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Texas Jeff
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Everything posted by Texas Jeff
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not much. The extra land is going to be where the highway is now, and I think the cap will support up to a two story building, but not more than that. The post about IM fields is about right. It could be fields, or parking for Moody or the LBJ library, or planted with trees for tailgating space. Think about things that are currently near the highway that are not buildings, that could be moved to this space. Then repurpose those areas with new buildings. Mostly this will be removing a barrier between the main campus and everything east of 35. So instead of having to cross at the Manor bridge with lots of traffic above and below, a student might ride a bike across a peaceful area from their dorm east of 35 to campus. They will still have to cross the access roads, which will be maybe 6 lanes wide, but these will be new crossings with good facilities for pedestrians and bikers. For baseball and softball, I think UT should work with the city to make Comal closable on game days, between MLK and the road around Disch-Falk. Maybe brick it like speedway. Move the road around D-F a bit north towards the tennis center, which would give them space to do something in the outfield. There is space east of the baseball field between 20th and MLK. Something will eventually go there. At one point I heard they were considering a beach volleyball stadium for that area, but I can't find a source for that. Softball could grow to the east, or even remove 20th street and grow to the south.
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I was impressed with the South African president. He remained cool after the video and talked about how the people in the video did not represent his government's policy and the need to bring voices to the table to discuss differences peacefully. He thanked Trump for the US delivery of technology that is helping them find criminal activity in South Africa. And Trump kept going back to "these are thousands of roadside graves, see the video? Thousands... Here, see these handouts? Death...."
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The regents approved $106 million to cover the cost of UT's caps in December 2024. It will create about 17 acres of new land for UT between 15th and Dean Keaton. The upper deck is going away. The northbound and southbound access roads are moving over close to the Disch-Falk parking garage, about where the northbound IH-35 access road is today. UT will have new surface land where the highway is now and the highway will be below the new surface area.
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They get more than that. School funding is so complicated that it is almost impossible to understand. Austin ISD gets about $13,800 to spend per student *after* recapture, which is about $2000 per student more than peer districts. But their basic allotment is around $6100. They get extra money because of carve outs and special allocations above the basic allotment. And spending per student within Austin ISD varies wildly, depending on the school. LBJ HS spends about $10,000 per student from the general fund and about $21,000 per student from all funds, per year. At LASA HS, a magnet school close to LBJ that used to be part of LBJ, the district spends about $6700 per student from the general fund and about $7900 from all funds, per year. LBJ is a smaller school (which means more money per kids spend on admin and building maintenance) with a harder to educate population, which means more money spent per kid trying to help them succeed. There is no one answer to school funding. You can spend $8000 per year on an A rated school, if you get to pick the population, and you can spend $21,000 per year on an F rated school, if you have a hard to educate group.
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not real: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bondi-springsteen-trump-boss/
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Just got back from DC -- some thoughts for others: You probably don't need a DC Metro pass. Get an electronic SmarTrip card for your phone and add money as needed. Tapping my phone to pay was great. The monuments at night are awesome. Much better than doing them during the day. You can stand in the spot on the Lincoln Memorial where MLK gave the "I have a dream" speech, it's marked. We got timed entry passes for the National Archives when they opened. First pass was at 10:15. You can get in line early. There is a little exhibit when you first get in. If you are one of the first, bypass that and head for the rotunda. We were one of the very first people of the day to see the founding docs and we got a good five minutes to check them out before the hordes caught up to us. You can check out the docs online at the National Archives before you go and it will be easier to spot stuff. Visit your congress person and ask for House and Senate passes. We emailed them and told them we were coming, and they offered to walk us over for a tour. We had booked at Capitol tour for 2pm, but we got there earlier and the person that walked us over got us on an earlier tour. Getting to the House and Senate galleries is a pain, even with the passes. We got to the Senate during a vote and saw about 50 senators walk in and give a Roman thumbs up or down on a vote, which was very cool. We were able to get both House and Senate passes from our rep, which saved me a trip to the Senate side -- but you might ask them before if they have both. You need timed entry passes to the Air and Space Museum. About half of the museum is closed for renovation. Still worth going. We did the American History and Natural History museums right when they opened. Perhaps that was a mistake, because we were there with hundreds of school kids. The school tours flamed out around noon and the crowds seemed to lessen as the day went on. If I had to do it again I would visit in mid-afternoon rather than right at the open. American History was great. All of the computers from my childhood are now in the museum. Natural History was not as great, but the Gems and Minerals section was really cool. The National Museum of the American Indian had the best museum food and coolest building. We went there because we heard the cafe was better than the other choices, and that was true, but we stayed and did the museum too. At a minimum, consider it for lunch if you are choosing a museum cafe. At Ford's Theatre, we had to choose between a tour with a talk and a walk-through tour. We picked the walk-through only, but I feel we missed out by not picking a tour with a talk. We got an unofficial talk because we sat down next to a school group and the group's teacher did about 20 minutes for her class on the events of Lincoln's assassination. It was her time to shine. She had the entire place sitting quietly listening to her. The Southwest terminal at DCA is like the old Robert Mueller airport. It's a dump ... but it was a long walk, a bus shuttle, and then a short Metro ride into town.
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I just got back from a week in DC and rode the Metro everywhere I went. I would not have ridden it if it did not go to the airport and required me to wait in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue in the rain. We have the same problem here with the heat. Also, DCA was built either by a crazy person or by a committee. Here's my non-negotiables for an Austin transit system: The initial system should connect: * the airport * the convention center * downtown and the capitol complex * Guad/The Drag/West Campus * DKR/UT PAC/Moody/Disch Falk -- a stop near where the UT police station is today * something near the long center * branch out from there once you have the basics covered All stations should be protected from the climate. Either go underground like the DC Metro/BART/Seattle Link or go up with the gondola idea. No one should have to wait in the heat standing in the middle of car traffic. No one should have to wait at a station for more than 10 minutes before they can start their trip. Maybe a little longer at the ends of the system but the core system should be every 5 minutes or better. People should feel safe riding the system. The cars and the stations should be clean and in good repair. Fares should be affordable to all. All stations outside of the core stations above should be located in an area that is willing to accept tall buildings with office/retail/housing, at least in the 1/4 mile around the station. Domain, you're in. Circle C, you're out. These neighborhoods should be required to reserve the ground floor for retail. West Campus, you're tall but your ground floor retail sucks. These neighborhoods need some reasonably priced parking garages mixed in with the tall buildings, at least for the next 25 years. Maybe you live in Brentwood but you can drive and park in a dense new neighborhood where the DPS property now is and park and ride from there. Eventually Waymo is going to get you that last mile. The system should be designed like DC's Metro and BART, where lines come in from the burbs and then double up in the central core, so that trains run very frequently in the central city. Project Connect's original proposal did much of this, but Project Connect as it is today is not going to accomplish this. They dangled pretty pictures of downtown tunnels and folks getting on the system at the airport in front of voters, and folks bought in. Then they bait and switched down to a system that is going to end up like San Jose's VTA. We should re-vote, and if people still want the proposed system at the proposed tax cost, then we should do it. Otherwise we should think again. We have a Red Line that costs about $50 in tax dollars per ride. A pathetic tiny two car train every 30 minutes. The same crew that brought you that is going to bring you an underutilized train system. Is Cap Metro being introspective at all on the value of providing this service at this price? Or willing to change? No they are not. They just keep plugging ahead with Plan A even at a tremendous cost to the taxpayer.
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Also, Hamilton warned us about this, but he used big words that are hard for us to understand: An avaricious man, who might happen to fill the office, looking forward to a time when he must at all events yield up the emoluments he enjoyed, would feel a propensity, not easy to be resisted by such a man, to make the best use of the opportunity he enjoyed while it lasted, and might not scruple to have recourse to the most corrupt expedients to make the harvest as abundant as it was transitory; though the same man, probably, with a different prospect before him, might content himself with the regular perquisites of his situation, and might even be unwilling to risk the consequences of an abuse of his opportunities. His avarice might be a guard upon his avarice. Add to this that the same man might be vain or ambitious, as well as avaricious. And if he could expect to prolong his honors by his good conduct, he might hesitate to sacrifice his appetite for them to his appetite for gain. But with the prospect before him of approaching an inevitable annihilation, his avarice would be likely to get the victory over his caution, his vanity, or his ambition.
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Trump's gift makes no sense except as a way for a foreign government to buy influence over him. A summary: The Air Force already is under contract to buy two 747-8 aircraft. They were built around 2015 and have been undergoing modifications to make the Air Force One's since 2020. This process is evidently taking a long time because everyone who works on the modification has to have a high security clearance. The new delivery date is one plane in 2027, one n 2028, which admittedly is a long time to modify a plane. The new plane would either have to be modified to met the AF1 spec or not. This modifications, as we have learned, take a long time. Trump can't just step on the plane and call it AF1. Or ... he can and just ignore the security requirements of the nation. So either he takes the gift and flys in a luxurious new plane that was literally designed for royalty, but gives up everything AF1 is supposed to do other than basic transportation. Or he sends the plane in for retrofitting and he'll get it back around 2032. Or he takes the gift, updates the livery to his personal preference, flys in it a few times to make it "his" AF1 like a game-worn jersey, then parks it until he is out of office and now he has a free jet fit for a king. Somehow merely having a personal yet aging 747 that will go wherever in the world you want to go, when you want to go, followed by cargo planes with your limo and helicopters, fully stocked with the McDonald's menu, is not enough for the man.
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Entered service in 1990 and there are two of them.
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My theory: Trump does not buy stuff. Most of our leaders don't. If they want a hamburger they ask an aide and a hamburger appears. Trump does know what he thinks his net worth is, and higher is better. So, to Trump, having more money is the goal since he does nothing to get the stuff he actually uses. Rounds of golf, transportation on a private 747, food, clothing, shelter. He gets what he wants not by trading money for goods, but by asking someone else to make them appear. If the person fails to make the goods appear, they are fired, which he enjoys doing, and he has a person that will make a new person appear who will attempt to make the goods he wants appear. And if they don't, he will fire them too, which he enjoys doing. Along with many of our leaders, he is disconnected from the experience of the average American.
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Can they hit?
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Look at the example of Mendez MS here in Austin. Before COVID, they had an enrollment around 600-650 across three grades. And they did poorly on the STAAR. They were failing like Burnet/Webb/Dobie but a few years earlier. Austin ISD partnered with T-STEM Texas and then Third Future, who now runs the school as a charter. Teacher compensation is higher than other AISD schools. Enrollment has sunk to around 200 students in two grades. They have plans to expand back to 6-8. But, the school's academic rating has risen from an F to a B. The Third Future school has tests scores going up ... but are they rising because of what the charter operator is doing or have they simply moved kids that would struggle in their model to different schools? Why are so many kids that live in that zone choosing another school? The school has a capacity of 1,229. Even with a 6th grade expansion, the school will be 900 kids short of full. Long term, it's not efficient to have a bunch of middle schools with 300 kids and a bunch with three or four times as many.
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They are going with a restart approach, with a charter safety valve. The schools are going to be restarted over the summer, with new administration. They are going to use something like the ACE model (Accelerating Campus Excellence). This will be their fifth year of possible F's in a row and they need a D to pause closure and a C to clear it for five years. They are going to test the students at the middle of the year and see how it is going. If it is not going well, they are going to seek an 1882 partnership with a charter school provider so that they can avoid getting the fifth F. They have to initiate this change by mid-Dec if needed, so the students have very little time to show progress in the fall. The ACE model does include hefty stipends, so it will cost an additional $1.7 million per year, per school, to implement. The district already has a deficit over $100 million per year. At their current spending rate, they will begin to violate their board policy of having 20% of costs in reserve this summer and will have no reserves by the summer of 2026. They have a lot of schools that are 1-2 years behind these three in getting their fifth F in a row, so they may have additional schools in the same situation by the 2026-27 school year.
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Conclave 2025: All of the Smoke, None of the Brisket
Texas Jeff replied to GopherRock's topic in Daily Texan
Father Guido Sarducci chimes in with his thoughts and analysis: -
I've been paying attention to the last few Austin ISD bonds and various other bonds, and I can say that funding for sports improvements generally tops the list, followed by funding for fine arts. There is also a lot of money in there for basic maintenance and AISD is way behind in just maintaining what they've got. During the 2022 bond process, the team was divided into groups like athletics, fine arts, transportation, and academics. Everyone had nebulous goals except for athletics, and they had super specific goals like 18 scoreboards, 50 basketball goals, etc. The Hays bonds passed, which is great for them, and they include money for artificial turf at all middle schools and money for an outdoor covered sports "pavilion" at all high schools. A pavilion is an artificial turf field covered by a shade structure, like an indoor practice facility but without the walls. It's shaded but not air conditioned. Sports and fine arts spending, middle school to high school. They are also building a brand new high school. The Dripping Springs bonds passed, which is great for them, and they include a brand new high school. If you look at the plans for the school, you can see how much of the footprint of a modern high school is used for sports and fine arts. They have an "academic wing" and "CTE space" for the basics, and add to it baseball, softball, football/soccer that will someday be a stadium, two football/soccer/band turf practice fields, a band practice pad, (which is an overflow parking lot for the stadium used mostly by the band), competition and practice gyms, tennis courts and a performing arts center. The DS school is very typical of a new build high school. The academic footprint is small and sports/fine arts takes up a ton of space on the campus. Lake Travis is building one with even more amenities. Del Valle is building one. Hays is building one and they just built M&G Johnson which is similar. Austin ISD has not spent as much on sports and fine arts over the years, and I think the lack of spending has contributed to their decline. Surrounding districts did it and their campuses are much more attractive. Families get a cheaper house and better buildings. I wish it were more attractive to lead with academic spending, but I don't think it is.
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I planted some new oaks a few years ago and used a tree gator to get them through the first few seasons. wrap it around the tree, fill, wait ... fill, wait ... fill, wait ... eventually the tree is OK without extra water.
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It's hard to imagine higher costs than paying $7 billion for 10 miles of surface track that duplicate existing bus lines, connecting 15 stations, of which two are Travis Heights and Yellow Jacket and will yield almost no daily riders. Very few people are going to want to go wait in the median of a street for a train in mid-July. IMHO build what you can of a subway and start to create a ribbon of density through the city. We only have a few north/south streets as it is and almost no east/west. Our local leadership has no vision. The Red Line has been open for 15 years and it is attracting 1800 rides per day, which means about 900 people. Is anyone talking about shutting it down because it is just sucking transit dollars for little value? No way ... it's now pitched as prime soccer parking. The Red Line goes through undeveloped land that could be dense, transit-oriented, double tracked, exactly what the transit folks want. But there is no vision. The two Austin traffic -related positive changes since the 1980s are COVID/WFH and Waymo. WFH is on the decline but Waymo is growing. Waymo isn't going to get rid of cars but it is going to reduce parked cars and lead to fewer accidents. Waymo is going to eventually take the CapMetro market everywhere except for the few core lines in the heart of the city that have reasonable ridership.
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Sounds like from the meeting that no students from Dobie, Webb, or Burnet are now being considered to move to Lamar, Murchison or elsewhere. The admin presented two plans, one involves a campus restart with a possible charter school option, and the other involves going directly to the charter school option. They don't have to choose the same plan for all three campuses.
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Waterline is now Austin's tallest tower. At completion it will be the tallest building in Texas at 1022 ft. This is the big ass building under construction south of the convention center, near Rainey St.
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Honestly pair it with an additional $500 million per year spending in school infrastructure and a promise to get rid of the sticks in the road and I'm all in... I know that the school and the city are different taxing authorities with different budgets but I would totally vote for that.
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I am fine building safe reasonable housing with food, medical care and support. Anyone that is in that situation that wants a path out of it should have a path. Anyone who is not mentally with us should have a path to get help. It's harder to decide how to help folks that have given up and that is their lifestyle. I feel that Austin is trying to go it alone without support from the state or support from surrounding communities. The ask seems to get bigger every year. I don't see progress. The current ask is about $100 million per year to support about 6000 homeless. That is over $16,000 per year per person and it is more than we spend on education per child in this community. Our suburbs and state need to chip in.
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Austin Transit Partnership issued a timeline last year that has trains running as early as 2033. I predict they won't get money from the Trump admin. There was never an unlimited pile of money for transit and Austin is competing with everyone else in the country for slices. Seems like the Feds are cutting stuff so I would suspect there will be a big reveal where ATP says that they are not getting a federal match for the train, so we are going to have to scale back the scale back ... or increase the tax going to ATP and pay for it ourselves. San Antonio got a transit project 60% funded but it's bus rapid transit, not rail, and it's an order of magnitude cheaper.
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Liiving through the last 10 years or so, it seems to me that the more we spend on homelessness: 1. The more homeless we seem to have here in Austin ... when they count it seems to go up. 2. The fewer homeless I see anywhere else in the region ... nice for them because their spending on homeless can go to zero. 3. The more entrenched "homeless spending" becomes in Austin ... meaning more and more orgs and salaries are dependent on homeless spending. 4. The more homeless I see, particularly on streets around the rapid bus line routes. The Mobile Loaves and Fishes guy seems to have a plan to help. Everything else seems, just from what I see, to be creating a homeless industry. I don't see our tax dollars creating solutions to problems, but I may not be looking hard enough.
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Well they are selling the old Rosedale campus and the closed Brooke Elementary site to the highest bidder, to raise cash that they can then immediately burn through on their way to zero. No district benefits to be had. They are doing something like what you describe at the old Anita Coy facility. I wasn't in favor of the change in zoning, but I will say it has advantages that Austin ISD could use it in their favor. They could buy properties close to their schools and redevelop them as 2-3 houses per lot. Then be the landlord to their teachers and staff. I *think* that would remove the properties from the tax base, so they wouldn't pay taxes on the property, which might make it even cheaper. The district could build a bunch of similar properties close to many schools and provide some teachers with a walkable commute and cheaper housing. They could give them a little less in pay because of this benefit, and spread out the savings to others.
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