Cost of Growth Archives - Page 8 of 8

The Real News on Water Treatment Plant #4: From the Comical to the Real Estatesman

Posted on September 29, 2009 by Linda Curtis • 0 Comments

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”.

This issue will be coming back in May 2010 for a vote of the Austin City Council. So far, they are split 4 in favor (Leffingwell, Martinez, Cole and Shade) and 3 against (Spelman, Riley and Morrison).

Get the story the Statesman and Chronicle failed to report, watch the debate yourself and YOU decide a major decision on Austin’s critical future on water policy!

Rope a Dope Developers!

Posted on August 13, 2009 by Linda Curtis • 1 Comment

If the Growth Lobby has its way, our metro population will double in just 16 years — and ordinary citizens will be paying the costs. 4 out of 7 City Council members want to forge ahead with Water Treatment Plant #4, an $850 million project planned during one of the worst droughts and economic downturns this century!

How can we beat the formidable Growth Lobby? Remember Ali’s ‘Rope a Dope’ tactic used to beat George Forman? We just wear ’em down till the last knock out punch.

Read what the Mayor cut off last Thursday on WTP4 here from CostofGrowth.com.

Save the Date: Good Ol’ Tax Protest, Thursday, Aug. 27, 6 pm outside City Hall — at the last City Budget Hearing as the Council deliberates on raising the property tax rate and fee hikes for water, waste water, trash and more!

Download the flier on our front page and share it!

Note: Would your organization like to endorse this event? Contact us right away!

PS For as little as $5/month you can help sustain our organizing. Thank you Austin!

Emancipating Pets, Patty Hearst and the Austin City Council

Posted on June 27, 2009 by Linda Curtis • 0 Comments

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.

City’s Citizen Budget Meetings: Charette or Charade?

Posted on June 13, 2009 by Linda Curtis • 2 Comments

Charette: a final, intensive effort to finish a project, esp. an architectural design project, before a deadline.

Charade: a blatant pretense or deception, esp. something so full of pretense as to be a travesty.

Last Tuesday’s first of three city citizen’s budget meetings, held at the Northwest Recreational Center, set up as a “charette” was, presumably, to be a lesson in public participation about the realities of cutting a city budget. After an overview of city revenues and expenditures by city budget officer Ed Van Eenoo, the 200 plus citizens in attendance, in groups of seven or eight to a table, voted on a sanitized list of some 30 budget cuts and revenue raising items.

As the first citizen to speak pointed out, the $2,000,000 annual payment to the Domain Shopping Mall was conspicuously absent, something they strongly objected to along with the 4th speaker.* (We swear to you, we did not seed the attendees!). One attendee had the idea of using funds saved by lowering the pay of the highest paid police force in the state (APD), to start the next cadet class. But renegotiation of the police union contract was not on the table.

Meanwhile, the rest of us peons in Austin are related to like well… peons, being asked questions like, ‘Would you prefer to cut libraries or charging people to get in to the Trail of Lights’!

In all fairness the City is doing some things right. The City Manager added an item to this year’s budget reduction proposal (page 313) to increase various fees for the City’s review of the larger development projects. It also creates a new category for smaller projects to more equitably distribute the fees among users. The overall proposal would raise an additional $370,750 and is at least a start, albeit a modest one. Bue it was KVUE’s story on June 3 that began to expose the 800 pound gorilla in the room — that some people (we wonder who) are projecting that the population of our metro area will double from 1.3 million to 2.7 million by 2025. Who’s going to pay for this growth? If nothing changes, it will continue to be us peons.

The short story on the City of Austin’s 2009-2010 Budget is this: the budget items selected for public scrutiny were limited to items m, n, o, and z. Unfortunately for us, the rest of the alphabet soup covering the full width and breadth of the budget were off limits.

Is this process a charette or a charade? Perhaps it is both. Our local “progressive” politics is becoming better known as Austin’s favorite pastime — confuse the voters.

If you want to participate and see for yourself, you might attend the second or third (and last) of these charades, uh, we mean charettes, this Monday or Tuesday (listed below). We’d love to get your feedback on this page either now or after you attend one of the meetings.

Peon: a person held in servitude to work off debts or other obligations.

Peons unite!

Monday, June 15, 6:30-8:30 pm – Gus Garcia Recreation Center, 1201 E. Rundberg

Tuesday, June 16, 6:30-8:30 pm – Toney Burger Activity Center, 3200 Jones Road

* Just in case you bought the Mayor’s TV ads last year opposing Prop 2 (paid for by the Mall’s developer, Simon Properties, the Real Estate Council of Austin and the Chamber of Commerce), the City’s contract with the Mall includes a clause Brian Rodgers, co-founder of ChangeAustin.org, won in court several years ago. That clause allows the City to walk away from the deal anytime without penalty.

Bigger Badder Boondoggle: Water Treatment Plant #4

Posted on February 25, 2009 by Linda Curtis • 0 Comments

Remember, one of ChangeAustin.org’s founders, Brian Rodgers (who has been investing in real estate in Austin for 25 years) told you the City paid $20 million more for the land for WTP#4 than it was worth. Now they want to build this $400,000,000 boondoggle, while neither newspaper is telling you the unadulterated truth about why this is another bigger badder boondoggle for ordinary citizens.

Below is Brian’s letter to the editor of the Austin Chronicle in response to their article [“Dumping the Water Pump,” News, Feb. 20], followed by letters from other activists and concerned citizens. Pass it on — and mark your calendars for our candidate forum on Saturday, March 14th, 4 to 6 pm at Opal Divine’s, 3601 S. Congress (Penn Field). Wanna vote on our endorsements? Dues are just $20 for the year. Sign up here.

Brian Rodgers, co-founder ChangeAustin.org

Dear Editor,

Water Treatment Plant #4 is for the newcomers – the supposed next million people who are hungrily eyed and aggressively courted by that specific sector of Austin business which benefits directly from population growth and controls the levers of city government: the real estate industry. The industry’s profits are taken along the development chain, but the costs of growth are offloaded onto the rest of us.

The true cost of public infrastructure for a new single family house is estimated at over $25,000 which is that house’s proportionate share of new and expanded schools, roads, water, wastewater, solid waste, drainage, police, fire protection, EMS, and municipal buildings. Who pays the $25,000? The rest of us.

Austin could charge $3,307 for each water tap but it barely collects $900, not including the 30% of fees waived and exempted. Austin could charge $1,852 for a wastewater connection but it settles for about $600 average. Austin neglects to charge a road impact fee of $2,000 per house like Fort Worth charges. Between city officials unwilling to charge the full cost of growth and the State of Texas prohibition on charging developers for their impact on schools and certain infrastructure, the cost must be paid by the rest of us in staggering amounts. Over $520 million in bonds for new schools were approved by voters in 2004 and $567 million in infrastructure bonds passed in 2006 to cover many of these very costs.

WTP#4 can clearly be postponed for many years at great savings – your savings – because that’s who will be stuck with the bill.

Brian Rodgers, ChangeAustin.org

Here’s Bill Bunch’s of Save Our Springs letter to the Chronicle (with his permission to publish):

Dear Editor:

While Katherine Gregor’s article on Austin’s proposed $500 million Water Treatment Plant No. 4 covered lots of ground, it missed a few critical points. The accompanying chart incorrectly labeled as “SOS projection” is actually the City’s own projected increase in “peak day” water demands while starting from last summer’s actual peak day use of 219 MGD (million gallons/day). Simply looking at the chart reveals that summer peak day demands are flat or declining as citizens and businesses wake up to the water, energy and money to be saved by simply paying attention.

We know there’s plenty more to be saved, at a tiny fraction of the cost of building and operating a new treatment plant. Our per capita water use is 25 to 30 percent higher than the very modest state recommended goal for municipal water use. Yet our “green” council refuses to even adopt this minimum recommendation. Fifteen percent of our water is lost to leaks, breaks, faulty meters and water theft. Where’s the plan to stop this waste? City efforts to substitute nonpotable reuse water for peak summer irrigation and commercial cooling demands are stuck in first gear.

Even if we needed extra treatment capacity, the City’s own consultants proposed a replacement for the Green plant downtown for one-fourth the cost of WTP4 while providing almost twice the treatment capacity. The plan would still free up 80 percent of the Green site for much needed downtown condos.

Any way you slice it, WTP4 is a colossal waste of money (aka boondoggle) that cannot be squared with the City’s proclaimed interest in sustainability.

Sincerely,

Bill Bunch, Save Our Springs Alliance

Letter to the Chronicle from Connie Ripley, reprinted with her permission.

Dear Editor,
    In your water article last week [“Dumping the Water Pump,” News, Feb. 20], Austin Water Utility Director Greg Meszaros stressed, “only to build Phase I.” Meszaros obviously does not have to pay the additional $400 million.
    Meszaros also said the new plant would allow the city to “take down” part of an old plant for repairs. If repairs were needed, why weren’t they done before Green was decommissioned? Seems $400 million is a lot for us to pay for that oversight.
    “Davis and Ullrich draw water from the Colorado River. WTP 4 will draw from Lake Travis.” Lake Travis is a part of the Colorado River just like Lake Austin. This is not a second source of water! The difference is Lake Austin has the additional benefit of inflows from Barton Creek and Bull Creek. Those will be lost with an intake in Lake Travis.
    What rate increase on water from the Lower Colorado River Authority? In the LCRA/City of Austin Settlement Agreement (June 2007), Austin does not have to pay another penny to LCRA for water until it reaches a trigger point of 201,000 acre-feet per year two years in a row. That might have happened by 2020 to 2025 if the current rate of conservation was not so good. Meszaros certainly skimmed over that fact! Another point for conservation.
    Producing less water reduces greenhouse-gas emissions. Again, conservation over a new plant wins again.
    The “other” Colorado River cities that Austin mayoral candidate Lee Leffingwell refers to beat us hands down on conservation. Los Angeles uses 125 gallons per capita per day compared to Austin’s 172 GPCD. Austin has a long way to go in “selling conservation.”
    Lake Travis is the lifeblood of Central Texas. It is time the city realizes that fact.
    Save water. Save Lake Travis. — Connie Ripley



From Judi Graci, with her permission.

Dear Editor,

   During the drought of 2006, LCRA General Manager Joe Beal said, “That lake is going to go empty the night before it rains. I mean empty. If this will have an impact on you, you better plan for it. It could be happening this year.” Again we are in an “exceptional” drought category. Lake Travis not only supplies our water but it cools our power plants. San Antonio became serious about conservation with their limited water supply. Austin’s answer should not be going to the bottom of Lake Travis with their deep-water intake.

     Not only WTP#4 is planned for Lake Travis, the cities of Round Rock, Cedar Park, and Leander (BCRUA) want to start construction of their Lake Travis water supply project, another deep-water intake. Round Rock’s usage is over 200gpcd. The best the Round Rock Council can do is implement a 5 month peak usage rate structure that targets consumption over 215gpcd. The Texas Water Development Board recommends 140gpcd. Conservation programs could save Round Rock 30% of its water needs.

   San Antonio’s conservation plans cost $400 an acre foot of water. What are the costs per acre foot on these two $400 million water supply projects?   What is the cost of driving out 2222 to the Oasis to be met with 92 acres of treatment plant facilities? What revenue could that site have produced to the City of Austin?

   Lake Travis is the single most important economic and environmental driving engine of Central Texas. Stop the dependency on excess water usage and give Austin’s residents a chance.

Judy Graci