Jump to content

Texas Jeff

Legacy Members
  • Posts

    1413
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Texas Jeff

  1. 5 hours ago, 'stache said:

    I see he’s mad at Canada now and calling Reagan’s actual words on tariffs FAKE! Sooooooooooooooooooo hilarious.

    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:

     

    • Hook 'Em 5
  2. 20 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    Well, this one made my blood boil. As someone who fished my entire childhood, and think it’s about as good an activity as a kid can be involved in…threatening to murder a kid for…fishing….pisses me off beyond belief.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/s/V68h5IXzgK

     

     

    My 14 year old son was threatened in Onion Creek neighborhood for fishing
    byu/Illustrious_Ad9163 inAustin



    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...

    • Haha 5
  3. 24 minutes ago, sasquatch69 said:

    How is Bowie HS affected by all this?

    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.

  4. 24 minutes ago, South Austin said:

    This is our neighborhood.  We still have a sophomore and freshman, but a lot of our friends have become empty nesters over the past couple of years and it doesn't seem like any of them want to move in the near future.  Some of it is wanting to keep the home base for a while as the kids come back from college.  Another part is continuing to live close to all of your friends who for various reasons all stay in the neighborhood even in the empty nest/retirement years.

    We have a big house that could be more than we want after all the kids are gone.  But the mortgage is cheap, and even when its paid off, and we could take a large chunk of equity and put it down on something smaller, and maybe something closer to Central Austin, but the prices and property taxes will be crazier by then. 

    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.

    • Haha 1
  5. 19 hours ago, HRSchenker said:

    Is the decline in AISD enrollment primarily due to enrollment in private and charter schools? Here in DFW we're seeing a bunch of school closures and consolidation despite some of these areas being the fastest growing in the nation. Lots of people fleeing to the burbs but those people either don't have kids or they're not enrolling them in public school. It's a very strange phenomenon. 

    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.

    • Hook 'Em 1
  6. 18 hours ago, HRSchenker said:

    Is the decline in AISD enrollment primarily due to enrollment in private and charter schools? Here in DFW we're seeing a bunch of school closures and consolidation despite some of these areas being the fastest growing in the nation. Lots of people fleeing to the burbs but those people either don't have kids or they're not enrolling them in public school. It's a very strange phenomenon. 

    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):

    image.thumb.png.c1db499cfe3048885141440e532e6bed.png

    And a list of area districts that send students to AISD (transfers in to the district):
    image.thumb.png.96c0a9fb79a4015505ce13ffef218673.png
     
      

  7. 5 hours ago, ZB'Tejas said:

    Well let's fix recapture. Even a small portion of that staying with Austin ISD fixes budget shortfalls. If 1,000 kids opt for private school and take the $10K with then that's just a tiny portion of what recapture does to our school system.

    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 ...

    • Like 2
    • Rage+1 1
  8. 1 hour ago, Snake Diggity said:

    There are a bunch of kids in SW Austin that are gonna get royally fucked having to go all the way to Crockett or Austin High instead of Bowie, when really most of them should be going to Westlake if they aren’t going to Bowie.

    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?

    • Hook 'Em 1
  9. 16 hours ago, BillyGoatHill said:

     

    He wasn't going to score.

    They (3 defenders) had angle plus coming from behind. Risk a fumble or worse, an injury (maybe a horse collar). Like Htown said, burning clock while up 3 (?) scores. Nothing wrong with taking a slide there knowing the game is already won.

    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.

    • Hook 'Em 3
  10. 16 hours ago, TXRed said:

    Alvarado just beat Carrollton Ranchview 86-13. It was 72-0 at half time. 

    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.

    • Haha 3
  11. Here's links to the board information session.  There are two videos, evidently there were technical problems at the end of the first one and they broke it into two chunks:

    Public comment and district presentation, about 2.5 hours:


    Board discussion, about two hours:
     

     

  12. I will be voting no.

    The city proposed a 20% tax rate increase for Project Connect with pictures of a downtown tunnel and a stop at the airport.   They got the money and almost immediately cancelled the tunnel and the airport stop.

    The city is proposing this 20% tax rate increase now.  The PAC supporting the city is claiming that Greg Abbott and Donald Trump have made cuts to the city budget and this is to restore those cuts.  Which is bullshit and the city and PAC know it.  The mayor and all but one of the city council members are supporting this argument.

    This is a choice between a 3.5% raise in taxes and an 8% raise in taxes.  The additional revenue isn't earmarked for anything.  It's more money for the stuff the city spends money on, a large portion of which is police, fire, EMS, the homeless and salads.

     If you support higher spending on city services and your number is 8%, then you should vote for this.  If you are OK with the 3.5% number, you should vote against.  I would like to see more honesty from our city before I go for the higher number, and I'm not seeing that.

    Most people aren't looking at an 8% raise this year, which means that a larger portion of their income will go towards city taxes, which makes it tougher to live in Austin.  I can't support that.

    • Hook 'Em 4
  13. The City of Austin is proposing to raise your city property taxes via Prop Q.

    If this passes, the city tax rate will rise by 10 cents, from 47.76 cents to 57.40 cents, a 20% increase in the tax rate.
    If this fails, the city tax rate will rise by only 5 cents, from 47.76 cents to 52.40 cents, a mere 10% increase in the tax rate.

    10 cents of tax rate translates to $100 per year for every $100,000 of your home's taxable value.

    What saith the Surl?  Do you plan to vote and if so, are you for or against?

    Early voting runs Oct 20-31.  Voting day is Nov 4th.  This is an off-year election so turnout will be tiny.

  14. On 10/7/2025 at 12:30 PM, bluto said:

    So great, redass grapevine/colleyville slashed the isd tax rate yet again this yr despite a budget shortfall. With the tax bill they’ll include a flyer with instructions on how to donate the tax savings if a person wishes to. a large part of it is trying to skirt Robin Hood… how about you mf’ers get your red ass rurals colleagues overturn Robin Hood instead. 

    I was curious about what was going on there with the tax rate so I looked it up.  School finance can break your brain.

    Each district has a tax rate consisting of a "Tier 1" base rate that is set by the state, an optional number of "golden" pennies", an optional number of "copper" pennies, and a rate to pay off bond debt.  The base rate and the copper pennies are subject to recapture.  The golden pennes and the bond money are not.

    Tax rates represent how many dollars of tax you pay per $100 of your property's taxable value.

    Grapevine Colleyville 2024:

    Base Rate:       0.6569
    Golden Pennies:  0.08
    Copper Pennies:  0
    Bond Debt:       0.1864

    2024 tax rate:   0.9233

    Grapevine Colleyville 2025:

    Base Rate:       0.6322
    Golden Pennies:  0.08
    Copper Pennies:  0
    Bond Debt:       0.1564

    2025 tax rate:   0.8686

    So GCISD's rate dropped because the state compressed their tax rates and the district refinanced their debt.  Compression generally happens when the property tax base goes up by more than 2.5% per year.

    Now let's do Austin ISD:

    Austin ISD 2024:

    Base Rate:       0.6575
    Golden Pennies:  0.08
    Copper Pennies:  0.09
    Bond Debt:       0.1230

    2024 tax rate:   0.9505

    Austin ISD 2025:

    Base Rate:       0.6322
    Golden Pennies:  0.08
    Copper Pennies:  0.09
    Bond Debt:       0.1230

    2025 tax rate:   0.9233

    Grapevine-Colleyville and Austin both have the same base rate for 2025.  This is not an accident.  This is the highest base rate allowed by the state for this year.  Austin ISD has a higher overall tax rate because they use their copper pennies, although this is partially offset by a lower rate for bond spending.

    These are all tax rates, not tax amounts.  You have to multiply the tax rate by the taxable value of your property, and divide by 100, to get the actual amount you pay.

×
×
  • Create New...