Making growth pay for itself!

Author Archives: Linda Curtis

Citizens Hearing on City Mismanagement

Please attend a Citizen’s Hearing on City Mismanagement and why the 10-1 Council needs new management.

Is Austin going in circles or just thinking about how to get out of this mess?
Is Austin going in circles or just thinking about how to get out of this mess?

Why we’re holding this event is because the City Council turned down our request for a public hearing.

Thursday, March 24, 6:30 to 8:30 pm
Austin Energy Community Room
721 Barton Springs Road
Reply to reserve a seat now or !

This event comes just before the performance review by the City Council of its chief executive officer, City Manager Marc Ott on March 29th.

This hearing is an attempt to advance the 10-1 movement by urging that the 10-1 Council get its own new management. (Learn more about the issues here at Manage Austin Better. Be sure to read excerpts from the Zucker Report here too.)

Marc Ott has been City Manager since 2008. He is up for review and a raise, while he has presided over mistaken projects that are costing Austin residents far too much for THIS (10-1) City Council to ignore. In his first year, the City gave stunningly short notice to a $2.3 billion deal for biomass (aka the “wood chip burner” in Nacogdoches), resulting in a $54 million dollar per year payout by Austin Energy ratepayers for 20 years — with no electricity in return. The City of Austin cannot get out of this 20-year contract! How has this and other decisions under Mr. Ott affects YOU and your neighbors, is the subject of this hearing.

The results of which will be given to your city council member and Mayor before they deliberate, likely in private, on Tuesday, March 29th.

Listen up citizens! Austin is in crisis with no foreseeable way out without a new course.

We must insist that the 10-1 Council seriously address the affordability crisis and the gross mismanagement of our city…because they are intimately related.

Reserve a seat by replying to this message  
or feel free to call us!
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Share this message across our wonderful, but nonetheless troubled city from here or on this event page on Facebook.

Come ready to have your say and to fill our your own evaluation of the City Manager’s performance.

PS Under Marc Ott’s leadership, we see the promise of 10-1 slipping away. If you’re OK with that, don’t show up at this hearing.

Insist on an Open Review of the City Manager

Screen Shot 2016-02-22 at 11.13.11 AMTomorrow and Thursday, the Austin City Council will begin discussions about the process for the performance review of City Manager Marc Ott. We must insist on an open review.

Will the City Council decide to do Ott’s performance review in Executive Session, out of the public view?

Or, will they allow YOU, as a city resident and affected party, to see and hear their deliberations on the performance of the City’s top executive?

As you know, we have been urging new management for the 10-1 Council. That will be Council’s decision.

But, will Austin – we, the people – have the open government we deserve on this important decision?

We still believe in this Council as much as we do 10-1. But withholding this process from the public, especially now, is unacceptable.

This a great test for the 10-1 Council.

It’s also a great test of YOU, dear Austin.

Contact your Council member and the Mayor. Urge them to OPEN UP THE OTT REVIEW. (For more details on the review read the 7 points below our signatures.)

Don’t know who your council member is, go here.

Mayor Steve Adler: steve.adler@austin.texas.gov, 512-978-2100

District 1 Councilmember Ora Houston: ora.houston@austintexas.gov, 512-978-2101
District 2 Councilmember Delia Garza: delia.garza@austintexas.gov  512-978-2102
District 3 Councilmember: Pio Renteria: sabino.renteria@austintexas.gov, 512-978-2103
District 4: Councilmember Greg Casar: gregorio.casar@austintexas.gov, 512-978-2104
District 5: Councilmember Ann Kitchen:  ann.kitchen@austintexas.gov 512-978-2105
District 6: Councilmember Don Zimmerman: don.zimmerman@austintexas.gov 512-978-2106
District 7: Councilmember Leslie Pool: leslie.pool@austintexas.gov, 512-978-2107
District 8: Councilmember Ellen Troxclair: ellen.troxclair@austintexas.gov, 512-978-2108
District 9: Councilmember Kathie Tovo: kathie.tovo@austintexas.gov 512-978-2109
District 10: Councilmember Sheri Gallo: sheri.gallo@austintexas.gov 512-978-2110

Don’t be sheeple, that is herded, Austin.

Austin Deserves an Open Review of the City Manager

1. Hold the Council discussion with the City Manager on his evaluation in public. There is no legal reason Council cannot do that. At a minimum, if there are some truly confidential issues that need to be discussed, the Council can retire to executive session just for that, and return to the public session.

2. Require the City Manager to complete a written performance evaluation and have Council put it’s individual and collective evaluation of his performance in writing.  Make it available to the public for comment.

3. The citizens of Austin deserve a chance to review the manager of the city, a city in an affordability crisis. A time certain is guaranteed by a public hearing.

4.  Performance metrics should be tied to the outcomes laid out in Imagine Austin.

5. A major responsibility of the City Manager is to inform the council on major projects. Have the City Manager explain his performance on projects that have affected Austin’s affordability like Biomass ($2.3B), Water Treatment Plant #4 ($1B), Waller Creek, Seaholm, and just recently, Pilot Knob $100M and a host of high tech company recruitment incentives whose high paid employees have driven up housing costs dramatically.

6. The city is a $3B per-year corporation. Most corporations in America, this size or larger, routinely evaluate their chief executive officer with a 360-review. The same can be said for many public institutions including our own UT-Austin and Huston-Tillotson University. The City Manager should be reviewed by those who work under him – anonymously. Allows them to comment on his performance, just like HT and UT students do of their faculty.

7. What does the City Manager do to enhance the city’s relationship with other government entities and other civic organizations?

8. Is the City Manager providing information to the council requested of him in a timely manner for making decisions?

City Sued on Pilot Knob Open Meetings Violation

Brian Rodgers filed this lawsuit against the city yesterday for clear violations of the Texas Open Meetings art_bailing_water_from_boat_md_clrAct on Pilot Knob.

The city failed spectacularly on the Pilot Knob agenda posting in what former County Judge Bill Aleshire calls,

“One of the grossest examples of failure to give sufficient notice – when they say they’re doing zoning and buried inside is an $81 million fee transfer from a struggling utility.”

The heart and soul of the Texas Open Meeting Act meeting notice requirement is that the notice itself must “sufficiently alert the general public to the topic to be considered.”

Meanwhile, the Mayor is quadrupling down on the ‘righteousness’ of his cause by calling for $400 million to be hijacked from the Austin Water Utility while the City Manager is busy practicing “management by hindsight”.

We are fairly stunned at the magnitude of this sophomoric mess.

The Mayor and City Manager should protect, not raid, the all-important impact fees designed to plug a hole in the sinking boat of affordability in Austin.

One way or another, we will not let the Pilot Knob $106 million diversion deal stand.

Let’s see what the Council does today.

If you want to help, send the Mayor a message that you don’t agree with his senseless plan to expand the hole in the boat, nor do you appreciate the Open Meetings violation.

PS Stay tuned for City Manager Ott’s review. It’s time for him — and some other senior management people to go.

The Mayor has an uber problem alright – Pilot Knob

The Mayor and City Manager have an “uber” problem — Pilot Knob. The Mayors chief of staff is in the paper

Cortez: We made mistakes, but Pilot Knob deal is still good for Austin
Cortez: We made mistakes, but Pilot Knob deal is still good for Austin

today admitting they made a mistake but expressing little intention of correcting it.
Brian Rodgers’ letter to the Council below explains why this is a bad deal for Austin. Call it affordable housing if you wish. It takes us down the same road of the previous Council by incentivizing growth that has dug the hole out of the bottom of Austin’s affordability.
The Mayor talked about making growth pay for itself when they ran for office.
Please call and write your Council member, especially the Mayor, and urge them to:

  • Nullify Pilot Knob and instruct the city manager, Marc Ott, to do his job and follow the law — post the fiscal notes so the Council can really look at this deal.
  • Give Ott his walking papers — he’s up for review in a few weeks.
  • Sign the petition at Manage Austin Better — ask your friends too!

Get to work, Austin! Call ’em and write ’em now.

Austin City Council Members,
The dramatic increase in impact fee revenues to AWU shown below is the result of hard won efforts by various city committees and individuals over 5+ years against substantial pushback from RECA, the Chamber, the DAA, and even upper city management itself. The maximum fee was approved unanimously by the previous council. The result of this rare success to make growth pay for itself is that hundreds of millions additional dollars will become available over the next 10 years to help AWU right itself as a utility which currently has negative ratings with Fitch and Moody. (See CM Gallo’s CBQ link below.)
Unfortunately, the Mayor has “discovered” this income stream and has decided to make it his golden goose to fund affordable housing on the backs of the ratepayers for Pilot Knob and future PUDs. He even wants to revisit old agreements.  Don’t allow this.  Please roll back the Pilot Knob PUD to the deal presented at first reading.  I imagine Richard Suttle’s client won’t care a bit. Please end city management’s sloppy practice of RCA’s without fiscal notes when clearly that would have made all the difference last December 17th.
How good is this “big new idea”? The annual $2 million in impact fees diverted can buy only 44 lots at the $45,000 lot price used in the Mayor’s documents. All of this for 44 lots per year? Beginning some time in the future and running for the next 20-30 years through at least one or two full blown recessions? It’s practically meaningless.
Thank you,
Brian Rodgers
Impact Fee Advisory Committee – 5 years
Joint Committee on Austin Water Utility’s Financial Plan
Impact Fee Collections

Stop this sneaky deal, Austin.

Screen Shot 2016-02-03 at 11.03.51 PMFront page news — Housing Deal Could Cost the City $50M!

While it appears Austin Mayor Steve Adler was hoodwinking his trusting Council by diverting $50 to 80 million from the struggling water utility to subsidize 650 houses outside of the Austin city limits, one wonders where the hell the City Manager was.

The City Manager, Marc Ott, is required by law to prepare a “fiscal note” on each reading of a proposed ordinance stating its economic impact on the City’s budget before submitting it to the council. Ott failed to do so on all three readings — leaving the fiscal notes completely blank every time. This misled the Council to think there was no fiscal impact.

After a 22% water rate increase last year alone to cover costs, you would think Mr. Ott would lift a finger to protect the utility and its customers from this latest looting which will cause further rate increases. Not so.

Enough is enough. City Manager Marc Ott needs to be replaced and the 10-1 Council members deserve their own handpicked city manager who will respect their authority and shoot straight.

Ott’s performance review is in the next few weeks. Tell the Mayor and City Council you want this Pilot Knob deal nullified and to have the ordinance process repeated legally with the true costs discussed openly.

Read and don’t weep — share it with others and contact the Mayor and your Council member.

Get to work Austin. Stop this sneaky deal.

Our friend, Richard Franklin

Richard Franklin, CandidateChangeAustin.org  likes to remember our friends who were there when we needed them. One of them is Richard Franklin. He was there when we asked for Eastside community leaders to step up to pass 10-1. He came to almost every meeting for two years!

Richard is running for the Travis County Commissioner’s seat being vacated by Ron Davis – that’s Precinct 1 (see map here in yellow).

You’re invited to this tomorrow. But, please take a few minutes to read the rest of this message.

Richard Franklin Fundraiser
Monday, Nov. 30, 6 to 8 pm
Midtown Live, 7408 Cameron Road
Click here for Richard’s website to give online

Richard was there when his neighbors in Del Valle were forced to pay through the nose for water because the city refused to serve them, throwing this low-income community to the dogs in private water business. When the city expanded and paid for a water line to the billionaires at Formula 1 and provided a trigger to the use of state funds for F1, Richard was there along with us, equally incredulous. And, when Travis County gave road improvements to Formula 1, guess who was there?

Austin has a lot of things to be ashamed of these days. We are rated the most economically segregated city in America. We are the only fast-growing city in the country losing African-Americans.

The Mayor recently spoke at an event in Bastrop, attended by at least one Travis County Commissioner – Richard was there too. The Mayor’s apparent message to Bastrop was to get ready for the people fleeing Austin’s affordability crisis. No questions were allowed from the floor.

The Austin regional real estate lobby, at this very moment, is actually fighting lobby reform at City Hall – practically the same rules that we already have at the state level.

What does all this tell you, hmm?

That both the City and County have some new leadership has given us some hope. But truthfully, the pedal-to-the-metal growth policy door has been open for a long time now. Austin has already changed – and not for the better.

Stepping up with Richard Franklin is but one thing that we can do. But we’re into this for something bigger. We are utilizing Richard to continue building a movement in Austin for citizens to take back their government. In other words, dear Austin, 10-1 was just the beginning.

Richard has put himself out there for years to be “used” in this way – to better this community, not pad his resume.

ChangeAustin will soon change our own strategy to support YOUR development of an on-the-ground populist movement of citizens. That is what is most needed now and Richard – we know – will be there too.