Cars found in Lake Travis are not the first time low lake levels have led to discoveries
By Asher Price
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, July 26, 2009
While waters receding because of the drought revealed this month whole vehicles submerged in Lake Travis, the episode was not the first time strange and sometimes grisly artifacts have poked their heads out of the banks of the Colorado River during severe dry spells.
The river was dammed in a series of massive projects in the first half of the last century to control flooding and provide steady water supplies for Central Texas. As a consequence, the lakes that formed swallowed up whole bits of history.
The drought "reveals things that haven't been seen in a long time," said Brian Block, executive director of Keep Austin Beautiful, which runs an annual cleanup of Lake Travis.
In August 2006, during the last drought that gripped Central Texas, an Austin man riding a watercraft on Lake Travis found a skeleton that archaeologists later estimated to be a female at least 700 years old.
The man, David Houston, had pulled onto the sloped southern bank, admiring a nearby house, when he saw a jawbone, teeth and a forearm in the clay soil less than six feet away. The site had been uncovered when the lake fell 16 feet below its August average to 649 feet above sea level.
Lake Travis has now fallen to 638 feet, down from a July average of 669.
Lake Buchanan, now at 997 feet, down from its July average of 1,014 feet, has yielded its own curiosities. The foundations of the buildings of the 19th century town of Bluffton, which was a stagecoach stop between Burnet and Llano, have reappeared. Originally formed in 1852, the town sported a blacksmith shop, a cotton gin, a hotel and saloons, according to the Handbook of Texas. When Buchanan Dam, which originally was to be called Bluffton Dam, was completed in 1937, the lake inundated the town.
Features of the site - last exposed in early 2007 during the previous drought - have again revealed themselves, including the foundations of the cotton gin, the stone rubble from the chimneys and foundations of the old hotel.
Besides the vehicles police recovered Thursday, at least two of which had been reported stolen and one at least as long ago as 1988, the lakes have offered up untoward relics.
In 2006, about a month after the discovery of the skeleton on Lake Travis, a concrete-filled barrel was found on the shore of Lake Buchanan in Burnet County. Inside was the body of a man who it was eventually determined had been killed by a blow to the head in 1990.
Police have not solved the crime, but Sheriff W.T. Smith said his office has conducted recent interviews.
Roger Wade, a spokesman for the Travis County sheriff's office, said there were at least five victims whose bodies haven't been recovered from accidents on the Highland Lakes over the past 10 years. He said there are no plans to send divers down to search for the bodies.
"The water is still treacherous, you still can't see, and there are lots of obstacles down there," he said.
But with the low lake levels, some scuba divers are able to get to sites they might not normally be able to reach.
The treetops of the old pecan orchards at Windy Point Park, normally at least 110 feet below the surface of Lake Travis, are now about 75 feet below, said Nicco Martinez, who runs Royal Scuba in Austin.
Visibility has suffered, however.
City says $72, appraisal data suggests $145.
By Sarah Coppola
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, August 03, 2009
As City of Austin officials seek feedback on next year's proposed budget at public hearings this month, they will be asking residents to accept a higher property tax rate and shoulder some of the burden of a budget crunch.
But city estimates of how much city taxes would increase for the typical homeowner use a narrow set of data that may underestimate the effect on many households.
City budget officials say that under the tax rate that they have proposed for next year, a typical homeowner's city taxes would increase $73. They base that estimate on Austin's median home sales price - the point at which half the prices were below and half were above -between March 2008 and February 2009.
But using the most up-to-date appraisal data from the Travis Central Appraisal District, city taxes for an Austin home with an average taxable value would increase $145 next year. City budget officials used appraisal district data in estimating expected revenue in the proposed budget and will use finalized appraisal district figures to set a tax rate.
But in estimating next year's added tax burden for the public, city budget officials are using data from the Texas A&M Real Estate Center. They say that is more useful because it shows median sales prices from cities across Texas, allowing a comparison of a typicalAustin tax bill to those of other cities. Also, median appraised values from cities across Texas - figures that the city would prefer to use - are not readily available, said Ed Van Eenoo, the city's budget officer.
City budget officials also argue that, unlike an average appraised value, a median home sales price is less likely to be skewed by the prices of very expensive homes. However, their analysis takes into account only about 21,400 single-family homes, condominiums and townhomes - out of the nearly 169,000 total residences in Austin - that sold during a soft market for high-price homes.
Using sales prices to estimate a tax bill is problematic, said University of Texas accounting professor Michael Granof, because sales prices "are not always as indicative of appraised values."
"In other words, I don't know that all of the houses that were sold last year represent a cross section of all the houses in Austin," Granof said.
However, an average appraised value also isn't the best figure because there are multimillion-dollar homes in Austin that push the average upward, said Granof, who specializes in government finance issues at the McCombs School of Business.
City Council Member Bill Spelman said that using a median appraised value would be preferred. However, he said he isn't concerned about the budget office's use of median sales price data to provide an estimate for increased tax bills as long as officialsmake clear that residents with homes above the median could end up paying significantly more.
Council Member Randi Shade said the appraised value would seem to be a better number because "that's what our tax bills are based on, not sales price."
"My appraisal is not the same as what I might sell my house for," she said.
The city is looking to generate more money to close a projected budget gap caused by declines in sales taxes and construction activity, two main sources of city revenue. The 2009-10 budget proposed July 22 by City Manager Marc Ott would keep intact many of the core services that residents said they valued most, such as library hours, parks programs and a police cadet class.
But the planwould scale back other services - for example, byclosing eight pools. It would alsoincrease Austinites' monthly water, electricity and trash bills and raise property taxes to the rollback rate, which is the highest rate that the city can choose under state law without giving residents the opportunity to seek a referendum to limit the tax increase. That rate would bring in about the same amount of money that the city spent this year on day-to-day operations, plus an extra 8 percent.
The City Council will hold three public hearings about the budget before approving a final version in mid-September. The budget would take effect Oct. 1.
The proposed rollback rate - 43.28 cents per $100 of assessed property value - also could change over the next month. The appraisal district is not expected to certify the tax roll, which will include all taxable property values, until late August, a month or so after a state-mandated deadline. Local cities and school districts use that data to set their final tax rates for the upcoming year.
Mayor Lee Leffingwell and other council members have said that they hope to choose a rate lower than the rollback rate, although Ott has warned that doing so would require cutting more city services. A slightly lower tax rate than the rollback rate would still mean a higher tax bill next year for most residents because many homes' appraised values have increased.
The appraisal district does not calculate median home values, only averages. The average taxable value of Austin homes - a number that includes tax exemptions - was $246,002 in 2008. Under this year's tax rate of 40.12 cents per $100 of assessed property value, that translated to a city bill of $987. According to the most recent estimate for 2009,the average taxable value of Austin homes is $261,452. Applying the proposed rollback rate for next year would yield a bill of $1,132, about $145 more and 14.7 percent higher.
The median home sales price in Austin from March 2008 to February 2009, when the city began crafting the 2009-10 budget, was $187,100, Van Eenoo said. That translates to a tax bill of $751 this year. Van Eenoo said the city used numbers provided by the appraisal district this spring to estimate that the median home sales price would increase to $190,468 in 2009. Under the proposed tax rate, that would mean a tax bill of $824 next year, $73 and 9.7 percent higher.
Van Eenoo said that in past years, the budget office has used raw data from the appraisal district to calculate the median appraised value of Austin homes, which last year was $189,547. The budget office will probably do the same thing this year, although it might not get the certified roll from the appraisal district soon enough to calculate a median before the city budget is passed in mid-September, Van Eenoo said.
East Austin homeowner Daniel Llanes, a local activist and performance artist, would pay about $50 more next year in city taxes under the proposed tax rate. Llanes' house on Red Bluff Road had a taxable value of $67,680 in 2008 and $74,448 in 2009, although he is still in the process of protesting his appraisal. He paid about $272 in city taxes this year and would pay about $322 under next year's proposed rate, an 18.4 percent increase.
By Michael Liedtke
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Monday, August 03, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc. invested billions of dollars in its Internet search engine during the past six years before realizing it made more sense to outsource the job - the same conclusion that the company's co-founders reached shortly after they started their Web directory in the mid-1990s.
The latest shift in direction will establish rival Microsoft Corp.'s Bing as the search engine on Yahoo's highly trafficked Web site and put Microsoft in control of the ads that appear alongside Bing's search results, pending approval of the proposed partnership by antitrust regulators in the United States and Europe.
The 10-year deal announced last week marks the end of a search expansion begun under former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel, who resigned under shareholder pressure two years ago. The demise of Semel's strategy returns Yahoo to a philosophy embraced by co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo in the company's early days.
Within two years of starting what was originally known as "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web," Yang and Filo concluded that Yahoo wouldn't be able to index all of the new sites proliferating on the Internet without more automation and sophistication.
Rather than spend its own money on costly upgrades, Yahoo hired AltaVista to supplement its search engine and then later turned to Inktomi. Those decisions freed up more cash for Yahoo to spend on developing content and other services that established its Web site as the biggest draw on the Internet.
In 2000, as indexing the Web grew ever more complicated, Yahoo sought the expertise of an ambitious young startup named Google.
In a move that Yahoo later regretted, the company promoted the Google brand next to its search box to show where it got its results. The exposure drove millions of users to Google Inc.'s search engine, which quickly supplanted Yahoo as the go-to place to find stuff on the Web.
After Google devised a way to make big money from text ads placed alongside search results, Semel wanted a bigger piece of the action. Beginning in 2002, Yahoo spent more than
$2 billion buying other search engines, including the remnants of AltaVista and Inktomi. Later, Yahoo invested heavily in search improvements that included a much-delayed advertising system called Panama.
The search expansion helped boost Yahoo's profits early on but didn't pan out as Semel envisioned. Google widened its lead in search as Yahoo's U.S. share shriveled from about one-third of the market in 2004 to about one-fifth of the market today. To make matters worse, socializing hubs such as Facebook and MySpace supplanted Yahoo as online hangouts.
"They just lost their way," said technology analyst Rob Enderle. The Microsoft deal "will let them rediscover what they once were: a place where a lot of people liked to spend a lot of their time online."
As CEO, Yang tried to reduce Yahoo's financial commitment to search by forming an advertising partnership with Google last year. In that plan - which was narrower than Yahoo's deal with Microsoft - Google would have served up some of the ads alongside search results on Yahoo. U.S. antitrust regulators threatened to sue to block the arrangement, scaring Google off.
Yang didn't seem to want any part of Microsoft. In May 2008, he and Yahoo's board rebuffed a Microsoft offer to pay Yahoo $1 billion in cash and buy $8 billion in stock in exchange for a search partnership.
In the deal struck last week, Yahoo gets no cash up front but instead will receive nearly 90 percent of the ad revenue generated by Bing when it handles queries on Yahoo's site . (Microsoft will also continue to run its search engine at previous locations such as MSN.com and the toolbars used with Web browsers.)
Carol Bartz, Yahoo's chief executive of the past six months, realized that the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company needed to get back to its roots. Since her arrival, she has sought to reduce the emphasis on the idea that Yahoo must run its own search engine.
"It really hard to tell whether (Bartz) just thinks Yahoo isn't that strong in search or whether she thinks she needs to jettison search to save the company," said Danny Sullivan, editor of the online newsletter SearchEngineLand .
What is certain is that Microsoft, desperate to expand its meager slice of U.S. search traffic, had pursued Yahoo for years. The combination of Yahoo's 20 percent share of the search market with Microsoft's portion would give the alliance about 28 percent of the market (Google's share is 65 percent), assuming no big shifts in usage before the project is fully running in two years or so.
"We found a partner willing and excited to put a lot of technology behind search," Bartz said Wednesday. "So our customers are still going to get the same search experience or better search experience because of the investment that Microsoft is willing to make."
Monday, August 03, 2009
Dean Kamen may be best known to the public as the inventor of the Segway, the electric-powered vehicle that is used for everything from shopping-mall patrols to mail delivery and city tours.
But Kamen's biggest passion is using technology to improve the quality of people's lives.
His DEKA Research and Development Corp., in Manchester, N.H., has developed wheelchairs that can climb stairs and is working on a prosthetic arm that will allow users to pick up small objects and pluck grapes from a bunch. He has also started a foundation to get students interested in science and technology through robotics competitions.
National Instruments Inc. of Austin is bringing him to town this week for its annual NI Week technology event at the Austin Convention Center. The theme this year is robotics.
American-Statesman: What drives your passion for robotics? Kamen: I think robots - no pun intended - are the perfect vehicle for demonstrating how much power and fun and excitement there is in a world where you understand and can apply technology. And it combines mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, systems and controls engineering, software. So it brings together a lot of disciplines. It makes it easy to allow kids to do a focused activity that has something they all seem to like, which is competition.
Many people tend to think of robotics in the context of industrial or advanced scientific uses, such as space exploration. Your work has focused more on using robotics to help humans. We do a lot of work making use of the skills and tools that you'd use in robotics, in particular to make what we call the Luke arm.
We were asked by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) to build prosthetic arms that frankly help to give back to these kids (soldiers wounded in combat) that have literally given their arms to this country something way better than a plastic tube with a hook at the end of it. So we set out to build a fully articulated arm with multiple fingers, an opposing thumb, a working wrist, a working elbow, a working shoulder that can both flex and abduct, the goal of which is allow these kids to have as much capability back as they possibly can.
Why did you start FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), which sponsors robotics competitions for students? I thought it is really both a tragedy for the kids and scary for our country that so many kids are passing up the opportunity to get themselves prepared for really fun, exciting, profitable, world-class careers in science and technology - not because the education isn't available, but because they are distracted by so much nonsense in our culture.
For example, how many hours in a day or a week do most kids spend trying excel at football or basketball, or how many of them think they are going to make it in Hollywood?
So we figured, in a culture that is obsessed with sports and entertainment, why fight it? Join it. Let's create a sport that is entertaining, that's competitive, that's exciting, that kids can do - except the skills sets they walk away from each season aren't that they are a little better at kicking a ball.
They're better at a whole lot of things that give them a taste of what the real world could be like for professional scientists or engineers. And there's a whole lot more jobs available for scientists and engineers than there are for people who can bounce a ball.
Are you concerned that the recession has dried up the national appetite for risk, and that, as the economy recovers, the people who help finance innovation, such as venture capitalists, will be much less willing to do so? Yes, in the wake of what's happened lately, everyone has gotten more risk-averse. While in some way, that may be good, what's the old saying? A cat will jump on a hot stove, but he won't jump on a hot stove again. The problem is, he won't jump on a cold one either.
I think in some ways we might be appropriately becoming more conservative. What I'm concerned about is what has always made America great compared to the rest of the world in terms of what we accomplish isn't that we're more disciplined, because frankly we're less disciplined. It's not even that we're better educated.
The big, big edge Americans have is our freedom. It's our freedom of thought, our freedom of creativity, our willingness to be free to take chances, free to fail, free to pick ourselves up and start again. And I hope our culture isn't giving up on that in return for some presumption that if you give up some of those freedoms, you get yourself some security, because I don't think you do.
COMPILED FROM STAFF REPORTS
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
AIR TRAVEL Passenger traffic at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport was down 10 percent last month amid a continuing slowdown in vacation and business travel.
Austin-Bergstrom traffic falls 10 percent in June
Traffic on Southwest Airlines, the airport's busiest carrier, was up 0.2 percent from June 2008. No. 2 American Airlines was down 16.5 percent. No. 3 Continental Airlines was up 2 percent, and No. 4 Delta Airlines, which merged last year with Northwest Airlines, had a 38 percent increase.
For the first half of the year, passenger traffic at Austin-Bergstrom was down 12 percent from the same six months of 2008.
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