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Emancipating Pets, Patty Hearst and the Austin City Council

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.

Losers & Winners Unite!

Chuck Young (left), Carole Keeton Strayhorn and Wes Benedict

Thank you Carole for running.  Had you not, Lee and Brewster would not have been forced to explain their votes on the outrageous no bid $2.3 billion biomass deal, show serious support for local businesses or acknowledge the need for a more open City Hall.

Thank you to all our friends who worked on this campaign.  A very special thanks are due to Chuck Young (who came to us from the Ron Paul movement), longtime Libertarian Wes Benedict, Democratic activist Kathleen Green, Republican activist Dan McDonald, our data base guru Chris Hauboltd and the many Carole supporters from across Austin’s political spectrum.

We all knew that Leffingwell was likely to win this race.  We wish him and the new Council well.  His increasing commitment to locally owned business in the final weeks of the campaign was encouraging, and we know there remains much to be done.  

Thank you to Perla Cavazos & Sam Osemene for taking forward our cause.  Congrats to the winners we supported – Martinez and Spellman.  Congrats to Chris Riley & Sheryl Cole.  We look forward to working with you all.

We will be watching and participating!  (The Statesman piece yesterday made clear that Brewster will have to drop out or lose the runoff, but we’ll leave that decision to him and his supporters.)

We would be remiss if we didn’t thank the Austin Chronicle who has taken to repeatedly attacking us in their pages and not printing our responses.  Below is a letter to the editor that they failed to print last week from our own Brian Rodgers.  

PS Contrary to what you’re reading in the Chronicle, three of the founders of ChangeAustin.org (Brian Rodgers, Linda Curtis and Albert Marino) are not Libertarians.  We are all longtime independent minded progressives.  Brian and Linda supported President Obama, much to the consternation of our libertarian friends.

LOSERS and WINNERS UNITE! It’s better to be attacked than to be ignored.

Watch for a meeting soon or chat with us at the end of this article.

Dear Editor:

Wells Dunbar’s May 1st Hustle wrongly claims Carole Strayhorn as the mayor who “bought Austin into that mother of all boondoggles, the South Texas Nuclear Project”. But it was Austin voters who approved the STNP in 1973 during Mayor Roy Butler’s term and Austin voters who approved the issuance of additional nuke bonds in 1979 during Carole’s term. 

Dunbar belittles ChangeAustin’s struggle against RECA and the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce at the Texas legislature to keep petition signature requirements accessible, not just for Austinites, but for all 346 Home Rule Texas cities who enjoy that same right to petition their government that Dunbar dismisses. Dunbar’s fictional account of a Capitol rally and his no-nothing accounting that “the bill has already died an ignominious death in committee” lays bare reckless reporting and lazy sourcing reminiscent of the fictional Baltimore Sun character Scott Templeton on HBO’s ‘The Wire’ who concocted news stories and faked phones messages because he was too lazy and dim to do the serious work of investigation. 

Perhaps most pathetically, Dunbar characterizes Texans for Accountable Government (TAG) as a “faux” organization despite TAG’s raucous and righteous fight against Police Chief Acevedo’s Orwellian plan to collect and compile DNA from anyone arrested for a Class B misdemeanor or higher – such crimes as obstructing a sidewalk or stealing $1 worth of cable TV. TAG sponsored the overflow public forum on forced blood withdrawal by Austin police held on March 30th at City Hall and attended by over 200 civil rights advocates.

At ChangeAustin, we’re tackling serious issues affecting all citizens, and our members believe Carole is the best pick for mayor to address them. Calling our group ‘increasingly loony-libertarian’ is a feeble hustle exposed by Dunbar’s faux and flimsy reporting.
  

Brian Rodgers, ChangeAustin.org