Second anniversary of Candlewood pushback met with several surprises, announcements

Security fence around the former Candlewood Suites.

Wednesday marked the second year since Pecan Park Boulevard neighbors and business owners first read news of the city of Austin's planned $9-15M conversion of a Candlewood Suites hotel into permanent homeless housing and started banding together to stop it from happening.

MOVE Candlewood, the organization leading the fight now entering their third year, issued a press release and a year-in-review. We include that below. But this week featured quite a bit of other announcements from the homelessness solutions front -- with plenty of that activity on and surrounding the anniversary. Here's the summary:

BREAKING: Elections law violation allegations may trail exiting Austin Mayor

The new year may have originally portended a tan and rested Steve Adler, who did not seek re-election to a third term as Austin mayor. But if elections law violation allegations stick, he might find himself immediately back to work fending off charges.

Local attorney and former Travis County Judge Bill Aleshire took to Twitter early this evening to announce: 

"On behalf of Mackenzie Kelly & Linda Guerrero, I filed a criminal complaint against Steve Adler today because of this press conference using city ATXN staff, equipment & website endorsing [Zo] Qadri & [José] Velásquez https://austintx.new.swagit.com/videos/190448 Can’t use public funds for political advertising."

Kelly is Council member for Austin's District 6, elected in 2020. Guerrero was recently a runoff candidate for District 9, with Qadri as the victor. Velásquez won the runoff election to District 3 on the Council. The new Council and Mayor are set to be sworn-in Friday.

The Tracker obtained copies of the complaint filings to the Texas Ethics Commission and a copy of Aleshire's correspondence with Democratic Travis County Attorney Delia Garza. View them here. Aleshire also corresponded with the city regarding the complaints.