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Desmond D’Souza testifies to the Austin City Council on August 26, 2010 against water rate hikes and against Water Treatment Plant #4.
Making growth pay for itself!
Category Archives: Cost of Growth
No More Water Rate Hikes!
Mayor Leffingwell and three City Council Members (Shade, Martinez and Cole) want to raise water rates to pay for a water treatment plant that is ten times more expensive than alternatives, including conservation.
Click here to send them this message:
Don’t waste our tax dollars and don’t waste our water!
The Austin City Council has raised rates EVERY SINGLE YEAR since 2003
AND the City plans FIVE MORE YEARS of water rate increases to pay for a water treatment plant we may never need!
Download the Petition-Stop the Water Hikes.
For lots more back up information, click here.
Here you can read comments Austinites have added to the petitions sent to all Council members.
The Council will vote on the city budget no earlier than Monday, September 13th. Be sure to sign up to get our emails — we may ask you to come to City Hall.
A Little Victory for Austin Taxpayers
Sweet! The Austin Community College Board of Trustees decided on Monday to opt-out of the City of Austin’s shameful historic property tax giveaway program to some of Austin’s wealthiest. (You might watch this video by respected preservationist Rick Harden, who blew the whistle on this a few weeks ago.)
We have a lot more work to do together to level the playing field for ordinary residents.
Come to our State Your Beef & Take Action meeting next Thursday y’all!
ChangeAustin.org General Meeting
Thursday, July 15, 6:30-8:30 pm
Carver Library (1161 Angelina)
Agenda
* Property taxpayer protest update: bring your questions & your horror stories!
* Update on historic property program
* Update on Water Treatment Plant #4
* Ideas for Budget Sanity for upcoming City budget deliberations
Note: that our volunteer appraisal attorney, Lorri Michel, will start the meeting with followup Q & A session for you beleaguered homeowners seeking a little tax justice!
City Budget Charades
We recently attended the city’s only budget charade, uh we mean charrette. City staff must have outnumbered the audience 3 to 1. Just 2% of the budget was up for discussion to close the City’s $11 to $28 million shortfall.
ChangeAustin.org came up with an easy $14 million by having developers pay fees to process their development plans, like they do in other cities. But that item wasn’t in the 2% up for dialogue.
Watch this short video.
We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.
Make sure you mark your calendar for our upcoming volunteer meeting on Thursday, July 15th, 6:30 to 8:30 pm at the Carver Library. (We’ll do a followup on property tax protests there too.)
There’s more to tell you about historic property tax giveaways to some of Austin’s wealthiest, the new coalition working for police accountability and open government, congrats to TAG and, taking the cake this month is the City’s decision to spend $44 million more wasted taxpayer dollars to build th $1.3 billion Water Treatment Plant #4. Never mind the wasted water, right?
Growth must pay for itself y’all, before they run us all outta town!
Check out the rest of our first newsletter and watch our new videos here. Pass it on.