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PvilleStang

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Posts posted by PvilleStang

  1. 8 hours ago, bolverk said:

     

    Cities have to take on debt to pay for new infrastructure of all types to accommodate growth, especially fast-growing ones such as Austin. I haven't looked up when the old library was built, but the thing was way too small and way too old. It was time for a new one. It was put on the ballot, and the voters in Austin collectively agreed through a bond election to take on debt to build a new one.

     

    That said, let's take a look at some of Austin's comps in terms of debt per capita, according to the Texas Comptroller (link provided so you can see for yourself), to see where the City of Austin as a single taxing entity stands:

    Austin             $1,548 
    Houston         $1,476 
    Dallas             $1,447 
    San Antonio   $1,237 
    Fort Worth       $824 

    So, we're pretty much in line with Houston/Dallas and a little above San Antonio, but Austin has also been growing much faster than all of them. I don't know what the heck is going on in Fort Worth, but good for them.

    Now, let's compare Austin to some of our really responsible, fast-growing Central Texas neighbors who are obviously the models of good governance compared to Austin's spend-thrift ways.

    San Marcos     $5,078 
    Georgetown    $2,606 
    Cedar Park      $2,202 
    Leander          $2,058 
    Round Rock    $1,711 

    Wait, hold up a minute. Are you trying to tell me that Austin has the lowest per capita debt burden? I'm so confused...

     

    Okay, well, surely Austinites are paying out the wazoo in taxes to keep the debt so low because we know this City is fucking incompetent (link to rates).

    Dallas             0.73570
    Fort Worth     0.67250
    San Antonio   0.54159
    Houston         0.51919
    Austin             0.44580

     

    Against our neighbors:

    San Marcos    0.603000
    Leander          0.417282
    Georgetown   0.374000
    Cedar Park      0.370000
    Round Rock    0.342000

    "Ha! I told you Austin's taxes were too high!"

    Well, you see, those suburban areas are largely trying to grow themselves out of debt by keeping low taxes to draw development stemming from Austin's growth. They're also taking out bonds that don't really increase the existing tax rates to fund new infrastructure. In essence, they're betting that their growth will pay for itself over the long term. Also, those suburban areas have the added benefit of developers often footing the bill for new infrastructure to new subdivisions. Finally, they don't have a whole lot of aging infrastructure that needs to be replaced (San Marcos might be the exception, and look at their rate). With the debt burden and the tax rates comparisons, it seems to me that we've got a pretty manageable situation.

    Is Austin perfect? Fuck no. Are there some stupid things the City does? Fuck, yes. But sometimes some of y'all get yourselves in way too much of a hissy fit and obsessed over the dumbest shit like a goddamned new library that was sorely needed. Maybe look around at what's going on in other places before you freak the fuck out.  

    Now, break up the spending by department, if you want to get into the weeds here.  Homeless services, Arts and Entertainment, etc.  We spend more money on the icing on the cake rather than the actual cake itself.  We need to ensure the basic necessities of a community are handled properly (Austin Energy and their tree trimming, road maintenance, water infrastructure maintenance, trash service, city sanitation workers, etc.) before we start throwing money at shit like tax payer funded cultural museums, DEI initiatives, investing in climate change, etc.  Hell, even building trains that serve a SLIVER of our population while alienating most the rest is a poor stewardship of our tax dollars.

    The fact that the city has that much debt PER CAPITA, compiled with the county debt per capita, state, and national debt is what's going to drive us into the shitter in a generation or two, and as long as we have this current mindset where we'll just print money or tax everyone, we're doomed.

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  2. 12 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

    You could put a gun to their downy heads and they wouldn’t be able to tell you how much the library cost, how it was financed, or whether/how long they were paying for it. Hell there’s a 60%+ chance they voted for it, if they were even here.

    But they sure are angry about it. 

    Libraries lend out e books. Real popular.

    Now why do you have to beseech the down syndrome folks.  Calling ACC aggy is even an insult to aggy.

    11 hours ago, Deej said:

    I'm starting to believe Bozo is Adler.

    The next few posts sure seem to support your theory:

    11 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

    There’s a housing shortage because we spent 40 years attempting to stop time. Welcome to the party pal!

    11 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

    Successful cities are proud of themselves and rightly so. This city could do with a lot more vanity, if only we aspired to something better than yesterday. I still can’t believe we built the library. We would never do it today. 

     

  3. 23 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

    Fair comparison.   But I drive by this branch on Enfield at opening, sometimes at lunch, sometimes on Fridays at 5, many Saturdays.  And there’s just never anybody there except maybe a car or two in the ATM line.  They shut down all their drive- thru lanes.  It’s a $3mm+ lot that is basically just a cash station and one dude hoping you’ll stumble inside today to rollover an IRA.  They’re dead and they don’t fucking know it yet

    Something something downtown Austin post office?

  4. 26 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

    Never mind the fucking pile of cash we had to send to Bruce last week to keep our house from being seized.  For what?  I have no fucking idea.  I guess so ACC can open up another campus somewhere to host servers with which students can dial in remotely for course instruction?  Or Austin city services I never see except when they contract out to meter reader third-party services to charge me for waste-water averaging when somebody forgets to flip a switch.  

    He says thanks!  Gotta keep his living room stocked with the latest in model train accessories.


    image.png.6c1edb973a74d471b2ea7f5c16152fb6.png

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  5. 8 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

    Yeah, I get it.  But when I think of your words, 'Talent Pool", i don't really think of paper pushers at the Texas Workforce Commission or GLO.  I get they need to a few days every 2 years walk over to the Capitol, but last I checked they're still allowed to drive over and park for free.  I have business in the Capitol regularly and I somehow make it work without having 500 square feet of office space and a reserved spot costing taxpayers $15,000/year just in overhead.  I mean, it's cooler now with that plaza and all between UT and the Dome, but it's just 10,000 workers taking up valuable space that could just as easily do their job in another part of town or remotely and hoof it in a couple times in odd-numbered years to deal with their overseers.  

    There's a certain kind of person / mindset that works for the state.  Having worked for several agencies, I can attest that there is actual talent working for most agencies, but the some of the front end workers are the ones that give the rest a bad name.  That said, most state agencies want(ed) to have all their employees working in the same building and close to the capitol, but I think those sentiments are a few years past their prime.  You might also notice that most the agencies that are in close proximity to the capitol are the more high maintenance agencies, if you will.  And I know there's still some tunnels from the capitol to a few of the buildings north of 15th, so I have a feeling those agencies will be the last to give up their office buildings. 

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  6. 1 hour ago, YGIFS said:

    What bugs the fuck outta me is the continued Capitol Plaza complex north of the Dome.  Their argument continues to be that they needed all that land and money for new builds to provide services for Texans.  When we all know goddamned well none of us goes in person to any of those buildings, even those of us who do business with the State.  It's bullshit.  Those employees hate the fucking commute because they can't afford to live anywhere near it, it's hundreds of millions in new buildings that we all have to front in taxes, parking sucks, and we can access almost any state service online.  It looks nice, don't get me wrong.  But it would have better served by private development or UT campus expansion.  For every head-scratcher on City Hall, there's a dozen buildings in that Capitol/State complex that could just as easily been moved out to far North or far East Austin and not a single fucking citizen would have batted an eye.  And the government employees would actually have a better quality of life.  Big part of the reason cost of real estate is so damn expensive in Austin is because our government owns way too much of the fucking land (at all three levels).  /rant  

    You do realize why all these state agencies work in close proximity to the capital? The three or four most overpaid figure heads of each agency has to spend like 4 days every biennium answering to the state leg as to where the money went, and why they want so much more in their next 10 year financial forecasting.  
     

    For what it's worth, TRS did it right and moved away from 10th and Red River to Mueller.  Sold the premium real estate for some slightly cheaper and larger digs.  I think you have to take in consideration that any place you work that's pulling in the middle class, you can't just move to the outskirts without alienating your staff.  Take for instance if you moved from downtown to off 130 on the far east side.  Anyone coming from Leander or Cedar Park or Oak Hill just got pissed.  You move from Downtown to the Domain, all your people from Buda and Kyle just took a big commute hit.  I think the appeal of downtown is you can pull from talent pools in all directions fairly equally.

  7. 19 hours ago, Storm the Field said:

    Been working like a dog for the past 2 months. Staying at the office until 7 or 8, coming in on Saturdays...etc. Two high priority projects that were both due back to back. One was a colossal thing I worked on for close to 5 months due last Thursday, which is exactly when the client got it. Another was a rush job that would have usually taken at least 6 weeks, but I only got a month and had to work on it while also finishing the other thing. Due tomorrow. Just sent off to boss for final review so he can deliver it in the morning.

    I'm going home and drinking a couple of beers and going out to dinner with my wife. Then I get the house to myself while she heads home to see her folks this weekend. You know where I'm not gonna be spending most of Saturday for the first time since Xmas?

    Pleases the ever-living shit out of me. 

  8. On 1/31/2024 at 7:13 PM, msucolt45 said:

    It was MFng Houston, so I don’t blame Karbach marketing on playing into the aggy hive. I would’ve done the same, but the “product” is piss, but just delivering to the hive! Imagine selling that swill on game-day was that brands’ biggest exposure.

    I think they were a couple years behind us, in actually selling alcohol in the stadium, so it is what it is.

    Hook’em!!!

    Karbach is owned by InBev.  It's freaking relabeled BudLight brewed in Houston.  

  9. 5 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

    Some fat, white, middle-aged asshole cussed out my wife and daughter in the Starbucks parking lot on Great Hills a week or so ago.   The spots there are tiny, and she was parked dead center (according to her).  Well parked or not, he didn't like that he had to shimmy his fat ass to get inside his car, rolled down his window and started screaming obscenities at my wife.   Wife asked him to calm down as our 11 year old daughter was with her, and he proceeded with "fuck your daughter, she's a bitch too."  Then looked right at my daughter and said, "Yeah, you.  You're a bitch just like your mom."  

    Given this site's proclivity for attracting a bevy of men who meet this particular description, I thought I might see if this story sounds familiar to anyone.  If you happen to be the guy, please announce yourself so I can come over and feed you your teeth.  If you're not man enough to message me your name and address, know that I'll eventually find you anyway.  

     

     

    With that out of the way, there does seem to be an uptick in the general level of anger out there in Austin these days.  I don't know if it's the influx of northeasterners bringing a more direct form of communication to us Texans, who prefer to act nice outwardly and talk shit behind your back, or it's a result of the political environment of the last few years, the state of the economy over the last few years, pandemic, etc. etc etc.  

    Was this her?

    image.thumb.png.e3bb5656b3ae41bac85086b1d63b6341.png

    She WAS inside the lines, I'll give her that...

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  10. 14 minutes ago, Sam Lin said:

    I definitely don't need more chopsticks. And pretending they're guns or swords growing up as an Asian only happens once, then you get your ass beat and quickly learn never to do that.

    They're 3 and 5 years old, and HAVE to use chopsticks anytime Mom and Dad use them.  Usually just them stabbing their food with one stick after trying to learn to use them for 10 minutes.

  11. 22 hours ago, Superhero said:

    Agree with this. 90% of the time I don't need plastic utensils, and they just end up in a bag (because we can't bring ourselves to toss them). I'd prefer they don't include it unless I specifically ask for it.

    Counter-point.  I think Asian restaurants need to include chopsticks by default.  If we don't use them, we definitely save them and the kids will use them the next time we get Asian, for nothing else than pretending they're guns or swords.

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  12. 2 hours ago, Samson's Wig said:

    So an equity and inclusion coordinator pissed off people of color at the PARD.  I never bought into the "we're living in a computer simulation" stuff, but things like this make one wonder. 

    I'm sure the Ron Swanson of the department will get this mess sorted out.

    This is what happens when you give AI access to your Outlook and let 'er rip!

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  13. 1 hour ago, hullabelew said:

    I start hearing a random beep......need to find the suspect detector bitching about a low battery.  Wife is following me around as I try to locate the beeping.  Constantly asking, "which one is it?"  

    Kitchen smoke?  Nope
    hallway smoke?  Nope
    Upstairs smoke 1?  Nope
    Upstairs smoke 2?  Nope
    Now I'm standing under the carbon monoxide detector waiting for that motherfucker to beep. 

    Her:  Maybe it's one of the light bulbs!  

     

    1 hour ago, tbone_ said:

    Htf did she even know it was beeping?

     

    1 hour ago, luke duke said:


    Isn’t she deaf?

     

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