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bschoolprof

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Everything posted by bschoolprof

  1. The director of weapons and barbarian produced it. Definitely has elements of his style. Surprisingly darkly funny.
  2. companion was entertaining. Bit of a genre bender.
  3. They've spent about $330 million on the professional and admin thus far, mostly out of the capital fund. Money well spent I'm sure. The light rail capital fund will have almost nothing in it by the end of 2025. The operating fund will have about 300 million for future spending in it at the end of the year.
  4. Prop A was not a bond package per se. It was a tax package, like prop Q this year. It was implied that construction bonds wold be issued and the tax would be used to help pay for the bond repayments.
  5. To answer this question, Prop A in 2020 raised property tax rates (sound familiar?) and committed 8.75 cents of the rate to a newly created Austin Transit Partnership. Currently, ATP pulls in about $150 million per year as revenue from this tax - it's by far the key source of revenue. What does ATP do with this money every year? You can review the budgets here. Some of it has been squirreled away in various reserve funds. This fiscal year, about $120 million will be spent on consultants, engineering reports, and admin. ATP has about 55 full time employees and spends about 200K per employee on personnel costs. We have no idea the ROI on these consulting and engineering reports, as well as other admin. I'll let your imagination fill in the blanks. ATP has issued no bonds. The entire funding structure is being litigated, costs have ballooned, and the feds are not going to kick in shit under this administration. TLDR, tax money is being collected, some reserved, much of it spent. Citizens have little to show for any of this.
  6. There is literally nothing to cut in this budget folks. No fat at all. We have to give council an extra $100 million a year or else we won't have a real, grown up city.
  7. that first play was football chess porn.
  8. thank god Taeffe is coming back next year since he's the solution apparently.
  9. More enshittening. The cable companies have basically died and we're still getting fucked. They weren't the problem.
  10. UTD feels like a college campus designed by Lumon from Severance. Not a great vibe imo. Great engineering and business schools though.
  11. Show your work. In 2015, the city spent $286 million on non safety from the general fund. In 2025, it's 634 million! What grown up goodies are we really getting for that extra 350 million? You don't think a reasonable person could find 30 million to trim there? Only Austin would consider a permanent tax increase to cover this. It's insanity.
  12. Yes. If non-safety spending increased at the rate of the "overpaid" cops, fire, and EMS over the last decade, we'd have a surplus, not a deficit. I went through the last 10 years of budgets on the city website. Non safety EMS has gone up by about 7-8% every year for a decade. There's a lot of fat there. Easily 30M. This whole charade is laughable, and shouldn't be partisan. And in what way did I imply that the city should spend money only on police and EMS?
  13. 1) Council can easily find 30M in the general fund budget to cut to avoid this increase. As I discussed on another thread, non public safety spending (police, fire, EMS) has soared over the last decade and should be reigned in. 2) Why care so much about tax rates? The property values in the Austin metro are the highest in the state, so of course rates will be lower. Austin used to have the highest total tax paid by residents per capita of any major metro, and likely still does. Yes, Robin Hood is a disaster. That's no reason to have city raise taxes even more. 3) meh. There are no good guys in any of this.
  14. This time espn has a streaming service of its own to prop up.
  15. Just dropped abc and espn due to a contract dispute.
  16. yeah, same. Some lady came out missing an arm, and that was enough for me.
  17. 50/50. Everyone hated him and he had mediocre performance. If he was beloved with the same record, me might have stayed on another year or two. OTOH, if he were 12-0 with a natty, he would still be here. He would just be our asshole.
  18. so is this an actual business? I'm too Surly 1% to even understand what I'm watching.
  19. never touch another man's crown. I thought this was common knowledge.
  20. he beats me because he loves me.
  21. My dog when he takes his morning piss on Wed.
  22. I don't think Sark is the guy . . . how can anyone look at the program right now, in year 5, and say he is with a straight face? That said, I don't really want him gone. Because we've shown no ability to pick good coaches - most programs suck at it. So I'm the battered wife stuck in a shitty marriage.
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