We make frequent drives up to Hutto and often see the Hippos, but the other day we decided to take the back roads and found Zebras, Impalas and Deer.

On a more serious note, Hutto has been in the news a lot lately. Austin turned on their first red light camera on May 23 and now the City of Hutto will install their own in August and propose to expand the Williamson County Landfill.

Hutto Fire Department Struggles to Keep Up with Demands of City

Hutto Residents Asked to Conserve Water After a Water Main Break, Request Lifted Next Day

Red Light Cameras to be Installed in Hutto

Proposed Landfill Expansion Upsets Hutto Residents

A family friend moved to Hutto last year to get away from the "big city" while still being close enough to get to work downtown. But this little spot is growing up fast.

Do you live in Hutto or another small town on the outskirts of Austin? Is it experiencing any growing pains? Share your experience living just outside Austin.

^{posted by lyla}

The City Council wants to raise property taxes. Oh joy. Residents can have their say on the matter at two public hearings coming up this month.

• Thursday August 21, 2008 at 6 p.m.
• Thursday August 28, 2008 at 6 p.m.

  Both hearings are in the Austin City Council Chambers at 301 West 2nd Street

According to the Notice of Public Hearing on Tax Increase (PDF) the new proposed tax rate of $0.4012 per $100 of taxable value would increase the average home's tax to $988.36 from an average of $927.02 based on this year's current tax rate. Of course any individual homeowner's taxes may go up or down depending on any changes in the value of their property.

Travis County is upping their property taxes too -- a proposed a $24.53 increase per year for the average homeowner they say. According to the Statesman article:

The increase would pay mainly for a new county criminal court, increased fuel costs, a 3 percent pay raise for most county employees and 31 corrections officers to staff a new detention building at the Del Valle Correctional Complex.

How do you feel about it these increases? Do you plan on making a trip to City Hall to voice your opinion on the Austin tax proposal? Why or why not? Talk about it.

Late Summer and Fall are a festive time of year here in Austin. But I'm just curious about how many festival-goers read this blog? Take the poll...

Austin 360 has a gallery of photos from Saturday's Ice Cream Festival at Waterloo Park. Lots of people I don't know eating ice cream. Captions would have been nice. My favorite was a picture of a t-shirt with a scoop of ice cream shaped like the State Capitol.

Now the pictures I want to see would be from the Hot Sauce Festival coming up on the 24th. In the description from our August events page Lyla called it a "spectator event." Yeah, watching people's reactions as they take a big ol' swig of hot sauce could be entertaining. Better than an ice cream brain freeze.

Reading the humorous description from a judge at a previous Hot Sauce Festival I noticed that they gave out little cups of ice cream as an anti-salsa. Perhaps they should consider combining the Ice Cream and Hot Sauce Festivals next year? In a twisted way that reminds of the sign near Amy's Ice Creams on Guadalupe -- stressed is just desserts backwards. Forgive the randomness of this blog posting. Perhaps I do need some stress-relieving dessert.

What's your favorite upcoming festival?

Did you know that the Texas School for the Deaf is the oldest public school in continuous operation in the State of Texas? Just a little "Back to School" trivia for you gleaned from a nice interactive presentation put together by the Austin American-Statesman. And for you budding history buffs, there's another nice write-up in the Texas Handbook Online.

It's also a hard place to spot in the dark. That's a bit of oddball trivia for you. I had to take the girls to the school at 6 am Tuesday morning because Friday Night Lights was filming there (they're extras) and although I've passed the place dozens of times, in the dark it's hard to spot from S. Congress - despite being a large campus. Nothing was lit up and we missed the entrance on the first pass.