Yes, it is totally true — the City wants to raise your energy, water and property taxes by an average of $265 per year.  Sign this petition/letter to the 4 members of the Council up next for reelection — Mayor Leffingwell, and Councilmembers Cole, Martinez and Spelman.  They must end unnecessary projects and the practice of the “growth lobby” (aka the big boy developers and the real estate lobby) offloading the costs of growth onto current residents.  As we say at ChangeAustin.org, ‘welcome to Austin, but pay your own way’ and growth must pay for itself.  Sign here and pass it on, folks, or forever hold your peace on Austin’s affordability.

You can ALSO print out the Petition-No Tax Rate Hikes 2012 City Budget here, take it around and mail it back to us by September 10th, before the City Council votes on September 12.

Bill Oakey Speaks on City Budget Reform.

Did you know that Austin City Council is being strongly advised by the City Manager to raise your energy, water and property taxes by $265 this year?  That’s in addition to all the likely hikes from the county, the healthcare district and AISD.

Sign this letter/petition now!  An immediate message is sent to Mayor Leffingwell and the three other members of the Council up for reelection next — Cole, Martinez & Spelman.  Then send it to your friends across the city!  (P.S.  Mark your calendars to attend the first budget hearing on August 25th.  More info soon.)  You can also print the petition out (see below) and take it around in your neighborhood.

Petition-No Tax Rate Hikes 2012 City Budget (print out, take it to your neighbors and get it back to us soon!)

TheAustinBulldog.org

Meanwhile…please plan to join us at our next meeting of ChangeAustin.org.

What Citizens Must Do As the City Budget Hearings Begin Soon!

Come Find out!
Monday, August 15th, 6:30 to 8 pm
Manchaca Library, 5500 Manchaca (@Stassney)

Guest Speaker:  Bill Oakey

Bill is one of the most effective citizen activists in Texas who got the Texas legislature to enact two bills into law.  One was the over-65 freeze on school property taxes.  The other was a “truth in taxation” law, which reformed the guidelines for public hearing notices on property taxes published by all statewide taxing entities.  Currently, Bill is working on plans to address out-of-control property tax and utility rate increases in the Austin area.

For more information call us at 535-0989 or email us at

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.

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!

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.

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!