Consumer advocate Bill Oakey has told Travis commissioners all about the Broward County courthouse, which is under construction and slated to open in the summer of 2015. Now, Travis County leaders are looking into the Florida project, and may survey other recently built courthouses around the country for cost-cutting ideas.

“I think, shame on us if we can’t find a way to build this thing the most most-effective way possible and give the judges what they feel they need,” said Commissioner Gerald Daugherty. He met with Oakey and is having an aide research the Broward project’s particulars to see how comparable Travis County’s project is and what can be scaled back here.

County Judge Sam Biscoe, chairman of the commissioners, said he will have a discussion during an upcoming meeting and will ask his colleagues to vote on whether to ask staffers to survey similar projects, including the Harris County courthouse that opened in 2005.

The county’s anxieties about cost overruns are real: The Criminal Justice Center opened in 2000, three years later than planned and at a cost of $45 million, about twice what was originally budgeted. The county sued the contractor overseeing the project, accusing it of design problems and delays, but the company said it did everything the county asked of it. Others had said the county rushed the project and demanded too many design changes.

As with that complex, commissioners plan to fund the civil courthouse through voter-approved bonds, perhaps on the November 2014 ballot. But approval is not going to be a slam dunk. Last year, Austin voters narrowly nixed $78.3 million in bonds for affordable housing; in May, two of the Austin school district’s bond packages, worth a combined $403 million, also failed.

If Travis County seeks $340 million in bonds for the civil courthouse, the cost to taxpayers would be about $61 to $69 a year. Commissioners have said shrinking the project’s tab could improve its chances for approval.

Back in Broward County, voters balked at the request for $450 million in bonds to finance most of the courthouse project, which would have cost the average landowner about $33 a year. About 61 percent of the voters rejected those bonds in 2006. That forced community leaders — lawyers, judges, mayors and commissioners — to regroup and reshape the courthouse plan into something they could afford with other pots of money.

“The type of building we had originally contemplated was not possible,” said Alphonso Jefferson, assistant to the Broward County administrator. “The task force looked at what the basic components of a new courthouse are … and that’s what you’re seeing coming out of the ground today.”

The new courthouse will have some room for expansion, but is built for Broward County’s court needs of today, Jefferson said. Originally planned as a 893,000-square-feet complex costing $510 million, the courthouse was pared down to a 714,000-square-foot tower costing $213 million. Broward officials are using cash, federal stimulus money and tax revenue to pay for it.

Shrinking the project helped, but Broward also found more affordable ways to build and finance it. How? That’s what Travis County officials hope to learn by scrutinizing the project.

Biscoe said his request for staffers to study other projects is “more than two hours of work. It’s a major investment of time.”

He also cautioned that Travis County’s $340 million estimate, originating from a consultant’s report in 2012, is likely an unreliably high figure. He said county staffers haven’t vetted the assumptions behind the estimate. The building hasn’t even been designed yet, which is when more accurate costs emerge. The actual cost, he said, will “be based on a whole lot of facts we don’t have today.”

Travis County officials plan to build a civil courthouse sized to meet its needs 2035 and last for at least 50 years. The existing Heman Sweatt Travis County Courthouse opened in 1931 and has had two major expansions, yet, the building has about half as much space as the county says it needs.

The new courthouse estimates are made on various assumptions by the consultants, such as building a “world-class building of significance/a grand public building,” according to an Ernst and Young report.

“That’s exactly what we can’t afford,” said Oakey, a retired accountant. “We definitely need a new courthouse. … But I quite frankly don’t think that if they put it on the ballot at somewhere between $300 million and $350 million, it will pass.”

The county is negotiating a contract with consultant URS Corp. to continue managing the remainder of the project, including public outreach ahead of a bond election and help with preliminary designs of the building. The firm would also help find a separate contractor to handle the final design and construction of the courthouse and help oversee the work at the downtown site, on the block south of Republic Square Park.

“The place we need to get fairly quickly is asking, ‘What are we talking about building? How big? What are the features that the judges say they need?’” Daugherty said.

The ultimate design of the building, and in turn its cost, will be determined by commissioners, working with URS.

Two courthouses

Travis County (projections)

$340 million

15 stories

510,000 square feet

500-car underground parking garage

31 courtrooms

Broward County (under construction)

$213 million

20 stories

714,000 square feet

500-car above-ground parking garage

77 courtrooms

Certainly, well-financed local governments provide services to residents and take care of parks, libraries, schools, roads and people in need. But there are limits – points at which more harm is being done than good when taxes are raised beyond certain levels. As local contributor Bill Oakey notes in his commentary below, the current system is not sustainable for most city residents whose wages have not kept pace with ballooning housing costs, electric rates and tax bills. It’s disheartening that the public’s ability to pay has been an afterthought in budget decisions.

That concern continues to be trumped by other priorities, such as providing substantial yearly pay raises and benefits for city and county employees and, in some cases, pay raises elected officials have awarded themselves; tax rebates for private companies that relocate to Austin or Travis County; and tax breaks for homeowners of historical homes in upscale neighborhoods. The steep and continued increase of tax bills is curious given all the additional money generated by new construction and businesses, a rebounding economy and larger revenue from higher property values. Elected officials tout growth as a counterbalance against such steep tax increases. Yet that benefit is not showing up in our tax bills.

That situation caused Austin City Council Member Laura Morrison to pose this question, “What do we have systemically in our business model that, even with growth, we can’t keep up with expenses … and (because of higher rates) are taking more and more of a bite out of people’s incomes?”

That question deserves an immediate answer. And neither the council nor the commissioners court should approve budgets until that question is answered and budgets are adjusted to reflect the financial realities of people who are paying the bills. Taxpayers should be getting a break, given all the extra money the city and county are taking in.

But the binge continues.

American-Statesman writer Sarah Coppola reported in recent editions that Austin’s property tax rate would increase from 50.29 cents per $100 of property value to 51.14 cents. That rate is just below the highest rate the city could choose under state law — 51.34 cents — without triggering a possible election to limit the increase.

Under the proposal, the typical Austin household would pay $173 more in property taxes, utility bills and other fees next year if the budget is approved in September. Austin would add 365 jobs to its nearly 12,400-person payroll, including 23 jobs in the planning department to review, inspect and permit new construction. Local attorney Bill Aleshire has a good recommendation to address planning department expenditures, including new jobs: Make the department a self-supporting enterprise from user fees. Council Member Mike Martinez, citing 900 positions in the city that are vacant, doesn’t see the need to add hundreds more. We agree. Council Member Bill Spelman is challenging the idea that Austin needs an additional 47 police officers in jobs that can be filled by non-civil service employees, who earn considerably less than police officers.

To give taxpayers a break, the council should take the long overdue step of granting home owners tax relief through a homestead exemption, as the county already offers.

For its part, the county also is on a bender regarding its expenditures. Earlier this month, two county commissioners, Margaret Gomez and Ron Davis, voted themselves and about 40 other elected officials a 3 percent pay raise. They were joined in that arrogance by retiring County Judge Sam Biscoe. The proposed budget for the next fiscal year also includes 3 percent across the board pay raises for all employees, though employees received hefty pay raises this year and the year before.

Though county tax bills will rise nearly 3 percent for the average homeowner, the tax rate will decline by a wee bit, about 1.1 percent. Taxpayers could and should get a bigger break, given the windfall to the county budget from rising property values. Officials seem unaware that most residents don’t share their affluence or ability to pay ever-increasing tax bills.

We’re not advocating that the city, county and other taxing entities practice strict austerity. Perhaps smaller tax increases are warranted in some cases, but they should be justified. We are arguing for tax sobriety.