Austin Pets Alive keeps Austin no-kill

Austin Pets Alive will be able to continue their efforts of being a no-kill animal shelter after Austin City Council approved at their last meeting an extension of their lease and are allowing them to renovate the building.

APA became a no-kill animal shelter in 2008 and was face this year with the threat of having to shut down if their lease was not renewed. The original lease was supposed to be temporary and end in 2015. However, the shelter and the city of Austin have decided that it is better for the city to continue to build on to the current shelter instead of at a new location.

To persuade the council to vote in favor of renewing the lease, APA volunteers and Austin citizens were asked to send a letter to council members expressing their want to keep Austin a no-kill city with the help of APA, according to volunteer Mary Hedengren. Hedengren volunteers with the Ruff Tail Runners program and regularly exercises the dogs on the trails around the Town Lake location.

“Keeping the shelter is a win all around for the community,” Hedengren said. “If they were farther south I wouldn’t be able to volunteer.”

The lease that APA has with the city of Austin states that the shelter must only pay for utilities. According to Rebecca Reid, marketing manager for the shelter, they also have to reach a certain quota of animals saved that would normally be put down by other shelters. For example, they must save 1,500 bottle babies (orphaned unweaned kittens).

“It’s a great win for them,” Nathan Smith, owner of Austin Tenant Advisors, said. “Especially since the city could definitely make more money by selling to someone else. In that area you would normally pay $32-45 per square foot per year.”

In addition to allowing Austin residents to adopt animals, they also have several other programs to encourage healing animals instead of putting them down. Some of these include the FeLV Sanctuary that helps cats that have feline leukemia find homes.

“We look at the demographics of which conditions cause the most animals to be put down by other shelters and ask ourselves: how can we help those?” Reid said. “We wouldn’t be where we are with all of our programs.”

The majority of their help around the shelter comes from volunteers, like Hedengren. According to APA, they had roughly 3,000 volunteers in the year 2013.

“About half of APA is ran by volunteers,” 20-year-old volunteer Josh Moczygemba said. “And they are always looking for more help. I have seen the good these people have brought to battered animals first hand and am extremely proud to be able to assist this noble organization. “

APA is continuing to grow and the renovations that they are now able to make will help expand the shelter even more. They are planning on making changes that will bring them up to health and safety standards such as replacing cement in kennels, electrical rewiring in some rooms, and getting a new industrial dryer.

In forms submitted to the IRS by APA they stated that in 2012 the total revenue collected was $2.5 million while in 2013 it increased to $4 million. The majority of revenue generated by the shelter comes from individual donors, according to Reid. Between 2012 and 2013 the amount of contributions increased by $1.5 million. After all expenses have been factored in to the revenue for the year, the net fund balance for the year was $2.2 million.

“Every day we are growing more,” Reid said. “We are super grateful to the city for renewing our lease. If it hadn’t Austin wouldn’t be no-kill.”

Photos of shelter here

Sound permit changes in Austin

The Austin City Council voted Thursday to change signage and low-frequency monitoring requirements for live music events.

When putting on a live music event, organizations are required to obtain an amplified sound permit. They are required to apply for the permit at least 21 days before the event and must pay the required fees.

Thursday’s vote updated these requirements for amplified sound permits in Austin. The ordinance now requires mobile response codes, like QR codes, linking to the event’s sound permit be placed on signs advertising the event.

 A larger change to sound permits was the council’s decision to switch from the traditional “A-weighting” to “C-weighting”. According to Hear Forever, a campaign by Howard Leight a company who specializes in making top of the line earplugs,  both scales measure the intensity and frequency of sound. Hear Forever was created to build awareness about noise-induced hearing loss. The new “C-weighting” scale will incorporate a more low-frequency range of sounds that is becoming more popular in today’s music.

“Before this change an event might have been in compliance with the A-weighting scale but still rattling windows of nearby residences from bass notes,” said David Murray, sound engineering consultant for the Austin Music Office.

At the recent Fun Fun Fun Fest the Austin Music Office rented sound monitoring terminals that were a way of tracking the sound output and proving that the event was abiding by the permit restrictions. According to Murray, the Austin Music Office hopes to continue to use these to help festivals make sure they are within the new amplified sound parameters.

These changes to the amplified sound permits will be put into place starting in February.

Changes to sound permits are a hot topic in Austin lately. In September, city of Austin officials announced they were going to more strongly enforce event permits throughout the neighborhood west of the University of Texas at Austin campus. They announced that each permit application must now include an attached site plan mapping the property of the event and any bars or other structures that are going to be built.

Austin isn’t the only city that has to be mindful of its large population while supporting live music. Cities such as New York City and Chicago also have large live music festivals that they must provide sound permits for.

“We get our sound permits through the New York Police Department,” said Josy Dussek, director of operations and community outreach at the New York City Parks Foundation. “We aren’t allowed to go over 85 decibels and have to shut down by 10 p.m. if we are having an event in Central Park. If we are out at the boroughs it’s 9 p.m.”

Council members have also decided that permits for festivals held in parks will no longer be obtained through the Parks and Recreation Department but through the Austin Music Office. Councilwoman Laura Morrison led this change.

“We had quite a bit of a challenge during our last festival,” Morrison said. “If we can take advantage of the expertise that our music office brings we’ll be much more sophisticated in dealing with sound.”

Social media use in police departments

Police departments champion their use of social media but how it is handled can either turn a bad situation worse or calm a crisis.

Police departments are claiming to embrace social media to generate a forum for better communication between the department and their local citizens. According to the International Association of Chiefs of Police, 95.9 percent of agencies use social media in some way. However, associate professor in Communication Studies, Keri Stephens, has noticed that the content on local departments’ social media sites can be lacking.

“I see limited communication,” Stephens said. “They’re not necessarily communicating about everything. I see updates of things that are happening. That’s the main thing.”

The Austin Police Department created their own Twitter and Facebook accounts in September 2011. According to the Austin Police Department Facebook page, the purpose of APD social media is to inform citizens and businesses of public safety concerns. But some users do not think that’s the case.

“Most tweets actually are not related to alerts but more personal stuff or police related events,” Alana Zimmerman, 20-year-old Twitter follower of the APD, said.

Interaction with the public is a large part of the reason that police departments are venturing into social media.

“I think that establishing a relationship with the community is helpful on a number of levels,” Brenda Berkelaar, assistant professor in Communication Studies said.

The Boston Police Department’s social media response during the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombing received praise from Boston citizens for the way it engaged the community.

“I applaud the Boston PD for leading an honest conversation with the public during a time of crisis in a way that no police department has done before,” Katherine Bindley, Boston resident, said in an interview with the Huffington Post soon after the bombing.

However, there are also some instances where police departments are not able to use social media to the extent that would help prevent crime. The APD was made aware of Facebook pictures that depicted physical abuse of two-year-old Colton Turner two months after the pictures were posted online, according to Austin Police. On Sept. 12 police were led to Turner’s grave. Since this discovery, Turner’s mother, Meagan Work, and boyfriend, Michael Turner, have been charged with tampering with evidence in the case, according to the case search warrant.

Despite the fact that police are still learning how to incorporate social media into their departments, according to Zimmerman, followers still appreciate this modern style of communication.

“I think the tweets are somewhat helpful,” Zimmerman said. “And by having them on my timeline, it makes their presence more memorable and seems like they are more involved in the community.” 

With the majority of the American population using social media it is more apparent than ever that police departments have a lot more to learn when it comes to this form of communication, according to Stephens.

“I think that they are especially an industry that is still learning what is acceptable to put up there and what isn’t,” Stephens said.

Student athletic trainers: stress on the sidelines

Student athletic trainers, who assist with sideline injuries in sports, say their long hours cause them to feel less prepared when they work with local high school and college athletes.

With universities around the nation striving to better their athletic training programs, student athletic trainers are no longer being paid for their work at local high schools because of accredited program rules. Students in other majors such as business and journalism also are required to intern but are often paid. However, student athletic trainers aren’t allowed to be rewarded for their services.

When the director of the athletic training education program, Brian Farr, began teaching at the University of Texas at Austin, the students were paid hourly by the high schools where they worked.

“We had to get rid of the internship program,” Farr said. “When you move to the accredited program it’s against the rules to pay. It’s a national standard from our accrediting body that students can’t be paid for their clinical experience hours.”

The Commission on Accreditation of Athletic Training Education accredited the program at UT-Austin eight years ago. Over the years since then the program has seen heightened requirements, according to the UT-Austin Athletic Training Program description.

The athletic training program at UT-Austin requires a pre-athletic training year, normally the student’s freshman year, which is spent in the directed observation program where they observe athletic trainers for various sports. Then they apply to the training program. If accepted, in the first year students must work four different college sports. During the second year of the program, students work one semester on a college sport and one semester at a local high school. The third year, students work on campus sports again and are expected to be the head student trainers helping to teach underclassmen.

“I think this is one of the most difficult undergraduate majors,” Farr said. “I don’t know many other majors where you have a full load, they’re not easy classes, they have practical exams, they have proficiencies that they have to do, they have in-services, then they do their clinical experience hours, and they have to study.”

According to US News article, 5 Reasons for Getting Involved in College—And How to Go About It, students should get involved in opportunities outside of their major to build community, discover strengths and build resumes. Student athletic trainers have a smaller chance to get involved because of their busy schedules.

“There were just a lot of time commitments that I couldn’t really commit to at the time,” Shelby Eckelkamp, a former athletic training major who is now a kinesiology major, said. “I wanted to be involved in other organizations. From talking to people in the program it didn’t seem like you would be able to be involved in anything else.” 

These students that say they feel exhausted from long hours and stress are distributed out to eight local Austin area high schools and put in charge of medically taking care of high school athletes.

“I don’t always have enough time to study or brush up on athletic training topics that I am weak on and therefore I feel less prepared in the clinical setting sometimes,” Katie Gilbert, junior athletic trainer, said. “I also get tired from working a lot and staying up late after working to get assignments done so I’m tired and off my A-game the next day, and it’s a struggle to stay present and not check out mentally.”

Their responsibilities and expectations on the job such as taping ankles and assessing injuries cause some like Ariel Atkins, a freshman basketball player at UT-Austin, to question why the trainers aren’t paid.

“I think they should. It’s just like learning the ropes,” Atkins said. “They get to shadow a professional and learn. In my opinion an internship is a job but it is also like school. You go to learn. But it is a job.”

But, this strenuous workload has been created for a purpose. It’s modeled after the realistic expectations of an athletic trainer.  The career that these students are striving toward isn’t a typical 9-to-5 job. Their heavy course load introduces them to the requirements of their future career, according to Farr.

“The money would certainly be nice, we work hard and don’t really have time for real jobs during the school year,” Gilbert said. “But not being paid enables us to count our clinical hours as part of our schoolwork, and…we are given the unique opportunity to sit for the National Board of Certification exam which enables us to practice anywhere upon graduation. So that’s a nice trade off.”

Farr said the experience, while difficult, is an essential part of athletic training.

“The cool thing about what they get to do is they learn something in class and they actually get to start applying it to real people,” Farr said. “It’s not reading a textbook, waiting until their senior year to do an internship; they’re doing things right off the bat.”

Benefit for local Austin musician

Friends, fans, and fellow cancer survivors gathered Saturday night to sing songs and share stories about Austin guitarist Davy Jones.

Jones was diagnosed in May with metastatic stage 4 lung cancer and wasn’t able to attend the gathering. His diagnosis also caused him to be unable to play in his band the Hickoids’ first-ever European tour, which began just weeks after the discovery of the cancer.

Jones said in a later interview that his diagnosis “used to be pretty much a death sentence but thanks to modern medical advances I have made a lot of progress in a few months.”

Saturday’s gathering at Hole in the Wall aimed to raise money toward assisting Jones with medical bills accumulated from his treatments. He has received both radiation and chemotherapy before being placed on a drug called Tarceva.

Jones has gotten help from both the Health Alliance for Austin Musicians and Shivers Cancer Center. The health alliance (HAAM) is an Austin resource that provides affordable health and dental care for local musicians. This nonprofit organization, which was started in 2005, helps musicians make ends meet while staying healthy.

“With Austin being the live music capital of the world, musicians bring almost $2 billion into the city’s economy, but the musicians themselves live on very low incomes,” Carolyn Schwartz, executive director of HAMM, said in an interview with the Daily Texan. When musicians need substantial health care, as in Jones’ case, bills can quickly pile up and surpass their ability to pay.

The lineup for the event was filled with fellow Austin musicians that are cancer survivors including members of the bands Scorpio Rising, and Brewtality Inc.  Houston Ritchenson, the lead singer for Brewtality Inc., has been cancer free for three years now. Additionally, Madame Scorpio, lead singer for Scorpio Rising, beat breast cancer five years ago after a double mastectomy and a removal of nine lymph nodes.  

“I would say it affected writing for sure,” Scorpio said. “It definitely makes me real happy when on stage, totally appreciate it so much more, and it feels right.”

Madame Scorpio helped organized this benefit to give back to Jones and thank him for all his past involvement in the Austin music community.

“We wanted to help Davy out,” she said. “He has done so many benefits for other people throughout his life as a musician.”

The atmosphere at Hole in the Wall was a positive one. The crowd included people who have been hearing Jones play for the Hickoids since their glory days in the early ‘80s. The band was recently inducted into the Austin Music Hall of Fame.

“I’ve been listening to Davy Jones since I started sneaking into bars,” Tammy Harter, long time fane, said. “The Hickoids were always a crazy good time.”

All of the audience rocking out to the music of the night encompassed the spirit of Davy Jones and what he is hoping to bring to the music world. His advice to aspiring musicians that have difficult obstacles is to “never quit no matter what!” He has begun rehearsing with the Hickoids again and said he hopes to be able to perform with them at the Austin Corn Lover’s Fiesta.

“This cancer thing is definitely gonna slow me down in perpetuity,” Jones said. “But I have zero intention of letting it stop my music career!”