Check and balance?  “No thanks, trust city staff to give away your tax money.  We don’t need no stinkin’ oversight!”

This was, in short, what citizens got from City Hall on the recent passage of a hollow economic incentive ordinance which dismissed the concerns of 123,000 Austin citizens who voted to stop the Domain Mall tax subsidies last year.

Read it here at AustinPost.org and please share your comments — but keep it clean!

Mark your calendars, folks for our first quarterly meeting — November 7, from 3 to 5 pm.  Location to be announced.

When big news stories broke in the good old days, Austin citizens relied on their one daily paper to get the details.  Along came the Austin Chronicle as the new boss, the progressive alternative to challenge the old boss American-Statesman; a rivalry good for coverage of community issues.  But a while back, the new boss Austin Chronicle (despite the good sensibilities of its publisher Nick Barbaro) decided to be damn nearly the same as the old boss Austin American-Statesman, and kowtow to the real estate growth lobby.  Which maybe explains why some people call them the “Comical” and the “Real Estatesman”. Read what the Chronicle and Statesman failed to report posted here at AustinPost.org.  Then, please comment and send the story out.  The more folks read it, the more it stays prominently on the front page — so even more will read it.

We hope you like it and look forward to hearing from you.

Watch the Debate on Proposed Water Treatment Plant

The City Council will host a Town Hall dialogue and debate featuring Austin’s environmental leaders, including our own Brian Rodgers, on whether Austin should commit a billion dollars to building “Water Treatment Plant No. 4.” Learn more about this issue by clicking here.

Please come!  The Chamber of Commerce will be out in force and they want your tax money to fund their agenda.

Meanwhile, the Council passed the City Budget yesterday, which includes a number of rate hikes. In response, Skippy the blogger said, “Skippy would like to make a prediction today and that is that the next 12 months could be the toughest economic time in Austin’s history and that there will be more cuts and layoffs at mid-year in City government. The budget is built upon rosy assumptions. You heard it here first mates!”

Let’s hope that Skippy is incorrect.  But just in case he’s right, why don’t you hunker down with ChangeAustin.org and become a member for just $20 for the year.  Membership entitles you to vote on the candidates we will endorse.

One thing is for sure, Skippy.  Austin will continue to see some very challenging times.  We’re all gonna have to pitch it to make things right.

Hope to see you this Thursday night.

PS  You can also become a sustaining member for as little as $5 per month. Help fuel our efforts for YOU!

Thanks to all who protested with us last week at City Hall.

It took us a few days to think about our next steps.

Thanks to SouthernShift.com, you can watch this wonderful 5″ video on “Travis County’s Dirty Little Secret” on the residential property tax inequity that is driving Austinites out of their homes.

We love you KXAN!  Scroll down this page to watch the 2.5 minute piece they did that helped us reach thousands.

The tax protests with the Appraisal District have been so numerous, that TCAD is settling quickly with folks by mail.  Did TCAD bite off more than it could chew with homeowners?  You betcha!

The Council is planning to raise your tax rate and raise utility fees and more.  (Click here for details on rate hikes.)

Let’s Keep the Heat on Officials:  Do This before October 1st!

1.  Call Mayor Lee Leffingwell at (512) 974-2250.  Urge the Mayor to lead the Council in stopping a tax rate increase in a down economy.  Ask him to cut the budget, not gouge homeowners.  Urge him to take action to get the Appraisal District to straighten out the mess at TCAD.  (Click here for the details on what’s wrong — very wrong — at TCAD if you don’t know!)  Note:  One of the cuts the City should do is the $850 million Water Treatment Plant #4. You should also send an email to the rest of the City Council on the same subject - click here.

2.  Call County Judge Biscoe at (512) 854-9555 and urge the County not to raise taxes on homeowners and to clean up the mess at TCAD.  You can email the remaining Commissioners here.

3.  Become a dues paying member of ChangeAustin.org. Why?  So you can vote on who we will support and oppose in upcoming elections.  It’s only $20, to join right here.

You can also attend hearings of the City Council on the Proposed Rate Hikes on September 14 and/or 24th.  The County’s hearings are the 22nd and 25th.  Details are on our calendar on the right side of this page (put your cursor over the date you want.)

Keep up the heat while the real temperature is coming down, thank god!

We’ll be back in touch.  Meanwhile, why don’t share this message with your neighbors.  And, as always, feel free to contact us anytime.  Just go to our contact page.

Does Austin need to spend $850 million for a third water treatment plant in the midst of one of the worst droughts and economic downturns of the century?  Read the details here courtesy of CostofGrowth.com.

..you can’t make ‘em blink.

Brian Rodgers at the County Commissioners Court, July 16

The Short Story
The Travis County Commissioners Court has so far refused to call for a full audit and to file a formal challenge to the under-valuations of commercial properties in Travis County. But some smaller taxing authorities (who, will remain anonymous at the moment) have contacted us and are preparing to go after the money they’ve been missing from the big developer boys. Meanwhile, the City of Austin just released its proposed budget and — guess what — it contains a property tax increase!

The Gory Details
On Tuesday, Chief Tax Appraiser Patrick Brown promised to ‘do better next time’ while Brian Rodgers pointed out that this was ‘just not good enough’. When County Judge Biscoe stated that he wasn’t going to support a challenge or an audit, Rodgers asked him, “I presented $120 million of missing property from the rolls. I can bring you another $120 million. You just have to tell me what your breaking point is.” So far, no response.

(Notice the lobbyists for the Real Estate Council of Austin sitting near the double doors behind Brian? The system works splendidly well for its members and they were on hand to ensure that nothing changes.)

The County appears to have based their decision not to file a challenge on the County Attorney’s advice in Executive Session that the deadline for a taxing authority to challenge the under-valuations of commercial properties was June 15th. That is not the information that we have, so we’ll see. More on this subject coming soon.

Message to the thinkers at taxing authorities: Come and get your money! It’s sitting there like a beached whale at CostofGrowth.com.

Here’s the City’s budget summary proposal released on July 22.

Note to Austin City Councilmembers: the budget proposal you were given on July 22 makes no mention of the fact that there are tens of millions of dollars per year you’ve been short-changed due to under-valuations of commercial properties in Austin. There’s also no mention of one of the most popular budget cuts mentioned by regular folks at the budget charettes. That was the Domain, good for about $2 million this year alone! Oh, sorry, we’re not supposed to talk about that.

Things are happening VERY quickly — So….
in order to complete some research, we have rescheduled our meeting for Thursday, July 30, 7 pm. We apologize for the inconvenience, but hope more of you will be able to attend.

RSVP so we can plan refreshments and a larger room please. You can call us at 383-8484.

GET ACTIVE and seize the moment before it seizes you!

10:30 a.m. tomorrow (Tuesday), Brian Rodgers will address the Travis County Commissioner’s Court along with Chief Appraiser, Patrick Brown.

Rodgers, ChangeAustin.org co-founder, founder of CostofGrowth.com and a longtime commercial real estate investor himself, will discuss the under-valuation of large commercial properties in Travis County.  Brown will respond and Rodgers will have an opportunity to rebut.

Y’all come if you can tomorrow if you can.

Watch for a report of this meeting.

Meanwhile, here’s some of the coverage we received so far:

KXAN
KEYE
KUT
KVUE
Statesman
Chronicle
Our Own YouTube Video

PS  Make sure you sign up to keep informed.

*** and many, many more examples available upon request ***

While homeowners pay 100% of our property taxes, large commercial owners (largely out-of-state speculators and big developers) have been getting a 40% property tax break — for years!

Why are Austin homeowners fighting for scraps at the tax appraisal hearings when the big guys get off the hook?

“The Appraisal District actually threatened me that if I kept pressing my point to lower the appraisal on my home, they would raise it!” - an Anonymous Travis County citizen.

With hope and optimism ChangeAustin.org welcomes the newly sworn in Austin City Council. The past City Council, led by outgoing Mayor Will Wynn, appeared to suffer from a Patty Hearst syndrome (better known as Stockholm Syndrome). As captives of the real estate industry, their sympathy and identity with their captors began last year to catch the attention of voters from across Austin’s political spectrum when 129,209 of them voted for Prop 2 (to halt the Domain mall subsidy and others like it). Will the new Council, as it searches for $30 million in cuts to the City budget to fill the budget gap, snap out of it? We, at ChangeAustin.org, the eternal (albeit critical) optimists, sincerely hope so.

Did you attend any of the recent City budget “charettes”? If not, the City added an additional charette this coming Tuesday, 6:30 to 8:30 pm at the eastside’s Givens Recreation Center, at 3811 E. 12th St. We hope to see you there. Charette is just a fancy name for meetings in which the citizens attending are given a list of potential budget cuts selected by the City from which to discuss our support or opposition. The problem isn’t so much the process, but the pre-selected and sanitized list the participants are given. Decisions involving the real allocation of resources are well outside the margins of debate.

The list of budget cuts up for consideration includes things like libraries, youth programs, Emancipet’s great animal neutering program (which actually saves the City money), neighborhood parks, the Community Action Network which deals with a myriad of concerns making up Austin’s “safety net” programs and nearly a thousand more items in the budget for the “little people”. But it was the items not on the list that told the real story. The one that seems to be a favorite “missing in action” is the now notorious Domain shopping mall subsidy (part of Will Wynn’s “legacy), a nice chunk of change amounting to about $2 million this year!*

Citizens must get ready for a whole litany of smaller cuts unless this new Council breaks the Patty Hearst-like spell and serves Austinites like true populists. Just last week the outgoing Council passed, by 6 to 1 (with Morrison all by her lonesome) a low income housing deal that was a rich deal for the developer because it gave him a 100% property tax break and $3 million in cash. Even low income housing advocates were holding their nose on this one.

For years, Austin citizens and activists have been asking for more accountability at City Hall. When we didn’t get it, we petitioned for a vote. We won some and lost many, but we keep fighting on, sometimes wondering if we need our heads examined.

Is it possible that the fighting will soon come to a halt? While we caution you not to start singing Kum Ba Yah yet, we’re beginning to wonder. A piece we wrote two weeks ago entitled, “Charette or Charade” about the city’s citizen’s budget meetings, prompted the following response:

“Wait till the $2.3 billion Biomass plant deal hits – you ain’t seen nuttin’ yet!” Well neither have you seen “nuttin’ yet” from ordinary citizens who are clamoring for fairness. For example, there are 95,000 property tax challenges going on in Travis County right now!

Will a perfect storm arrive in Austin where citizens, not just activists, are ready to put their foot down? Maybe we won’t need to deprogram the City Council in memory of Patty Hearst, though it was probably jail time that snapped her out of it. Seriously, we’re here to help.

Contrary to what the recently departed Mayor Will Wynn said in those TV ads paid for by Simon Malls last year, the Domain deal was and still is a completely voluntary gift by the City to the developer.