Tag Archives: Austin

Taxpayers Rejoice! Rail Bonds Trounced By 14 Points!

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By Bill Oakey – November 5, 2014

We did it! The people have spoken and now we can celebrate! We just defeated the largest tax increase in Austin history! Congratulations to all of you who voted and thanks for all of your efforts…

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The final tally was 57.2% against and 42.8% for. That is a difference of 14.4 percentage points, a resounding victory by any measure! If you would like to see a breakdown by precinct of how the rail bond votes were cast, check out this report:

Travis County Results By Precinct

Click on the image below to see a City-generated map of the precincts and their percentage of support for the rail bonds:

Urban Rail Precinct Map

Notice the numerous bright red areas where the bonds failed by over 65%. The highest margin that I have found so far is in Southwest Precinct 363, where the bonds failed by 76.36%. There are many lessons that our civic leaders and a long list of insiders from various organizations can learn from this experience. First among them could not be more basic…

Listen to the people!

When over 70 candidates for the City Council precincts began talking with their constituents early in the campaign, most of them learned quickly that public sentiment was against the cost and against the route for this rail plan. However, community involvement was never considered to be a major part of the planning process by the City Council, Capital Metro, or Project Connect. Instead, they relied on the strong arm tactics of developers and other downtown special interests to tell them what was best for all of us. But coming on the heals of a massive tax increase to allow U.T. to build the only tax supported medical school in the history of the nation, voters have made their position abundantly clear – Enough is enough!

Now What’s Next for Project Connect?

That is a very good question. The gang that couldn’t shoot straight never did connect with the public. Hordes of people were not clamoring to take a train ride from East Riverside to Highland Mall. So, now what will happen to all of the staff bureaucrats who have been planning, reporting, compiling and otherwise pontificating on the future of light rail in Austin? Will they disband their operations and turn off the spending spigot? Or will they simply take a break and then get back down to business?

After all, we had the ROMA consultant report on rail almost a decade ago. I shudder to think how many tens of millions of dollars have already been poured down the rat hole for this failed route for a rail system. It was 9.5 miles to be a “first phase” of a citywide system. We would have exhausted our City bonding capacity to pay for it. And yet no one ever publicly talked about how much it would cost to build and maintain a citywide system. It would probably be safe to assume that the planning and building cost alone would be at least $10 billion and possibly much more. The Portland rail system that is so often highly touted got its start in the 1980’s when building costs were infinitely less expensive.

And We Have One More Taxpayer Victory to Celebrate!

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The ACC proposition to raise the cap on the tax rate went down to defeat last night! This is wonderful news. It is helpful to recognize that ACC has been raising taxes above the rollback rate on a regular basis. Now they should get the message that taxpayers have reached their limit. Remember that little thing called affordability? And besides, property appraisals will continue to increase until the inevitable bust at the end of the boom. So, ACC will have plenty of tax revenue coming in.

For the rest of the City Council members heading into a runoff on December 16th, please remember this. The people have let their voices ring loud and clear. Affordability is the number one issue. You will not be able to sit back and coast along on the time-worn mantras and cliches that have paved the path to victory in earlier elections. Let the debates begin, and may the best affordability candidate win in each of the remaining districts!

Why I Voted For Steve Adler, And Why You Should Too

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By Bill Oakey – October 31, 2014

It is quite appropriate that the Halloween tricksters from a certain male opponent of Steve’s sent out two ghoulish mailers this week. We shouldn’t let them scare us, and it’s easy to tell that they are the ones who are spooked!

The special interests who are backing Steve’s opponents are unwilling to match his pledge of real tax relief for Austin homeowners. Instead, they conjured up a band of outside agitators from South Carolina to send out negative mailers to Austin voters. This represents an act of desperation, and it probably means that Steve’s positives messages are cutting into the hopes of any opponents who were hoping to beat him.

This is where those of you reading this come in. Make your plans to vote for Steve, if you haven’t already. You can vote at any polling location on Tuesday. Then you need to email, Facebook and tweet your friends and remind them to vote for Steve. If we keep the attention focused on these net few days, Austin can finally put the bad old days of business as usual at City Hall behind us.

Steve is a down to earth, hard working guy who is quite the opposite of the spooky character that the outsiders portray him to be. You should set a time to go by his campaign office at 301 Barton Springs Road. Volunteers will be needed right up until the polls close at 7:00 on Tuesday.

In the meantime, just keep in mind that solid, common sense principles like financial transparency, truth in taxation, and real affordability reforms instead of lip service and empty promises can be ours if we just get out the vote for Steve Adler.

Treat yourself to a grass roots victory in the mayor’s race this Halloween. Remind your friends that all of the tough problems that Austin faces today were brought about by the very people who are opposing Steve in this election. It is their “experience” that got us into this mess.

Oh, and there’s just one other thing. Wouldn’t it be fun to see that boyish grin on Steve’s face Tuesday night when he wins!

Does The City Have The Backbone To Save North Central Austin?

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By Bill Oakey – October 30, 2014

I have often wondered aloud in these blog postings about Austin’s purpose or mission as a city. To many observers it would seem that Austin is in the real estate business. Certainly we can state that they (our City leaders) are in the economic development business. Either way, current residents can discern a built in contradiction with either of those two purposes.

Austin did not become unaffordable on its own. There was a lot more at play than simple “market forces.” Cities have lots of administrative tools to guide their growth. For decades City Council candidates have sought the backing of neighborhood and environmental groups, promising to protect “all that is unique about Austin” and “Austin’s great quality of life.” But what does all of that really mean? It can be interpreted very narrowly to mean that we don’t want Barton Springs to become so polluted that it is no longer safe to swim there. And it also means that we like our open spaces and do not want every inch of Auditorium Shores to become commercialized. And of course, there are issues of clean energy, climate protection and other progressive ideals.

But in this year of 2014, another giant issue has arisen that was never a part of the classic “progressive agenda.” Of course I am talking about affordability. Since many have accepted the reality that this year has become a tipping point in that area, politicians will no longer be able to sit back and be comfortable by just parroting the old line progressive themes.

In some sense, affordability falls within the realm of social justice. People should be able to buy a home in Austin and contribute to the tax base over 20 to 30 years and be able to keep their homes in retirement. As I mentioned in a recent blog posting, I have a favorite analogy for that. Imagine that your boss at your company calls you into his office and tells you that your job and your division will be phased out within six months. Your sole responsibility during that time will be to train your replacements. Whatever happens to you after the transition is nowhere on the boss’s radar. That’s the farthest thing from his mind.

Well, in today’s Austin you can simply substitute “house” for “job,” “neighborhood” for “division” and “city” for “company.” While you are sitting in your chair reading this, thousands of Austinites are staring at a looming timeline of the number of months that they can afford to pay taxes and stay in their homes. This fact was observed very clearly and very painfully by many Council candidates as they knocked on doors along the campaign trail. It was not at all uncommon for a campaign worker to come across residents who expressed their concerns through visible tears.

In the starkest and coldest terms, these people are simply biding their time to make room for their replacements. It’s as though the giant seed pods envisioned by science fiction writer, Jack Finney, have been planted in the bushes next to bedroom windows all over town. The movie of that story was called “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” The real-life Austin version could be modified slightly to become “Invasion of the Property Snatchers.” Imagine if you and your wife were the last ones left in your neighborhood not to be taken over by a McMansion or a luxury apartment building. Both of you will survive as long as you don’t fall asleep. But whatever you do, don’t get separated. Or else you might come back and hear some uncomfortable words from your spouse. Something like, “Oh, honey, we were so wrong before! It’s nice to give up our home. Come on and let me take you to the others. We need to be like them!” Then as the approaching mob gets closer and the footsteps reverberate like thunder, you will know they are coming after you. “He’s over here!” your wife will scream. “Come and get him. He’s over here!”

Now, About That Idea Of Trying To Save North Central Austin

North Central Austin contains many scattered neighborhoods where the older homes still stand and the residents have lived there for a considerable number of years. To see some really good examples, take a leisurely drive through the streets behind Highland Mall in the Airport Boulevard area. Many of these comparatively affordable neighborhoods lie within City Council Districts 4 and 7.

As you may very well know, the City is in the process of developing plans to “improve” those neighborhoods. In today’s planning vernacular, we are talking about “Corridor Plans.” Every major thoroughfare is on a waiting list to become a “corridor” with a “master plan.” We saw that process unfold with East Riverside. It was designated as an early cornerstone in 2010 for the proposed urban rail line. I can still close my eyes and see the faces of the displaced residents pictured in an American-Statesman article on the transformation of East Riverside from late last year. Using East Riverside as an example, it’s easy to see that these “corridor plans” are actually “gentrification plans.”

It has already been several years and two consultant reports since plans for an Airport Boulevard Corridor Plan were first launched. The vision at the time was to anchor Highland Mall with a major ACC campus rebuilding effort. Then, poof, the entire corridor would blossom into big box luxury apartment “communities.” But there was just one little problem. Certain links in the chain have failed to mesh in the right way for that plan to materialize on its own. The word that I have heard from developers is that the Burnet Road corridor has been bumped up ahead of Airport Boulevard. We know we are about to lose the Omlettry Restaurant. It’s just a matter of time before the quaint little bakeries and pet supply stores along Burnet will be scheduled for the bulldozers. And the price of new housing and property taxes for existing residents will take off like a rocket.

With a new grass roots City Council set to take office in early January, it will be time for the folks in North Central Austin to stand up and be counted. What kind of improvements would they themselves like to see in their neighborhoods? Are their ideas the same as those devised by the expensive national consultants? If not, then the new City Council will have an early opportunity to recalibrate the purpose and the mission for Austin. What are our values? Do we just exist as a ripe fertile hunting ground for local and out of state developers? Or will the people who already live here be granted the chance to directly shape their own futures?

All of us will need to stay vigilant and wide awake, at least long enough to find out if some our neighborhoods can still be saved.

About the Impending Rail Bond Failure – What Is The Big Picture?

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By Bill Oakey – October 30, 2014

In the closing days before the City election, I thought it would be interesting to assess the likely defeat of the massively expensive rail bond proposition and put the issue into perspective. Other than a few “old guard” political insiders and actual members of the pro-rail PAC’s, I have not met a single voter who has told me they were voting for the bonds. What’s up with that and what can we learn from this experience? My analysis is divided into several categories.

Desperate Campaign Tactics

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you should know by now that I am not a card-carrying Tea Party member. (Far from it!) And I certainly don’t take my marching orders from the Koch Brothers. When the Let’s Go Austin PAC started using the Tea Party/Koch brothers tagline, most of Austin let out a collective chuckle. This suggestion is so absurd that it hardly deserves a response. The implication is that all self-respecting “liberal progressives” should open up their wallets and jump happily onto the rail bandwagon. After all, “We’ve got to start somewhere.” Right?

The problem here is that the approach taken by the pro-bond supporters is extremely simplistic, outdated and completely misplaced. Their appeal of course is to the supposedly united “Democratic Neighborhood/Environmental Coalition.” This amorphous group is assumed to be on call and ready at any time to accept whatever message the Old Guard wishes to thrust upon them.

The truth is much more complicated. There are numerous splits among Austin progressives these days, and they cut across all age groups, ethnicities and income levels. We need only look at the newly formed alliances that have come into play in the district City Council races to see that all of us are not joined at the hip. However, the dusty old 1980’s era tactic of calling upon the Old Guard to sell this flawed plan has been put into play. We were expected to embrace the smiles on the glossy faces of Kirk Watson and Lloyd Doggett and fall right into line behind them.

Nope!

Who’s Ready to Take That First Trip From East Riverside to Highland Mall?

It will be several years before the rail line is ready to roll if voters approve the bonds. But one of the big nails in the coffin of the supporters is of course the chosen route. The billion dollar plus price tag for 9.5 miles of rail tells voters that any investment in a citywide system would be astronomically expensive. So, most voters want to see the most bang for their buck. The so-called “first phase” simply doesn’t provide that. Even the Daily Texan student newspaper at U.T. endorsed the opposition in this election.

But if you just can’t wait to take a train ride from East Riverside and Grover (one of the most exciting intersections in Austin) to Highland Mall and the Airport Corridor (one of the hippest and most vibrant sections of Austin), well get in line. Project Connect would probably be delighted to take a list of names of people who want to be first to step aboard hat train.

But the Sierra Club Endorsed the Bonds. Doesn’t That Mean That You Should Vote Yes?

Not hardly. The “Sierra Club” as a whole did not even get a chance to discuss the complex issues involved in the urban rail plan. There were no meetings where anyone from the numerous anti-bond organizations were invited to come and speak. In fact, the entire endorsement decision was delegated to one member of the executive board. Then the rest of the board simply rubber stamped it.

If the Bonds Are About to Fail, Then What Went Wrong?

Many of the players involved suffered from big credibility problems. The City Council knew there were huge credibility issues with Capital Metro. That’s why they dreamed up the “Project Connect” moniker as a new brand to sell the rail plan. But most voters understand that even though the bonds are appearing on the City ballot, Capital Metro would manage the rail system and pay for the operational costs. In recent years Cap Metro has been riddled with debt, mostly related to costs of the Red Line commuter rail. Bus routes and the frequencies of stops have suffered since the Red Line began. And the only time the Red Line fills up is during the morning and evening rush periods.

Another major credibility problem is Mayor Lee Leffingwell and most of his cohorts on the current City Council. They have shown that they never met a spending opportunity that they didn’t like. Budget surpluses are burned up as quickly as they arrive, and there are no guidelines and no citizen input during the process. Mr. Leffingwell and Company have bowed down to the special interests over and over again, leaving Austin with a clogged and congested transportation system and an affordability problem so severe that thousands of families are being priced out of the City.

But the Fliers In the Mail Say That Urban Rail Will Wipe Out Traffic Congestion. What About That?

The level of population density along the proposed route is so low that a major “economic development” effort would be needed to boost that density. Failure to achieve the required ridership levels would jeopardize the Federal funding for the rail. So, just think about that for a minute. If the developers can succeed in packing in enough new residents from California and elsewhere into big box, high rent luxury apartment units, maybe they can achieve the density required. But if they do, think of all those new people with cars. All of those cars would more than offset any supposed congestion relief.

If the Plan Is Flawed and the Route Is Not Popular, How Did Our Local Leaders Miss the Mark?

That’s the easiest question of all to answer. Public input was never intended to be part of the equation. The East Riverside portion of the plan was set in stone as far back as 2003. You can find references to it in the Downtown Austin Plan. An even better place to look for the history of Austin urban rail is the Austin Chronicle. Just do a search for “Austin rail” and you will find tons of archives that give the history in fascinating detail.

The Let’s Go Austin folks will continuously parrot the line that the choice of route was arrived at through “data-driven” analysis. A much more appropriate d-word would be “developer-driven.”  One mind-blowing sentence in one article in the Austin Chronicle archives tells the whole story of how rail and high density development go hand in hand. On the night several years ago when the City Council voted to adopt the East Riverside Corridor Master Plan, the Planning Commission made an 11th hour appeal. They begged the City Council to keep neighborhood compatibility standards in the new master plan. Below are the actual words from this article in the Chronicle dated March 5, 2010.

“The mayor and council members rebuffed a last-minute recommendation from the Planning Commission to apply the usual compatibility standards (which limit height near houses) in the master plan; that could have gutted the density necessary for the new rail transit line at the heart of the plan.” Once the plan was adopted, low-cost student housing units were bulldozed and a development frenzy got underway. The gentrification of East Riverside became inevitable.

Fast forward to late 2013 when the Project Connect “information sessions” and “open houses” got underway. The public was never invited to fully engage in the process and help determine where they wanted to invest their tax dollars in a new urban rail system. The special interests had already made that decision years before.

So, What Can the New City Council Do to Pick Up the Transportation Pieces After the Rail Bonds Fail?

How about this for a good start…Try listening to the people!

Watch KVUE Urban Rail Town Hall Online – We Easily Won The Debate!

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By Bill Oakey – October 21, 2014

At the KVUE Town Hall this morning, the format was very informal. It was a rousing and lively discussion, and I’m happy to report that our side crushed the pro-bond folks! Many thanks go out to the management and staff of KVUE for hosting this critically important public event. It was a real pleasure to have the opportunity to participate.

And now you can share the excitement and the facts with all of your friends, neighbors and fellow voters. Please forward this blog posting to everyone you know and ask them to do the same. Tweet it, Facebook it and revel in it. And by all means go out and vote early against the Austin Proposition. It is listed right after the City Council races on the ballot.

Here is a link to the KVUE videos online. The Urban Rail Town Hall is split into 4 parts. Scroll down the page to get to the four videos:

http://www.kvue.com/story/news/local/2014/10/17/kvue-urban-rail-town-hall/17444765/

Vote Against The Austin Rail Bonds – Largest Tax Increase In Austin History!

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By Bill Oakey – October 20, 2014

Early voting starts this week, so be sure to head to the polls and snuff out the “Austin Proposition.” This item was originally publicized to be called Proposition One. But you will find it in the Austin section of the ballot, listed as simply the Austin Proposition.

First, a bit of good news about the ballot. Yes, it is long. But if you vote straight party in the County and State candidate races, you will be able to fly through the ballot very quickly. You will not get stuck in a long line, and if there is a line it should move fairly fast. I voted today and was very pleased with quickly it went.

The rail proposition may be an even bigger draw to the polls for some voters than any of the candidates. Despite the efforts of some news organizations and political groups, the overwhelming number of City Council candidates have come out quite vocally against the bonds. That’s because they have been going door to door for months, talking to their constituents. Voters in all corners of the City are fed up with a City Council that raises taxes every chance they get and then spends whatever budget surplus becomes available with no public input or formal process.

There is little credibility left for Mayor Lee Leffingwell to claim in the closing months of his tenure. As the leader of the so-called “Project Connect” group that was concocted to promote the rail package, he and his colleagues at the City and Capital Metro never had any interest in listening to the public for their views. Instead they sought only to appease the downtown business crowd and the real estate developers. Their preferred route has been in the planning stages for over a decade. East Riverside emerged as the special interest choice as soon as the developers started bulldozing low cost student housing and displacing those residents to build massive big box apartment structures. in the early 2000’s the Mueller neighborhood was included in the northern section of the route. But after the Red Line was built and Highland Mall rose from the ashes to become an ACC campus, Highland became the new northern destination for “urban rail.”

The problem is that there is not nearly enough population density along the entire corridor to justify rail along that route. How many people do you know personally who are clamoring for a train that they could jump on every 10 to 15 minutes to go from East Riverside to Highland Mall? If you flew in a helicopter over Austin during rush hour, you would not see the East Riverside to Highland Mall traffic backed up and congested at anywhere near the levels that you would see in U.T.’s West Campus area, or anywhere along North Lamar.

So, how does Project Connect and the proponents of this flawed route justify their choice? They claim first and foremost that it will “take cars off the road” and “relieve traffic congestion.” Well, guess what? in order to come up with the ridership numbers needed to qualify for Federal funding, the developers would have to attract many thousands of new residents to the East Riverside and Airport Boulevard corridors. All those cars hitting the roads would far exceed any supposed gains from building a rail line.

The throngs of employees who work at U.T. and the Capital Complex live all over town and many have been priced out of Austin completely. So, only a small percentage of them would be wanting to hop on that train every 10 to 15 minutes. Many of the arguments against the rail bonds that you are reading here were expressed by the editorial staff of the U.T. student newspaper, the Daily Texan. In a historic move last week, they retracted their previous endorsement of the bonds and printed a well-articulated appeal to vote against them.

Now For the Worst Part – The Devastating Price Tag

We have all heard about the $1.3 billion total cost of the rail project. When it was first announced, we were told that the Feds would put up half the cost. Just today the Statesman reported that the best we can hope for is a Federal match of 30% to 40%. There are problems with the cost in every direction you would care to look. Nobody talks about the interest on the debt. And the subject of the annual operating costs has been conspicuously absent from this election campaign. That’s because even Project Connect cannot say with any certainty how much the operating costs would be. What they have said is that they would have to go into to debt to pay for new buses. That’s a sure sign that the already declining quality of Capital Metro’s bus service will only get worse if the rail bonds are approved.

The 6 cent tax rate increase over five years for this bond package is most likely the highest property tax increase in Austin history. Keep in mind that each year in the budget cycle, the City Council routinely haggles over raising the tax rate by a fraction of one penny. The six cent increase for this bond package includes the assumption that property values will keep going up every year. So, even though affordability has risen to become the number one issue in this election cycle, Mr. Leffingwell and his right hand voting companion, Mike Martinez, would like to stick you with the highest tax increase in Austin history.

Go to the polls this week and vote no. Tell your neighbors to vote no and tell your friends to vote no. And if you run into to anybody that is not totally convinced, ask them this handy little question. If we double our bond debt to pay for this package with the largest tax increase in Austin history, how would we ever afford to expand the system and build rail extensions to take people where they really want to go? And how would we be able to afford future bonds for the City, AISD, Travis County or ACC? If we “have to start somewhere,” let’s not start in the wrong place for the wrong price.

A much better choice would be to vote no and let the new grass roots City Council build true consensus by listening to the people and formulating a transportation plan that the entire community can support.

Watch KVUE Town Hall On Rail Bonds This Tuesday

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By Bill Oakey, October 17, 2014

Be sure to set your DVR or be on hand to watch KVUE’s town hall on Austin’s rail and road proposition. It will air this coming Tuesday October 21st from 11:00 to 12:00 noon. The forum will be moderated by KVUE News anchors Tyler Sieswerda and Terri Gruca. Their questions will lead the discussions and provide equal time to address those who support and those who do not support the bond proposition.

Here are the details:

PANELISTS & THEIR TITLES

AGAINST: Lyndon Henry / Transportation Planning Consultant

FOR: Natalie Cofield / President & CEO Greater Austin Black Chamber

AGAINST: Roger Falk / Travis County Taxpayers Union

FOR: Lee Leffingwell / Mayor of Austin

AGAINST: Richard Franklin / Member of Gray Panthers

FOR: Joah Spearman / Austin business owner

AGAINST: Bill Oakey / AustinAffordability.com blog writer

FOR: John Langmore / Former Capital Metro Board Member

AGAINST: Jim Skaggs / Coalition on Sustainable Transportation

FOR: Martha Smiley / Vice Chair, Regional Mobility and Transportation for the Austin Chamber of Commerce

Can The New City Council Define The Affordability End Game?

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By Bill Oakey – September 19, 2014

Over the past several months I have had some fascinating conversations with a lot of smart and sophisticated people about Austin’s affordability problem. Everyone agrees that it is quite serious, and everyone agrees that solving it will not be an easy task. So, what are the steps that the new City Council would have to follow if they actually wanted to make real, quantifiable progress in solving the problem?

1. Define the Problem – That’s the first step in the scientific method. We need a detailed survey showing where the low income and moderate income Austinities live. We need charts that show details about income levels, types of jobs held by different demographic groups, etc. And we need to list the specific categories of affordability issues, such as taxes, debt, housing and rent costs, utility costs, transportation costs, building and construction costs, etc.

2. Planning, Planning, and More Planning – The only way out of any type of problem of this magnitude is to develop specific plans to target the problem. Austin is swimming in plans right now, and some of them contain numerous references to “affordability.” However, there are no real plans designed specifically to make Austin more affordable or to address the root causes of progressively worsening unaffordability.

3. Action Plans With Goals, Performance Measures, Milestones and Result Tracking – Plans by themselves only represent wishful thinking unless they are backed up by concrete actions that turn lip service into proven results. How many new low income housing projects did Austin lose each quarter throughout the year? How many did they gain? How much of a budget surplus did the City have at the end of each quarter? How much of that money was pledged to reduce taxes and fees or lower utility rates? Part of the objective here is to determine what questions to ask, and then what specific steps are needed to address each one. Those steps need to be incorporated into the action plans.

4. Combined Regional Financial Forecasts – The City, County, AISD, ACC, Central Health, Capital Metro and CAMPO need to meet regularly and discuss their future plans and how much those plans will cost. Every plan that every entity currently has in place needs to be scrutinized for feasibility. It is absurd for any organization to publish a plan with completely unattainable projections. The Capital Metropolitan Planning Organization’s 2040 Transportation Plan calls for $1.2 billion in spending every single year for 25 years in a row. Eighty per cent of the funding has to come from local funding sources. There is no way in hell that Austinites will be able to afford anything close to that amount. So, the people who publish these various plans need to sit in front of each other at a table in the same room. They need to look each other in the eyes and explain out loud how they expect to get the money to pay for each of their plans. If they determine that the costs are too high, they simply need to revise the plans. Period. And they can do that by setting priorities and making realistic assumptions. Everyone needs to be constantly reminded of the tagline for this blog – “Let’s Put the Public’s Ability to Pay Into Austin’s Planning Process.”

5. Address the Cost of Growth and the Gentrification Issues Head On – There is no question that the exaggerated hype over Austin and the extremely aggressive growth rate is unsustainable. The current path that we are on will lead to an unprecedented boom and bust scenario if our leaders do not take steps to prevent it. Sometimes it can be difficult to stand up to the special interests and say no. But it is absolutely essential to the City’s future for us to consider how much capacity we have in terms of roads, water, land, and other resources as we consider how much growth we can accommodate at what pace. No private business would ever take the risky “build first and ask questions later” approach that Austin has followed for many decades. Gentrification is another issue that can be measured and quantified. We need to look at the impact of the CodeNEXT plans on existing neighborhoods. One of the best ways to insure that neighborhood plans are protected is to expand the Land Development Code Advisory Group to include equal representation between neighborhood members and industry members. And we need to establish road impact fees to help make growth pay for itself. We cannot afford to continuously increase taxpayer and ratepayer expenditures for recruiting new businesses to Austin. That is a private industry responsibility.

The bottom line in planning for growth comes down to a very simple concept. Our growth rate and the cost of growth need to be set within the context of what is sustainable. Our current policies that allow for all growth in all places all the time at breakneck speed are not sustainable and cannot be allowed to continue.

The New City Council Will Have to Hit the Ground Running

The new City Council will need to be prepared for the one of the toughest challenges that the City has ever faced. There are no off the shelf remedies for an affordability problem on the scale of what we have in Austin. The issue will require lots of innovative thinking and bold strategies. If it turns out that no other city has ever even thought about developing a comprehensive Affordability Strategic Plan, then let us be the first. Every candidate needs to be thinking about it now. Because the hard work will begin the moment after the swearing-in ceremony is completed in early January.

If We Don’t Like What’s Happening To Austin, What Should We Do?

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By Bill Oakey – September 12, 2014

We often hear statements made about Austin as though they were carved in stone. “Austin is This” or “Austin is That.” And we are expected to march along, blindly accepting whatever Austin “is” or whatever it is being turned into.

But what if the majority of citizens have a different desire for what they want Austin to be? Is there anything we can do to change the status quo? Well, I can assure you that if I did not have the heartfelt belief that we can do something to change the status quo, this blog would not exist and you would not be reading it right now.

I’m going to paint an analogy that feels a whole lot like what Austin residents have been subjected to in the last few years. Suppose you went to work one morning and the boss unexpectedly called you into his office. He announces that your entire division at the company is being outsourced. Over the next six to eight months, your assignment will be to train your replacements. But let’s add one more little piece to this analogy. The boss tells you that in order to accommodate the good folks who will be taking your place, he will need to dock your pay significantly so that you and the others in your division will shoulder the cost of the transition.

In other words, you have just been told that it’s only a matter of time before you are kicked out of your office. And to add insult to injury, you will foot the bill to pay the cost of bringing your replacement into the workplace that you have enjoyed for the past twenty odd years. Sound familiar? All you would have to do is substitute “neighborhood” for “division,” “home” for your job, and “city” for your company. The people who control the planning and policies of Austin are working hard to convince you that the “right thing to do” is to abandon your home and your neighborhood so that some people you have never met can come in and take it over. And on your way out, you can kindly leave a check for your share of the expenses of the upgrade of your neighborhood.

Hardly a day goes by that I don’t hear somebody say, “Well, the population is going to double by the year so-and-so” and we just “have to start somewhere” to make the investment needed to accommodate all of the new people. We are expected to be good little soldiers and head down to the polls on November 4th and vote to double our bond debt for the new urban rail system. If we don’t like the route, that’s not a problem. This is only the first phase of a citywide system that will cure all of our traffic problems. Never mind that the price tag for a citywide rail system would be $8 billion to $10 billion.

Is There Anything We Can Do to Change the Status Quo?

Indeed there is, but it will not be easy. After the new City Council is sworn in, we need to let them know that “Austin” is not just a page in a banker’s ledger book or a real estate broker’s portfolio. It is a place where living and breathing people already have homes, families and jobs. There are numerous words that politicians and power brokers use to describe their aspirations for Austin. One of those is “competition.” Austin is supposedly in constant competition with other cities for the next corporate tax handout. Well, what if the people told the politicians that we would rather be in “competition” for an affordable place to live?

A word that you will hear very seldom if ever is “capacity.” What is the public’s financial capacity to pay for an endless parade of plans and projects to turn Austin into a completely different and unaffordable place? Do you suppose that there just might be some practical limit on how much a homeowner should be expected to pay for property taxes? I submit that there is a limit, since we know that many Austinites have already clocked out and left for more affordable pastures. For those of us who remain, how much more in property taxes can we absorb? A $10,000 annual tax bill? $12,000? $15,000? Who knows where it will all end up if we stay on the path that we currently find ourselves on.

Within the context of capacity, we have transportation experts who can measure our road capacity. It is not terribly difficult to predict how long it might take for certain roadways to reach total gridlock. So, what do we do about that? The boneheaded planners who conjured up the limited-access “Lexus Lanes” on Mopac certainly did not help matters any. And do you really think it’s a good idea for the City Council to approve a PUD along MoPac with more retail square footage than Barton Creek Square Mall? If we thought real hard about it, we might just realize that the plans in place could be revised under the new Council to help preserve our neighborhoods.

Attempting to go up against the well-funded and firmly entrenched powers-that-be who pull the strings on City decision-making will not be easy. But the new 10-1 Council system is our best chance in a very long time. There have been plenty of extensive discussion on various reforms that could be enacted to set Austin on a more financially sustainable path. But one fundamental concept underlies all of those reforms:

Citizen involvement in the planning process.

Until we convince our elected leaders that we and our neighbors are entitled to a seat at the table during major planning sessions, and that our input must be included in the published reports on the plans, then we can only expect more of the same. Healthy doses of Inclusiveness, transparency, and financial accountability are essential ingredients for any reform package that will tilt the balance of future opportunity and prosperity back toward the existing residents who helped make Austin the desirable place that it is today.

Guest Editorial – City Budget Slaps Taxpayers; Reforms Needed

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Oakey: New council needs to look at budgeting overhaul

Posted: 6:00 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2014

By Bill Oakey – Special to the American-Statesman

It’s as if somehow the City Council never got the message, even though the message has been echoed loud and clear across the city. The taxpayers need relief. Austin has an affordability problem.

The budget that the City Council adopted has landed with a thud. Taxes are going up again. Oh, they heard the message from the taxpayers all right. But the sad fact is that they just don’t care. This City Council simply never met a spending opportunity that it didn’t like. If 50 people split up and walked into each of their offices tomorrow with 50 new spending proposals, council members would put all of them on the next agenda and then add a few more of their own. Affordability is apparently just a word to them, something to repeat when they are out in the community but to completely ignore while they are on the dais.

I have had the opportunity to meet with many of the candidates running in the 10 new council districts, as well as for mayor. I have recommended some crucial financial accountability and transparency reforms. To start with, the city should stop playing games with budget surpluses and inflated departmental budgets padded with unfilled staff vacancies. We need quarterly reports with budgeted versus actual revenues and expenditures posted to the city’s website. And we need to limit unfilled vacancies to no more than 5 percent of the workforce as Portland, Ore., does, instead of the 9.7 percent that is currently allowed in Austin.

The existing policy on budget surpluses is to wait until February to announce the amount of any budget surplus from the previous fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. For two years in a row, we have had surpluses of $14 million. In 2013 the council blew through that amount in a few minutes with no public input or anything else resembling normal budget scrutiny. Council members were about to do the same thing this year when outraged citizens, including myself, bombarded them with emails begging them not to spend the surplus. This time they held off on spending the $14.2 million, but only temporarily.

That surplus was quietly tucked away, and the council never mentioned it again. When I contacted them and asked about it last week, I was told that all but a few million of it “was absorbed into the new budget.” My specific suggestion during the spring to transfer the money to hold down the water rate increase was ignored. The loud chorus of citizen appeals to use the surplus for tax relief was also ignored. When I asked council members to revise the written policy on spending budget surpluses to include taxpayer relief as a specific option, the request was denied.

Throughout the year the potential exists for the city to run up a budget surplus. Current rules allow departments to spend money from staff vacancies on other projects. We definitely need serious reforms, such as the Honolulu policy that places funds for unfilled vacancies under the control of a central office, to be disbursed only as needed.

We need a new City Council that listens to the people and takes affordability seriously. There is more to serving in that job than generating costly new plans for every spending opportunity under the sun. If you went online and downloaded all the corridor gentrification plans, forestry and trail plans, etc., you would get dizzy trying to add up all the costs. If city leaders don’t find some way out of business as usual, the people who live here and our local economy will suffer. Let’s hope that the new council not only hears the affordability message but acts on it as well.

Oakey is a retired accountant and writer of the blog AustinAffordability.com