Texas Jeff
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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.
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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.
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Needs piles of banker boxes to truly give it that Trumpian look...
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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).
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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.
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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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What is your definition of "worse"? On the plus side, there are no longer "F" rated schools in Houston ISD. On the minus side, teachers have left, the community has complained, a bond to improve schools failed, and enrollment is down. The low scoring schools are implementing the New Education System, which raises teacher pay but enforces a standardized curriculum. I don't know much about it but it seems similar to what is going on at Mendez MS in south Austin and the three failing middle schools in north Austin. If success is measured by state achievement tests, scores are defiantly rising. If you measure it some other way, it's not great.
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My first trip to Disch-Falk went down to the wire and as the drama built there was all this ... clapping. Slow claps leading to fast claps, clap-clap-clap, just on and on. It added a level of tension and anticipation to baseball that I had never experienced. Of course, I was previously a Rangers fan. Someone told me it was led by a fan, and I think now that was Scott. That was pretty peak Wild Bunch and I had student tickets way up high so I never got to hear what they were saying, but the clapping thing was incredible. What a fantastic experience, I still remember it.
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The district was floating a new plan for BW in the workshop last night. It was tough to tell from the tiny map they showed, but I think they were showing all kids west of Shoal Creek going to Casis and all kids east going to Brentwood. Not closing the school seemed to not be an option. And $6.1 million for schools is basically maintenence money. I have been to a few meetings for the 2022 bond and the money goes fast. $100 million for Sadler Means for a school that will enroll 300 kids. $140 million each for Northeast and LBJ and a big part of that money is going to new athletics buildings. They will still need more in the next bond. $25 million for Nelson Field and I would challenge you after the renovations to see what has been done. $15 million for Delco Center only to discover that Delco was not built correctly, has an unstable foundation, and is used for a wrestling tournament and not much else ... and on and on. AISD's new builds are well done but the amount of money it takes to do it is amazing.
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Austin ISD straight up sold the Rosedale campus for $26 million. They are using the money to reduce the district deficit. It's being redeveloped into housing, but not low-income. The proposal is for 435 market-rate apartments in a six-story complex. The revenue from the sale will be gone in a year, spent on the budget deficit.
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For the record, here's the entire radio address by the Gipper, one of at least two he made on tariffs: Reagan sounds amazingly sane compared to the current dude and this is late in his 2nd term:
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Hope that this guy is charged both for the murder threat and interfering with a person legally fishing. And he’s doxxed and treated like the POS that he is. What are you in for? Threating to murder someone... Wow. Also I prevented a minor from fishing...
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Almost not at all, and by that I mean you still have to play Westlake, Drip and LT. Best of luck. Bowie's boundary has some tiny changes to cede a few streets to Crockett and add a few streets from Akins, but other than that it's unchanged: https://www.austinisd.org/sites/default/files/dept/school-improvement/docs/consolidations/BowieHS_AISD-Draft-Consol-DW-Boundaries-10.3.2025-ada.pdf There are some changes to the middle schools that feed Bowie.
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Also where would you put all of your crap? 🙂 My kids have been off to college for a while and I am still opening closets, panicking, and then slowly closing them. Our neighborhood was built in the 1940s and I think my kids were part of maybe the 3rd wave of kids to live here. The fourth is ramping up. We had lots of kids on our street when we moved here. Then teens and then zero. Now we are back to strollers.
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One more point on this: fewer kids are being born in Austin ISD and more of those kids are gone by kindergarten. The number of births in Austin ISD has steadily dropped from 11,300 in 2006 to 9,100 in 2022. And the percentage of kids that are still in AISD by kindergarten has dropped from 68% in 2006 to 55% in 2022. Both trends reduce the number of kids in the district. Unless the district makes up for this shortfall by importing kids from elsewhere, enrollment will drop and will continue to drop, regardless of the quality of the education, the buildings, whatever. Westlake is projected to drop too, as is Vandegrift. Lake Travis is building a second high school and is having some second thoughts about being able to fill it. We are headed into an era where we need fewer schools or smaller schools. They can still be great schools, but the days of measuring a district by the growth in the number of students are ending.
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The 2023-24 demographic report had some information on losses to area charter schools and other districts. It shows a net loss of 868 students from SY 2017/18 to SY 2022/23. Over that same period, district enrollment fell by 8266 students. Here's a list of area school districts and charter schools that receive students from AISD (transfers out of the district or to charters): And a list of area districts that send students to AISD (transfers in to the district):
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You're not wrong. Remember Prop A from last year? Austin voters voted to voluntarily raise their own school property taxes to cover "copper" pennies. If those "copper" pennies were simply changed to be "golden" pennies, meaning no recapture, the budget would balance with room to spare. It would mean $130 million in new funding for the district per year, and it would not affect the "original" recapture payment at all. That would still go to the state. Such an easy fix and yet here we are ...
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Michael Taaffe wants you to stop being such fucking pussies.
Texas Jeff replied to immamac's topic in Football
He mentioned Crabtree. Too soon, man, too soon... -
Sounds difficult…
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The Patton / Small community is very important to the Austin High community. Those parents always showed up. The Travis Country community was also a huge part of O. Henry and Austin High. I get that they are trying to fill up Crockett and change the demographics to balance enrollment, but it seems crazy to deliberately reduce the population at Small and Austin High, schools that are mostly full today. They are trying to keep all of the high schools open by spreading the kids around ... which may lower utilization at Small and Austin High ... and again what was the point of this exercise?
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Cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, etc.)
Texas Jeff replied to surlybevo's topic in Business and Markets
I really hope it was these guys: -
Almost 100 years ago ...
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When I saw Manning slide live, I thought maybe he could have made it. After watching the replay, I agree with you, just slide. Manning slid around 4:42. OU burned two timeouts and the clock ran down to 2:59 before the field goal attempt. Had Texas been able to get another first down, they could have taken it down to maybe a smidge over a minute.
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I'm a product of Carrollton/Farmers Branch ISD. We have a long history of being doormats for surrounding schools. We had a year where crosstown rivals winless Newman Smith played winless R. L. Turner, which should have produced a win for somebody. They tied. We peaked when we produced Vanilla Ice.
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