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On some of those I totally agree. But I get the feeling you are more against taxes period regardless of if they are high or low. Such as in this case where the taxes (and tax rates) are low. I agree though that all types of government departments are going to try to increase their budgets. To a degree. But those are not the people we elect. We elect the ones who make the budgets, and it is their responsibilities to manage the budgets the departments get. The departments and those like yourself can and do try to get as much funding as they can, but at the end of the day will only get the funding that those we elect give them in their budgets.
To most Austin residents environmental issues are important, even if they are not to you. To the majority it is, and that is what is important. Austin is liberal. So to myself, a liberal, the bag ban is something I believe is important. Many of us don't like those bags in our dumps. And likewise for the Greenbelt we don't like the bags and beer cans often left (or worse the bottles) and the fires caused by those smoking during dry periods that put our homes at such great risk. By your anti-tax, small government post I'll assume you are conservative and anti-environment. Which is fine and of course we all can chose for ourselves how we feel about all the issues even if we don't agree. But most people in Austin are liberal and pro-environmental. Green issues are important to most of us. So issues like the bag ban and clean greenbelts shouldn't be a surprise and I would hope you would agree that those we elect should represent the values of those who they are serving.
How the money is spent to me is a separate issue, because political differences we will never agree on. Political differences playing a large roll in how that money is being spent. The collection of that money, and if the taxes are high, or artificially high is a different matter though. As you suggested the taxes have gone up 38%, I absolutely believe that. My taxes have almost doubled in less than 10 years! However I am only paying 1.9 which hasn't gone up much of any that I know of. What has doubled is the appraisal for my property.
As Hoffdano says, yes how much I am paying has gone up a lot. But the problem with what we have is it is creating an artificial tax increase, by the values of some of the central Austin residents getting the increase, but the rates staying the same. So we are subsidizing outer city residents and the rest of Travis County. All of the increasing tax burden is being places not evenly over the city or county, but as OpenD so well states on those in the central parts of the city. It is Central and South Austin that is subsidizing the outer areas and baring the brunt of the artificial tax increase to pay for the increasing needs in police/fire, highways/commuter rail and other to the outer areas of the city.
I am neither conservative nor anti-environment. I brought up those examples as indicators that the City is already quite prosperous. Poor cities do not spend money on such things. The need for those bans has been debated before on this forum, and is off topic. I be happy to discuss it, but let's do it on a separate thread.
What I am is pro-affordability. Not every check-out person at Whole Foods can afford to pay $1200 for an efficiency apartment in Austin.
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"So we are subsidizing outer city residents and the rest of Travis County. All of the increasing tax burden is being places not evenly over the city or county, but as OpenD so well states on those in the central parts of the city. It is Central and South Austin that is subsidizing the outer areas and baring the brunt of the artificial tax increase to pay for the increasing needs in police/fire, highways/commuter rail and other to the outer areas of the city."
What do you suggest the government do about that? Surely you are not proposing that property taxes be lowered for Central and South Austin and raised for everyone else to equalize the tax burden.
What do you suggest the government do about that? Surely you are not proposing that property taxes be lowered for Central and South Austin and raised for everyone else to equalize the tax burden.
Not sure that's what the poster is suggesting, and I wouldn't want to speak for him/her anyway. But the overarching point is that the reality is that the economic core of the region, the downtown, provides a big proportion of the overall tax revenue. Dispersed, "sprawl" development, over time, cannot pay for itself - the cost of providing city services, infrastructure maintenance, and so forth outstrip the tax revenues that type of development produces. So an economically strong, dense downtown is essential to maintaining services across the city, even to those areas that are tax revenue negative. It's about economic sustainability, at the end of the day.
That's not to say that those "suburbs in city limits" are a bad thing - they're attractive to a lot of people, and cities do need to provide them in order to stay competitive for new and talented residents that will attract the large, successful employers needed to economically anchor the region.
I am neither conservative nor anti-environment. I brought up those examples as indicators that the City is already quite prosperous. Poor cities do not spend money on such things. The need for those bans has been debated before on this forum, and is off topic. I be happy to discuss it, but let's do it on a separate thread.
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Originally Posted by austinrebel
What I am is pro-affordability. Not every check-out person at Whole Foods can afford to pay $1200 for an efficiency apartment in Austin.
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"So we are subsidizing outer city residents and the rest of Travis County. All of the increasing tax burden is being places not evenly over the city or county, but as OpenD so well states on those in the central parts of the city. It is Central and South Austin that is subsidizing the outer areas and baring the brunt of the artificial tax increase to pay for the increasing needs in police/fire, highways/commuter rail and other to the outer areas of the city."
What do you suggest the government do about that? Surely you are not proposing that property taxes be lowered for Central and South Austin and raised for everyone else to equalize the tax burden.
I too would love for Austin to be much more affordable. But taxes aren't what I see making Austin unaffordable. I certainly would never proposed lower taxes for central Austin than outside Austin. I don't think the taxes have anything to do with why central Austin has a higher COL. It is the values of the properties that do that.
As long as central Austin is so much more desirable than the burbs it will always have much higher land values and pay for the services in the burbs. But because the rates are so low they carry such a much higher part of that subsidy than if Austin had average taxes of the other Texas cities. If the rates were higher the burbs would pay a larger share of their subsidy. None of that however helps in the affordability that I think we both want for Austin.
There are some means that I believe would help with affordability in Austin. The biggest one being transit. Or at least traffic improvements. But both of those require taxes. If it were easier to get around Austin then values would even out. Highways and roads obviously don't pay for themselves as they are generally provided with out tolls, although in today's no-tax environment that isn't so much the case anymore. Bus and rail transit also generally don't pay for themselves in the US because they have to keep fares low to compete with the automobile. So taxes are needed for both of those solutions, but I think overall either of them would help even out values around town.
Another is zoning laws. For one, allow denser zoning. Allow duplexes and such in central Austin neighborhoods. In some they are allowed, but in the powerful wealthy ones they are not. And in a city like Austin many of the closer in neighborhoods are the powerful wealthy ones that don't. Also if city hall would not cave to every singly NIMBY neighborhood association every time they opposed anything it would go a long way to providing more housing. Unfortunately the primary concern of the NIMBY's I don't believe is that they don't want the affordable housing, but traffic concerns. They aren't being NIMBY just to be mean, and selfish (ok, sometimes maybe they are, but I don't think all are that way) but they are being that way because the streets and major thoroughfares in their neighborhoods can't handle any more cars. Which takes us back to the city needing some sort of transit.
Every other city has transit but us. Yet we are the ones with the least affordable housing.
I think a sound $1B "traffic improvement plan" bond package would be approved 2/3 to 1/3. Conservatives would vote overwhelmingly for it.
But mix that bond with funds for green power that costs more than "regular" power or city council pet projects and it would probably lose. People, even conservatives, are not against taxes per se. It is about what the taxes are spent on.
Good points, but I think you are discounting the impact of taxes on affordability. That checker at Whole Foods is going to see his/her rent rise as a result of the tax increase, as well as because of supply/demand issues. The landlords have to make up that money somehow and it's landlord's market so there is no reason why they can't. And rents are already unreasonably high.
I agree with BevoLJ in regards to zoning. Most of it in Austin is designated so almost in perpetuity with neighborhood associations claiming that the character of their neighborhoods should never change. Sorry but the market changes as so has Austin demographics.
I was on Cornado Island (San Diego) a few month back and picked up a flyer for a vacant 7,000 square foot lot with alley access. Same size as many Central Austin lots but in this case the California municipality has given it R-4 zoning, or the ability to build six 3-bedroom condominiums on a "normal sized" lot. That kind of increase in supply keeps down the pressure on demand and tempers prices.
All of the increasing tax burden is being places not evenly over the city or county, but as OpenD so well states on those in the central parts of the city. It is Central and South Austin that is subsidizing the outer areas and baring the brunt of the artificial tax increase to pay for the increasing needs in police/fire, highways/commuter rail and other to the outer areas of the city.
To be clear, it is not "and South Austin," it is only the core downtown area that generates taxes in excess of what is spent on services in the area. The rest of the city costs more to provide services to than what it pays in, overall, including South Austin.
It's the high density of downtown property values plus the concentration of downtown sales tax revenues that makes the difference.
The Houston rent increases were on average. For years many places, especially decent apartments, were already $1,000+. I rented the second floor of a small home in Montrose for $1,200 without the benefit of central air and having to rely on street parking. That's still 4-5 miles from downtown. This was from 2007-2010. You could still find crappy efficiency/1 bedroom places for 560-700 bucks - but you'd be living with a bunch of sex offenders or cheap student/family housing. the people that lived in those are complaining about their rents going up $500. that is turning the city rental market into something much more like what Austin has now. Houston has had a population boom just like Austin has, but they have a development plan to concentrate on further revitalization of the city core. the core being much larger and more spread out than Austin has previously made that difficult. They are throwing up "nice" apartment buildings/condo communities everywhere within the beltway (Sam Houston/Beltway 8) in preparation for the light rail tracks bridging everything together
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But taxes aren't what I see making Austin unaffordable. I certainly would never proposed lower taxes for central Austin than outside Austin. I don't think the taxes have anything to do with why central Austin has a higher COL. It is the values of the properties that do that.
