Austin City Council did not meet last week, but that doesn't mean there weren't some stories coming out of City Hall.

Comparing Rail Systems

Some members of city council spent the first part of the week in Phoenix to check out the city's commuter rail system, among other things.

It opened last year at a cost of $1 billion, and took 10 years to build.

Of course, Austin's commuter rail is still not up and running yet. It's a year behind schedule, but has taken half that time to build and cost a little more than $100-million.

"Comparatively, we are pretty much like the rest of the country. It takes time to build a rail system. Once you get it going, what we've seen in other cities is that it tends to expand at a much more rapid pace," Mike Martinez said.

Capital Metro's Metro Rail should get the all-clear from the federal government to start carrying passengers sometime in January or February.

Green Zilker Park

On Friday, after more than a month of being closed, the great lawn at Zilker Park is back open.

The lawn was closed for repairs after this year's mud fest, otherwise known as the Austin City Limits Music Festival.

A few parts of the lawn are still under repair.

Earlier this year the lawn was closed for eight months so the city could put down some new grass at a cost of $2.5 million paid for by the company behind ACL.

Upcoming Council Meeting

Council will be meeting this week to look into the possibility of making it against the law to play loud music on Lake Austin from a boat.

During their morning briefing, council will hear from citizens water conservation task force that should start sometime before noon.

New Central Library

As the city looks at the future of Austin's Central Library, the public is invited to contribute to the discussion.

"We have to apologize sometimes because, this building, we've so outgrown it," Library Facilities Planning Manager John Gillum said. "We have been a pretty aggressive branch library program since I came to work here in the late 70s."

Gillum said the current library is not big enough to take care of Austin's population.

"A new central library, I think, will be an incredible stimulus for the community at large," he said. "I think if we do our job correctly it'll be an architectural icon and become a symbol of our city."

The library planning manager said it will also help improve library services throughout the city, and particularly downtown, with greater reference and research materials.

"Computers are part of our life now, we'll have far more public access computers," he said. "I don't want to put a pencil to paper and sketch anything until the public has weighed in on what they want the new library to look like."

But, Gillum said he is considering plans for a high-tech auditorium.

"We want to design this new library to serve this community and to reflect its values, so this is very important to us," Gillum said. "We're recording everything everybody says and we're taking every email that's sent to us. It's of critical importance that people let us know what they want."

Public input meetings will take place Tuesday Nov. 10 at 6 p.m. at the Carver Branch Library and Thursday Nov. 12 at the North Village Branch at 6 p.m.