Gentrification-Simultaneously "a physical, economic, social and cultural phenomenon, commonly involving invasion by middle-class or higher-income groups…and the replacement or displacement of many of the original occupants." -Chris Hamnett, urban planning scholar.

-K. Anoa Monsho

CPR for East Austin

On October 4, Austin City Council Members Danny Thomas and Raul Alvarez unveiled their plan to create a Community Preservation & Revitalization (CPR) Zone that they hope will promote business development and alleviate the negative effects of gentrification in East Austin. The boundaries of the Zone are: I-35, Riverside Drive, State Highway 71, US Highway183, and Manor Road.

The poverty rate for the area encompassed by the CPR Zone is more than twice the poverty rate for the rest of the city. The unemployment rate is almost twice that of the rest of the city and the median family income is fifty-four percent of what it is in other areas of the city. The combined Hispanic and African-American population of the zone is 84.4 percent while the combined Hispanic and African-American population of the whole city is 40.3 percent, with Hispanics comprising slightly more than 30 percent of the total population.

The proposed Zone is designed to close the economic gap between East Austin and other, more prosperous areas of the city by:

• Offering property tax rebates linked to the creation of new jobs and providing employment to residents of the CPR Zone.
• Providing rebates from 35 percent to 85 percent of the total city property tax for mixed-use commercial development, if developers guarantee that 10 percent of the residential units would be affordable to people earning 65 percent of the median family income. The amount of the rebate will depend on the size of the development.
• Providing the same incentives to commercial-only developments providing they create from twenty five to one hundred jobs for Zone residents.

To benefit from the incentives, developers must invest in a Homeowners' Assistance Fund that will be available to residents who've lived within the zone for at least ten years and whose income is 50 percent or less of Austin's median family income. The goal of that fund is to help longtime residents offset rising property taxes as more businesses move in and property values increase. The city anticipates that the CPR Zone program will facilitate economic growth in a way that safeguards the community from the negative elements of gentrification and preserves its cultural heritage.

The Austin City Council has passed a resolution directing the city manager to facilitate public input on the proposal and make recommendations for implementation in early 2005.

-K. Anoa Monsho