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Texas Jeff

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  1. Start with a conditional overlay between Lamar and Guadalupe, between 38th st and the University Neighborhood Overlay, which I believe ends at 29th st. Enable construction of really tall buildings in this area, especially close to the rail stations at 38th and Guadalupe and 29th and Guad. Create a special tax for this zone to pay to extend the rail from 38th to the Triangle, and create a rail stop there. Redevelop the older parts of the triangle area as tall tower housing and create a walkable community around the new rail stop. Extend the special tax to that zone to help pay for the rail and the stop. Not all of the area is ready for redevelopment, but the state owns a bunch of property around there and a ginormous surface parking lot at 51st and Lamar. Go tall where possible. In between, decide how much area is really needed for the mental health centers and create a plan to build that. Redevelop the rest of the area as towers than are walkable to the 38th and Guad rail station, along Guad. Redevelop whatever is possible on the other side of the street. Hyde Park can't be redeveloped but the edges can. Redevelop what you can up and down Duval, mid rise or higher. The #7 bus is a damn good route. Make it easy to get farther north on that bus to the Highland Mall area and redevelop the crap out of the ACC campus area up there. Add a rail stop on the Red Line at about 55th and Duval and redevelop everything east of there between the rail and Airport, using tall towers. That area would have #7 bus access to downtown plus a two stop ride to the downtown convention center. Work with TxDot to implement the cap where the Red Line crosses IH35 and plan an overlay for that area, primarily to redevelop the HEB area (Hancock Center). Keep the HEB. Nuke the Sears. Create a walkable community across the cap with tall density close to the rail station. This could go all the way down to Fiesta Mart. Start talking with the state about moving DPS HQ somewhere else, or rebuilding it elsewhere. You could create a walkable community all the way from Lamar to ACC Highland Mall with lots of transit. Consider taxes on all of this new development to fund expansion of the rail line, so that it can get to the airport and go farther up Lamar. Once that rail is built, remove the new taxes, or reduce them to just enough to maintain that part of the system in good repair. I'm going to stop there, but that's just north central Austin. A few citizens could think about this for an hour and come up with many more opportunities like this that do not involve tearing down family housing and trees in interior neighborhoods. Most of my proposals allow people to commute downtown on transit, with an easy walk to a train or bus.
  2. 80 year olds are just now getting their FW:fw:fw:RE:Fw:fw email and are clicking on the link to donate.
  3. I think we went through a weird decade with cheap money. We still have zero tax rates on up to $500k in cap gains. As mortgage rates dropped, house prices rose. If you could buy a $1,000,000 house with 3% money and watch it appreciate at 10% per year with $20k in taxes, that's $50,000 in cap gain per year. Why have someone live there and wear it out? Use it for a vacation home for a few months a year and then move there permanently at the end for two years, figure out a way to sell it with low transaction costs .... and up to $500k is yours tax free. It's a risky deal but in a rising market with low rates everyone thinks we will always have a rising market with low rates.
  4. How much of the cost in our health care system is simply related to billing and collecting? Anyone know? It seems like a significant part of our current system is just figuring out who owes what and trying to collect.
  5. They started as Florida Tech or something like that in the 1960s, to provide engineering talent to the space industry. They now have an enrollment similar to A&M. UT-Dallas has a similar history. UTD started as a grad school to create talent for TI and the DFW tech industry.
  6. If Texas wins out: Everyone is eliminated from the championship game except OU, Kansas, Ok St, and West Virginia. OU has games remaining against the other three. OU wins pretty much eliminate whoever they beat, unless OU loses two. Kansas plays Ok St tomorrow and Ok St plays West Virginia in a week. Losers of those games are probably out.
  7. I don't trust the paper glasses ... just my opinion. I will be making a pinhole camera to check it out, which is really simple to do. Something to check out during the eclipse tomorrow. Find a tree with leaves throwing a shadow on the ground, or on a building. You may see some half moon shapes, which is pretty cool.
  8. Also, the increased money for security is not going to teachers. The state is mandating that schools have someone at each campus ready to blast away, but did not provide enough money to fund the blasters. So districts are creating or expanding police forces, at a cost higher than what the state is providing, leaving even less money for teachers. I know this is a crazy counter proposal but perhaps we could not sell guns to young people and instead provide them with more mental health resources.
  9. Texas has about 5.2 million kids enrolled in K-12. Providing $5.2 billion for 5.2 million is easy math ... $1000 per kid. How does that end up being only $75 per kid? Even a $3000 one time bonus adds maybe $200 per kid, and it's a one-time thing.
  10. This article suggests you can build an ADU on SF-1 and SF-2 under current code. This was allowed in late 2021: https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2021/12/council-to-allow-adus-in-more-places/
  11. They are also considering reducing the minimum lot size to 2500 sq ft, so a developer could, in theory, buy a single home on a 50x100 sq ft lot and subdivide it into two lots, then build three units on each lot. On site parking requirements are also possibly changing. There are other restrictions like setbacks, floor-to-area ratios, building height, and so on that constrain what can be done on a lot, and those could also be changing. The two changes that have been most publicized are the 1 house to 3 house change and the 2500 lot size change. Austin has a variety of single family zoning categories, from SF-1 through around SF-5. If you have SF-3 zoning, which is common, you probably can either duplex your existing property or add an ADU for your family member under existing zoning.
  12. I think Texas is going to go undefeated through the rest of the conference schedule. I thought that maybe they would beat OU and then drop a game late, and have to beat OU again to make the playoff ... now I think if they are a playoff team then they will play like they are and win out. It will help if OU wins out and the teams Texas does NOT play (West Va, Cincinnati, Ok State, UCF) all get two conference losses to prevent wacky tiebreakers. Cincinnati and UCF already have two or more. West Virginia probably is the most likely tiebreaker spoiler. Root against those four. IF Texas gets a rematch agains an undefeated OU, I like their chances. The winner will claim a playoff spot. It will be epic.
  13. make a sign with the Big XII logo but make it just say Big II
  14. They should do this during UT home games. Right after the drone show but before the fireworks and smoke cannons. Liven up the place…
  15. I used to work for a chip company with about 3000 employees, at a satellite office. Our CEO would visit about two times a year and give a little talk. The best one was him describing his path from new hire engineer to CEO. He put up an org chart of our company with all the departments and said "This is what I *thought* I was supposed to do" ... and highlighted a line going directly from the bottom to the top. Then he said "This is what I actually did" and the next slide showed him going all over the company. Engineering, marketing, working in the factory, supply chain, sales, back to engineering, across to marketing again, and so on. Everything except the cafeteria. The rest of the talk was about his different experiences with the company, but he said he could never have been CEO without first having the experience of being in all parts of the company, to see how it fit together. If your goal is to make it to the top, it helps to have a breadth of experience, wherever you start.
  16. Congrats to Austin High! Bowie took the lead with about a minute and half to go up by 3. Austin High scored on a 3rd and long with 3 seconds to go for the win.
  17. I would tweak that a bit to say “your relationship to the district”. My kids are recently out of school and I have a wife teaching in the district, so I’ve seen a lot of what is right and wrong, but I no longer have kids in the district. But generally, I like your idea…
  18. If you feel the need to read even more about colleges you may not be familiar with, you can buy the Fiske Guide for $25. https://www.sourcebooks.com/fiske-guide-to-colleges.html 2024 edition via Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Fiske-Guide-Colleges-2024-Edward-dp-1728271835/dp/1728271835/ref=dp_ob_title_bk It has a small writeup on most US colleges and universities. The physical book feels like looking through an old phone book, with super-thin pages bound in a giant book. It's OK. It gives you some idea of what to expect if you just want to leaf through a bunch of schools.
  19. Correction: SMU's enrollment is actually about 12,053. Rice is about 8,672. I think I left off grad students for those two schools...
  20. I was curious, so I looked up enrollment numbers for Texas public schools, in this case from Fall 2022. Here is everyone with an enrollment over 20k, which is about 80% of the Texas public university enrollment. The Aggies are growing their main campus but UT is putting together a system: Texas A&M: 67,165 UT Austin: 52,189 U of H: 46,580 UNT: 44,349 UT Arlington: 40,942 Texas Tech: 39,743 Texas State: 38,171 UT San Antonio: 33,557 UT Dallas: 31,570 UT RGV: 31,317 UT El Paso: 23,880 Sam Houston: 20,996 Other UT System: SFA: 11,232 UT Tyler: 8,968 UT Permian Basin: 5,250 Other former SWC Texas schools: Baylor: 20,709 TCU: 12,273 SMU: 7,056 Rice: 4,494 Any surprises on this list? I didn't realize that UNT and U of H were that big....
  21. Some random thoughts from my two kids' college app experience... For those of you considering Arkansas, why not take a look at Auburn? It's a cool college town, about an hour from ATL, the campus has a ton of new buildings and the people are some of the most polite folks I've met. Even when drunk. Also, it rains and stuff grows there. Also, they have an unlimited supply of Southern blondes. It's not Harvard but they do a reasonable job of educating folks and a high ACT or SAT score will knock tuition down to close to in-state levels. They have the big football stadium and a great gameday atmosphere, but are not as pre-programmed and as money oriented as UT athletics. We visited UT-Dallas and Texas A&M, and before our visits I had UTD ahead of TAMU. Afterwards, I would have been OK with my kids picking TAMU but not OK with them choosing UTD, even with a scholarship. During our visits, we started talking about the "Rah rah" of each campus, meaning how much did it feel like you were part of a community while you were there, how much school spirit did you see. A&M did that better than anyone else. UTD tried but didn't have it. UTD felt about as exciting as going to college in Richardson sounds. However, UTD put an emphasis on the low cost of education, via scholarships, and how they tried to connect students to job opportunities. If you are poor in Texas but smart, want an engineering or business degree, and just need a cheap place to get a good education and get started in the world, UTD may be for you. Your kid may miss out on the "college experience". They really need a walkable "west campus" student housing area to get more energy on campus. We visited NC State for our engineering kid. Great engineering school. Not so great everything else. A huge engineering campus, but it was a short bus ride from the "main" campus. The football stadium was miles away, but they had a nice softball stadium right in the middle of campus and it seemed like the entire campus was at the game when we were there. Everyone in Raleigh will offer you a biscuit with your meal. They should all be 400 lbs just because of the biscuits. The airport was small and kinda sucked, but they do have direct flights from Austin. Trees and plants everywhere at a time when Austin is just starting to dry up. I tried to get both of my kids interested in Cal Poly .. a STEM-ish school in a great location in California. No interest. I still think it looked like a nice place to go to school for a kid that wants to "get away". I would rather have my kids at Texas State than Texas Tech, if they whiffed on the better Texas schools. San Marcos vs Lubbock is no contest IMHO, and we know a lot of kids that are enjoying Texas State. In Lubbock, the dust dusts you. UTSA -- never been but had to go pick up a car near there in May. Much nicer than I thought it would be. They are working on the "rah rah" and becoming San Antonio's team. Seemed very promising and I was happy it was part of the UT system, but I don't know much about the academics. I work with a UTSA grad who loved it. Will be interesting to see if they ever build an on-campus football stadium or keep using the Alamodome. UDub aka Washington -- beautiful campus, awesome stadium, great transit. Kinda cold and dark in the winter. They mentioned that counseling was free and would be available for anyone that needed it during the winter. Yikes. The closest thing we saw to UT. Their homeless are way, way crazier than our homeless. Their museums are way, way cooler than our museums. And, for your engineering kids ... some schools let them directly into engineering their freshman year and some delay the decision on getting into their major until their sophomore year. My engineering kid did not want to go through an entire senior year of college apps and a freshman year of competition just to get into an engineering major. Texas A&M and Washington do the delayed thing, Texas does not. If your kid is choosing engineering and headed to a school that has a competition for different engineering majors during their freshman year, be sure to have that conversation with your kid. They might go to a school intent on a chem E major and get slotted into civil engineering. UT had an interesting listening session. It was all kids who had changed their major. They all told their stories about what they thought they wanted to do when they got to school and what they actually learned they liked while they were there. Lots of kids do that and don't be surprised if they go to school to study one thing and pop out on the other side with a different major.
  22. In the tech industry, I would say commuting is no longer a factor. I work downtown-adjacent, near Mopac and 6th. I have an easy drive to the office. My office is empty on Mondays and Fridays, and mostly on Wednesday. I could collect 24 monitors on my desk and no one would notice. Tuesdays and Thursdays are "work from the office" days, but most employees come in around ten and leave around three to avoid traffic, and work the rest of the time at home. No one drives during "commuting" hours. Before COVID we were in office Mon-Fri, eight hours a day. Most of my co-workers have kids in school, and would never consider putting their kids in Austin ISD. They live in Hays, Dripping Springs, Steiner Ranch, Leander, Round Rock, etc. My company would get better in-office attendance if we had smaller offices in the suburbs, and even then I doubt people would be there more than 8-12 hours a week. Personally, I'd like to see more people in person but I am clearly in the minority, and I think this is the new way of working in tech. If Austin is going to be a tech town, I think commuting traffic is a diminishing problem. Great for the environment, but (in my opinion) not great for collaboration, but hey what do I know. Now, we do have new college grads that come from all over. Our northern transplants just went through their first summer and they're a little shell shocked. The new grads pretty much want to live wherever the other young people live. And right now that's the Domain, East Austin, apartments in South Austin, a few live downtown. They don't want to come to the office either, but they do want to live near other young, childless people. Those are the people that will buy or rent these apartments in neighborhoods. They can out-spend any teacher, or first responder, or poor family of four. They do not think that Austin is expensive. Companies are moving them here because it's cheaper to park them here than in Silicon Valley. For my industry, commuting is dead.
  23. Hey, if it were up to me we would be up-zoning the areas closest to transit, particularly close to the rail system and close to the 801/803 lines. Think of the university overlay extended north and south. Lots of 8-20 story towers with everything you need along the rail route. A train that goes all the way to the airport. Two or three neighborhoods in the Robinson ranch filled with towers with Red Line trains connecting them every five minutes. Stations that are protected from the elements so that it's possible to wait for a train when it's 105 outside or raining. I'd rather do that than put small apartment complexes in residential neighborhoods, but I understand why developers want density. Just my opinion.
  24. The recent proposal was to reduce the minimum lot size from around 5000 sq ft to around 2500 sq ft, allow three houses to be built on each lot, and for those lots that do, consider reducing lot setbacks or impervious cover or McMansion restrictions or required parking. Here's an article: https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2023/07/council-considers-code-amendments-to-relax-single-family-zoning-rules/ So, someone could in theory buy an existing home on a 50x100 lot, tear it down, subdivide it, and build six homes, IMHO apartments, on the site. The could also build less density, like one house per 2500 sq ft lot, or just rebuild on the lot like today. Portland up-zoned a few years ago and has some of this stuff going up today. The council did not pass these rules, but directed the city to come back with proposals for change. Unlike CodeNext, these proposals would affect every single family lot in the city by changing the definition of single family zoning. This is not "missing middle", where some lots near transit were considered for up-zoning while inner neighborhood house were spared. This would be the rules for any single family lot in the city. There are devils in the details. For example, historic zoning is probably not affected, nor places like Mueller that have a special overlay, nor places with HOAs that have rules against this stuff, nor places with deed restrictions ... so long as the owners next door are willing to pay to fight for the deed restriction in court. The HOA would possibly have to fight the developers to enforce the HOA rules and those without an HOA would probably have to organize more one-on-one. This is great for builders and realtors, since they get to sell a house six times ... great for investors who can build out a lot and then rent out the apartments ... great for young, high tech folks looking for a place that they can use for WFH on Mon/Fri and drive to the office for a few hours on Tue/Wed/Thu. Not as great for neighbors who have to live next to a giant building with the extra cars, A/C units, trash cans. This will not create affordable housing for teachers. Expect the normal arguments from all three sides of the issue: those for it, those against it, and those that will profit from it. In the end, nobody's riding Cap Metro -- it's all cars and WFH, poor families will continue moving to Pflugerville and Hutto, Austin ISD will continue to shrink, and the city council will continue to ignore Robinson Ranch. But hey, I could be wrong.
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