Three city of Austin pools to sit out summer
Austin’s aging public swimming pools face mounting needs for expensive repairs.
Three Austin neighborhood swimming pools will sit out the 2017 swim season for repairs, while others remain in “critical” condition and the city grapples with the future of an aquatics system that is rapidly deteriorating.
Givens and Govalle pools in East Austin, and Shipe pool north of downtown, all in various stages of repair, will not open this year, said parks department spokeswoman Shelley Parks.
The city’s staff hopes that will cut down on water loss from the aquatics system, which last year leaked approximately 350,000 gallons of water a day — the equivalent of the water use of 153,000 households over the 12-week season.
An aquatics master plan, outlining needs in various areas of the city and evaluating the condition of existing pools, has been in the works since 2013. It is expected to be released next month.
It would take an estimated $45 million just to fix the pools that were operational in 2013 “and they’d still be boring rectangles,” without modern features, Patrick Hoagland, an architect with planning firm Brandstetter Carroll Inc. who has been working on the plan, told the Parks and Recreation Board on Tuesday.
“I’m a little concerned we’re already in over our heads, so to speak, and how do we get out of this?” board member Randy Mann said.
The average age of the city’s swimming facilities is over 50 years, staff members said in a budget presentation this month. Four pools — Gillis, Montopolis,
A Texas nurse who is in prison for the 1982 killing of a toddler has been charged with murder in the death of an infant a year earlier, and authorities said Friday that they think she might have killed as many as 60 young children around that time.
Genene Jones, 66, is serving concurrent 99-year and 60-year sentences at a Gatesville prison for the 1982 killing of 15-month-old Chelsea McClelland and the sickening of a 4-week-old boy who survived. The girl was given a fatal injection of a muscle relaxant and the boy received a large injection of a blood thinner.
Jones was due to be freed next March under a mandatory release law that was in place when she was convicted. But on Thursday, the Bexar County district attorney’s office announced that she has been charged in the 1981 death of 11-month-old Joshua Sawyer, who investigators say died of a fatal overdose of an anti-seizure drug, Dilantin.
During Jones’ time working in hospitals and clinics in San Antonio and elsewhere in Texas, children died of unexplained seizures and other complications.
At a news conference Friday in San Antonio, District Attorney Nico LaHood said investigators believe Jones might have killed some or all of those children because they died under unusual circumstances during or shortly after her shifts.
“She’s been suspected in dozens of infant deaths, and she’s only been held accountable “traffickers assisted the victims in obtaining fraudulent visas and travel documents by funding false bank accounts, creating fictitious backgrounds and occupations, and instructing the victims to enter into fraudulent marriages to increase the likelihood that their visa applications would be approved.”
Members of the organization also are accused of engaging in money laundering by funneling money through bank accounts the women were instructed to set up upon their arrival into in one,” he said.
It’s not clear why Jones’ actions, involving so many suspected victims, weren’t detected earlier. But Sam Millsap, a previous district attorney in Bexar County, told KSAT-TV in 2013 that medical records at the San Antonio hospital at one point were accidentally destroyed, hampering efforts by investigators to prove their suspicions.
Chelsea McClelland died after receiving an injection at a clinic in Kerrville, northwest of San Antonio, and prosecutors at Jones’ 1984 murder trial said the nurse dangerously injected children there to demonstrate the need for a pediatric intensive care unit at a nearby hospital.
Other prosecutors theorized that Jones’ tactic was to take swift medical action and save some of her victims, making herself appear to be a sort of miracle worker.
LaHood said the new murder charge is based on fresh evidence that came to light and a review of old evidence. He also said the deaths of some of the other children are being re-examined and that additional charges could be coming.
Jones has been consistently denied parole over the years. She was due to be released next March after serving a third of her sentence under a mandatory release law adopted in 1977 to help alleviate prison overcrowding. The law was overhauled 10 years later.
Jones was “emotional” when she was served an arrest warrant Thursday, LaHood said.
Because of the new charge, Jones will be transferred to the Bexar County Jail and held on a $1 million bond while the case is prosecuted. the country.
The indictment relates to another indictment in Minnesota that was unsealed in October. To date, three of 17 defendants in that case have pleaded guilty.
Kimmy and Thinram, the Hutto men, have identical indictments with one count each of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking, conspiracy to commit transportation to engage in prostitution, conspiracy to engage in money laundering and conspiracy to use a communication facility to promote prostitution.