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Texas Jeff

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  1. They are focusing on the schools that require a turnaround plan, or TAP. These are the lower scoring schools that are at threat for closure. They are also going ahead with the move of the wall-to-wall dual language programs. They plan to vote on this portion of the plan this month. The other portion of the plan, district-wide boundary adjustments and closures for schools not affected by TAPs or dual-language, is paused. The three schools that were slated to be closed but are now paused are Bryker Woods, Palm, and Maplewood. The district is considering additional community feedback on this part and may take action later.
  2. Tax bills are now out. I think they do not include the Prop Q tax, but I'm not certain. I just compared my 2025 tax bill to my 2020 tax bill. Since 2020: Austin ISD up 22%, average of 4.0% per year City of Austin up 36%, average of 6.4% per year Travis County up 57%, average of 9.4% per year Central Health up 67%, average of 10.8% per year ACC up 53%, average of 8.8% per year Folks say that the school district is most of your taxes so the others don't matter, but the others are increasing their share of the pie. I will give ACC a pass since they are trying to charge zero tuition, which I think is great for the region. Austin ISD is probably right at inflation, even with the big tax increase from last year.
  3. The people have the power to elect the board of trustees. The trustees have the power to hire the superintendent and set the budget. The superintendent has the power to hire everyone else in the school district. Before the takeover, the people have the power stated above. During the takeover, the commissioner has the power to initially appoint the superintendent and appoint the board of managers. During the takeover, the board of managers have the powers that the board of trustees normally have. During the transition back, the board is a mix of elected trustees and appointed managers. After the transition back, the people have the same power they had at the start, which is to elect the board of trustees.
  4. Yes, periodically. The commissioner must "decide" for the first time sometime in the first two years. If the decision is to continue, then the commissioner must "decide" again sometime within the next two years, and so on. It is not a fixed two year duration, it can be shorter but not longer than every two years. The decision the commissioner makes is to begin the process of returning control. Once that starts, control reverts over three years.
  5. Yes, it is generally outlined here: https://tea.texas.gov/texas-schools/school-boards/school-governance/bom-faqs.pdf-0 Basically, TEA appoints a Board of Managers to replace the elected Board of Trustees. The Managers have the power the Trustees normally have. The TEA is supposed to set an exit criteria to reverse the process. Texas law specifies the process for returning control to a Board of Trustees in Sec. 39A.208 of the Texas Education Code. The basic idea is that every two years the education commissioner decides if it is time to start the process of returning control. If it is time, then they replace one third of the board of managers every year until the board of managers is eventually replaced by the board of trustees. The board of trustees/managers has the power to hire the superintendent, who has the power to hire everyone else. They also set the budget. This is the "control" that the board has that leads to overall control of the district, via the budget and the superintendent.
  6. Got 'em right in the marimba.
  7. It used to be easy to rank Republicans by how much they sucked. Put Nixon first and Lincoln last. Everyone else goes in between. It's amazing to think that Dick Cheney has probably made it to page 2 of the list.
  8. The sticks in the road are not going to pay for themselves... You bought the sticks, now the sticks are getting pounded by daily traffic, eventually you will have to buy replacement sticks.
  9. The Prop A or Project Connect vote was a vote to raise city property taxes for a specific purpose. I think it was about a 9 cent tax, or about a 20% rise in city property taxes. The money raised from the tax was and is being transferred to an entity called the Austin Transit Partnership, or ATP. So the city collects your taxes, figures out what part of that is Project Connect, and transfers that amount to ATP. ATP does not have directly elected officials. It has board members, some are elected officials and some are "community experts." As part of the Prop A vote, ATP is required to transfer about $300 million over time back to the City of Austin to help people who are displaced by Project Connect. This is going on now, even though there is not yet a rail system in place. The city is giving ATP tax revenue, and then ATP is giving back a portion of that revenue to the city for housing. I am not sure of all of the conditions, but I think the city can spend it on whatever they want related to housing. Examples might be rent assistance, helping to fund a low-income apartment complex, giving money to a non-profit that does this kind of work. The rest of the money stays with ATP. They are spending money on consultants, marketing/community engagement, office space, open houses, getting docs ready to submit to the Feds, etc. I think they are also saving money for eventual capital expenses (building the system) but I am not certain. They hope to apply for and receive federal money from the "New Starts" federal program. This is a bucket of about $5 billion per year that the feds give out to programs all across the country. Current projects get a total of about $1 billion in funding from these projects and are in LA, Seattle and Minneapolis. New York has the biggest project, the 2nd street subway, with a grant of about $3.4 billion. Those are not "per year" amounts. Those are total amounts. IMHO they are unlikely to receive more than about $1 billion from the feds to build this thing, and also IMHO they are going to have to wait until a new administration comes in to get any money. They hope to use the funding source from the Prop A tax as a guarantee to get a loan to cover construction costs. This is subject of a set of lawsuits. It is uncertain that they can do this. I am not clear what would happen if they borrowed billions to build the thing and then the voters of Austin decided to repeal the tax. So, it's not a bond. It is an annual tax that is transferred out of the city budget to another entity, but then some comes back for housing. The rest stays with ATP. Right now they are doing the engineering work to design the thing and probably building up a cash surplus to be used for construction. They want to use the future tax flows to secure a loan, but they have to wait until the courts say they can do that. They want money from the feds, but they probably won't get more than about $1 billion total and probably not until at least 2029.
  10. The Statesman has an article out today about how our city council members are spending taxpayer money given to support their office: https://www.statesman.com/news/local/article/austin-city-council-spending-tax-hike-prop-q-21129374.php Ryan Alter is shown appearing to give a $100,000 donation to Austin Parks. In reality, he shifted the money from his council office budget to the parks dept. A nice thing to do for the parks, but he made it look like he personally donated the money. Lots of examples of council members spending taxpayer dollars on causes that you might not normally consider to be city functions. PTA donations. Flights to Germany and Japan. Personality testing. Consulting fees paid to folks that work for other city council offices. A lifetime membership to the Texas Bar Foundation.
  11. They received about 7000 "comment cards" on the first draft. They ended up discussing about seven different ideas for modifying the proposal at a board workshop on Wednesday. None of the schools that were slated to close were taken off the list, but they have made very minor adjustments to the plan. A few schools that are on the list, Oak Springs ES, Martin MS and Bedichek MS, may reopen in the next few years with a different purpose. They are still looking at a few other scenarios, but they are trying to "balance" enrollment across the district which means limiting transfers and moving boundaries. Some neighborhoods are being significantly impacted by these changes and the district is "looking" at the problem, but resisting change to the plan.
  12. Needs piles of banker boxes to truly give it that Trumpian look...
  13. RMDs are easy. You will figure out how to do it the first year and then just repeat every year. Each year, you will determine your IRA value at the end of the year. Based on a table from the IRS, you will calculate how much your RMD is for the next year. Most mutual fund companies calculate this for you and tell you "you must take $X in RMD this year and you have taken out $Y to date" if you don't want to do the math. At the end of the year, they send you a 1099-R with the amount you took out and you report that on your taxes. Then you repeat that every year. Once you turn 70 1/2, you can make donations to charities straight from your IRA and they count as part of your RMD. You don't have to itemize to take these deductions -- they come right out of the IRA. These are called Qualified Charitable Deductions or QCDs. -- If you want to get fancy, you can do your taxes in December once you know any dividends or cap gains and then do a partial Roth conversion, if you are OK with the tax rate you would pay on the conversion. But that's a bit more math, but it's not hard. You can enter your stuff into TurboTax and figure out what your tax is without the Roth conversion, then figure it out with the conversion, and if you are happy paying tax at that rate, do a partial conversion. -- Pre-tax 401(k)'s are great for deferring income when you are in a high bracket to a later time when you are in a low bracket ... but I tell young adults to do the max Roth 401(k) that they can early in their career while their income is lower. The limits for the pre-tax 401(k) and post-tax Roth 401(k) are the same, so you can really sock away a ton early in your career if you have a low tax rate and choose the Roth 401(k).
  14. After 65 you can kinda treat your HSA like an IRA, in that you can take a distribution for non medical expenses and not pay a penalty. You still pay tax on the distributions for non medical expenses, but you can think of it like an extra IRA. If you like the extra IRA concept but still having some cash for medical expenses if needed, then you may want to max out the HSA.
  15. Lots of things could be done. You could expand the earned income tax credit, making sure that it's refundable. You could flat out give everyone cash and raise tax rates to compensate for it, making the system more progressive. You could make all charitable deductions "above the line", meaning you don't have to itemize to deduct them. Charity would increase.
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