By Bill Oakey
March 16, 2014
Taxpayers across the City still have time to stop the Tuesday vote by the Austin City Council to dip into the $14.2 million budget surplus and start spending it. If they follow last year’s procedure, nearly the entire surplus will be gone, even if they don’t spend it all this week!
Email All 7 City Council Members With A Single Click:
You can either use your own words, or simply copy and paste these two requests that we will be making at the Taxpayers Press Conference on Tuesday morning:
1. Please delay beyond this week any action on spending the budget surplus, or on establishing a policy on budget surpluses, to allow more time for public input.
2. Please make a unanimous commitment not to spend any of the budget surplus. Send a clear, positive message to the community on fiscal responsibility and affordability.
What Else Can You Do To Help?
Forward this blog posting to all of your email contacts, all of your Facebook friends and Twitter followers. Then, hang onto to your wallets and purses and hope for the best! Ask your friends to follow this blog for the latest updates and action alerts on Austin affordability issues.
What Is The City Manager’s Recommendation?
City Manager, Marc Ott, recommended to the City Council not to spend the budget surplus! Instead, he recommended leaving it in reserves, or applying it to next year’s budget to provide property tax relief.
Do We Know Where Each City Council Member Stands?
Not for certain, yet. But each of them will be sent an email inquiry early Monday morning. This blog will post their responses, or any lack of responses, after the close of business on Monday.
Austin Affordability 
We also demand a full accounting of every bond passed by voters, issued, and then languishing unspent.
We demand a full accounting of COA Utility rate calculations for electricity, water, wastewater and solid waste. These have been withheld for years for ‘competitive’ reasons.
We demand a full disclosure of Austin’s cost share and give-backs for the new UT Medical School. Why is city land being turned over to quasi-private hands.
This city under dozens of years of questionable leadership has driven quality of life to all-time lows, allowed a renegade police force to run roughshod over minorities, and hidden business deals with developers, and ‘mobility’ experts that have ruined Austin.
AUSTIN IS NOT FOR SALE — WE WANT IT BACK.
I agree 100% with the above recommendations. It makes me sick to my stomach to think about what the City Councils in the last 35 years has done to Austin and the current Council is the worst. I have lived here 50 years and my husband and 6 siblings were all born here. IH35 was bumper to bumper in 1963, the same as it is today. Their families owned business here since 1936. Because of the influx of people from all over the world, real estate is out of sight. The governor is no exception. He goes to California, etc. with his fancy speeches to “come to Texas, we will give you all kinds of perks. All of you are a bunch of nut cases. Can’t any of you see what the overflow has done to our city. I don’t go to downtown anymore, you can’t get around and I used to go twice a week. You continue to build million dollar roads and buildings. You cannot see that the more roads you build, the more people will come. You can NEVER catch up. I strongly expect there is something “under the table” for all of you. The saying goes, “if you have dug yourself into a hole, quit digging”. I guess you don’t know what that means.