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Posted
1 hour ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

If only. Trust me. I go WAY back in this town. Our voters suck in an organic way. It’s an even split of rootless transients, cheap hayseeds dimwit progressives and grouchy oldtimers (my category). Our entire civic culture has been broken since the Kocureks died. 

Man, you got enough grievances to be a former R voter.

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Posted
2 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

If only. Trust me. I go WAY back in this town. Our voters suck in an organic way. It’s an even split of rootless transients, cheap hayseeds dimwit progressives and grouchy oldtimers (my category). Our entire civic culture has been broken since the Kocureks died. 

Which bucket were you in before you got old?

Posted

I live in Round Rock so I haven’t been following this as closely as most of you. Project Connect would be my biggest hurdle in voting for this though. I was a vocal supporter and ride the train down from the Lakeline station pretty often. But since the vote passed, all we have seen is ballooning costs, cutting the additional lines down to 1 new one, and it not being online until 2033.

Maybe somebody knows the answer, but I keep asking where the tax money being collected is going. Is it in an al gore lock box, being blown on consultants, being mixed with the general budget? Nobody seems to know.

I would have serious hesitation voting for more taxes based on the above. Huge mass transit supporter but I feel burned.

Posted
I live in Round Rock so I haven’t been following this as closely as most of you. Project Connect would be my biggest hurdle in voting for this though. I was a vocal supporter and ride the train down from the Lakeline station pretty often. But since the vote passed, all we have seen is ballooning costs, cutting the additional lines down to 1 new one, and it not being online until 2033.
Maybe somebody knows the answer, but I keep asking where the tax money being collected is going. Is it in an al gore lock box, being blown on consultants, being mixed with the general budget? Nobody seems to know.
I would have serious hesitation voting for more taxes based on the above. Huge mass transit supporter but I feel burned.

Project Connect was a bond package. My guess is that it hasnt been activated yet.
Posted
23 minutes ago, Eskimohorn said:


Project Connect was a bond package. My guess is that it hasnt been activated yet.

And you would be wrong.

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Posted
And you would be wrong.

Well tell us how bonds work Einstein. The man asked a question. Enlighten us on when Austinites begin paying for something that has been tied up in legal and legislative controversy and could tentatively begin scaled down in 2027.
Posted
8 hours ago, Eskimohorn said:


Well tell us how bonds work Einstein. The man asked a question. Enlighten us on when Austinites begin paying for something that has been tied up in legal and legislative controversy and could tentatively begin scaled down in 2027.

Project Connect is not a bond package.

Posted

The average Austinite has no idea if they are even paying for Project Connect, let alone what they will get out of it. They know for sure they are being robbed on the school taxes due to the state. Tough environment to ask for more tax money.

Posted (edited)

 

10 hours ago, Larry T. Spider said:

I live in Round Rock so I haven’t been following this as closely as most of you. Project Connect would be my biggest hurdle in voting for this though. I was a vocal supporter and ride the train down from the Lakeline station pretty often. But since the vote passed, all we have seen is ballooning costs, cutting the additional lines down to 1 new one, and it not being online until 2033.

Maybe somebody knows the answer, but I keep asking where the tax money being collected is going. Is it in an al gore lock box, being blown on consultants, being mixed with the general budget? Nobody seems to know.

I would have serious hesitation voting for more taxes based on the above. Huge mass transit supporter but I feel burned.

To answer this question, Prop A in 2020 raised property tax rates (sound familiar?) and committed 8.75 cents of the rate to a newly created Austin Transit Partnership. Currently, ATP pulls in about $150 million per year as revenue from this tax - it's by far the key source of revenue.  What does ATP do with this money every year?  You can review the budgets here.  Some of it has been squirreled away in various reserve funds. This fiscal year, about $120 million will be spent on consultants, engineering reports, and admin.   ATP has about 55 full time employees and spends about 200K per employee on personnel costs.  We have no idea the ROI on these consulting and engineering reports, as well as other admin.  I'll let your imagination fill in the blanks.

ATP has issued no bonds. The entire funding structure is being litigated, costs have ballooned, and the feds are not going to kick in shit under this administration.

TLDR, tax money is being collected, some reserved, much of it spent. Citizens have little to show for any of this.  

Edited by bschoolprof
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Posted (edited)

image.jpeg.a444136add722bcba672ca9e5fb2b35f.jpeg
 

"The median property tax bill in Austin, which includes county, school, community college, and district taxes on top of the city assessment, is $8,381 in 2025 — nearly $6,000 more than the national median of $2,400." "Austin’s property taxes have gone up 118.3% since 2015." "The average homeowner paid $973 in city taxes in 2015; in 2025 they owe $2,124.35 — and that’s only the city’s portion."

Council Member Ryan Alter made a show of “donating” $100,000 to the Parks Department—posing with a giant checkand TV cameras. The catch: it wasn’t his money. It came from his $898,000 taxpayer-funded office budget. He’s also spent $10,000 in public funds on groups like Texas Gun Sense, Clean Water Action, and the Liberal Austin Democrats, and even bought himself a $2,500 lifetime membership in an elite legal foundation. Council Member Vanessa Fuentes billed taxpayers $4,100 for a “Latina Power” career coach and personality testing. She just led a 27-person trip to Japan for a sister-city celebration. Council Member Mike Siegel used city money for $2,000 in artwork, $2,800 in furniture, and a trip to Germany for a “biodiversity” conference. All this while the Council boosted its own pay 40%—to $116,000 a year—and increased office travel and food budgets by over 50%.

 

World Class City = never ending cost of living increases and no middle or working class. But look at the Library!!!!

Edited by ChickenSandwich
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Posted

Comparing property taxes of a Texas city to other cities is comparing apples to lizards. Most other states have income taxes, so property taxes carry a LOT more of the load here.

Just compare total per capita local tax burdens, that’s much more accurate.

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Posted

Prop A was not a bond package per se.  It was a tax package, like prop Q this year.  It was implied that construction bonds wold be issued and the tax would be used to help pay for the bond repayments.  

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Posted
11 hours ago, Larry T. Spider said:

Maybe somebody knows the answer, but I keep asking where the tax money being collected is going. Is it in an al gore lock box, being blown on consultants, being mixed with the general budget? Nobody seems to know.

The Prop A or Project Connect vote was a vote to raise city property taxes for a specific purpose.  I think it was about a 9 cent tax, or about a 20% rise in city property taxes.

The money raised from the tax was and is being transferred to an entity called the Austin Transit Partnership, or ATP.  So the city collects your taxes, figures out what part of that is Project Connect, and transfers that amount to ATP.  ATP does not have directly elected officials.  It has board members, some are elected officials and some are "community experts."

As part of the Prop A vote, ATP is required to transfer about $300 million over time back to the City of Austin to help people who are displaced by Project Connect.  This is going on now, even though there is not yet a rail system in place.  The city is giving ATP tax revenue, and then ATP is giving back a portion of that revenue to the city for housing.  I am not sure of all of the conditions, but I think the city can spend it on whatever they want related to housing.  Examples might be rent assistance, helping to fund a low-income apartment complex, giving money to a non-profit that does this kind of work.

The rest of the money stays with ATP.  They are spending money on consultants, marketing/community engagement, office space, open houses, getting docs ready to submit to the Feds, etc.  I think they are also saving money for eventual capital expenses (building the system) but I am not certain.

They hope to apply for and receive federal money from the "New Starts" federal program.  This is a bucket of about $5 billion per year that the feds give out to programs all across the country.  Current projects get a total of about $1 billion in funding from these projects and are in LA, Seattle and Minneapolis.  New York has the biggest project, the 2nd street subway, with a grant of about $3.4 billion.  Those are not "per year" amounts.  Those are total amounts.  IMHO they are unlikely to receive more than about $1 billion from the feds to build this thing, and also IMHO they are going to have to wait until a new administration comes in to get any money.

They hope to use the funding source from the Prop A tax as a guarantee to get a loan to cover construction costs.  This is subject of a set of lawsuits.  It is uncertain that they can do this.  I am not clear what would happen if they borrowed billions to build the thing and then the voters of Austin decided to repeal the tax.

So, it's not a bond.  It is an annual tax that is transferred out of the city budget to another entity, but then some comes back for housing.  The rest stays with ATP.  Right now they are doing the engineering work to design the thing and probably building up a cash surplus to be used for construction.  They want to use the future tax flows to secure a loan, but they have to wait until the courts say they can do that.  They want money from the feds, but they probably won't get more than about $1 billion total and probably not until at least 2029.

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Posted
16 minutes ago, Texas Jeff said:

 

The rest of the money stays with ATP.  They are spending money on consultants, marketing/community engagement, office space, open houses, getting docs ready to submit to the Feds, etc.  I think they are also saving money for eventual capital expenses (building the system) but I am not certain.

 

They've spent about $330 million on the professional and admin thus far, mostly out of the capital fund. Money well spent I'm sure.  

The light rail capital fund will have almost nothing in it by the end of 2025.  The operating fund will have about 300 million for future spending in it at the end of the year.  

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Posted

How many fucking mobility type bonds is the City going to tee up every fucking couple of years? With all the bonds passed in the last 2 decades, it should have a gazillion dollars to spend for mobility. All I see are reduced car lanes for unused bike lanes. Stop the fucking insanity.

 

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Posted
Just now, crash_davis said:

How many fucking mobility type bonds is the City going to tee up every fucking couple of years? With all the bonds passed in the last 2 decades, it should have a gazillion dollars to spend for mobility. All I see are reduced car lanes for unused bike lanes. Stop the fucking insanity.

The sticks in the road are not going to pay for themselves...

You bought the sticks, now the sticks are getting pounded by daily traffic, eventually you will have to buy replacement sticks.

Posted
3 minutes ago, Texas Jeff said:

The sticks in the road are not going to pay for themselves...

You bought the sticks, now the sticks are getting pounded by daily traffic, eventually you will have to buy replacement sticks.

Now do the same analysis for all the money spent on unused bike lanes and then convince me that it was money well spent. Here's a thought, don't spend money on stupid shit and spend it on maintaining and replacing sticks.

Posted
12 minutes ago, ChickenSandwich said:

Responsible spending, affordability and cost of living aren’t really in consideration when you can just give yourself a raise and a budget increase. 
 

They are immune from their policy failures. 

When one political group is entrenched at the city/state/national level, it becomes a steaming pile of shit. Accountability is out the door because the idiots in charge know they can do whatever the fuck they want and idiots will still vote for them. We are seeing the this diarrhea at all levels of government. 

Everyone gets the leadership they vomit onto themselves. 

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