Texas Jeff

I was curious, so I looked up enrollment numbers for Texas public schools, in this case from Fall 2022. Here is everyone with an enrollment over 20k, which is about 80% of the Texas public university enrollment. The Aggies are growing their main campus but UT is putting together a system: Texas A&M: 67,165 UT Austin: 52,189 U of H: 46,580 UNT: 44,349 UT Arlington: 40,942 Texas Tech: 39,743 Texas State: 38,171 UT San Antonio: 33,557 UT Dallas: 31,570 UT RGV: 31,317 UT El Paso: 23,880 Sam Houston: 20,996 Other UT System: SFA: 11,232 UT Tyler: 8,968 UT Permian Basin: 5,250 Other former SWC Texas schools: Baylor: 20,709 TCU: 12,273 SMU: 7,056 Rice: 4,494 Any surprises on this list? I didn't realize that UNT and U of H were that big....

Some random thoughts from my two kids' college app experience... For those of you considering Arkansas, why not take a look at Auburn? It's a cool college town, about an hour from ATL, the campus has a ton of new buildings and the people are some of the most polite folks I've met. Even when drunk. Also, it rains and stuff grows there. Also, they have an unlimited supply of Southern blondes. It's not Harvard but they do a reasonable job of educating folks and a high ACT or SAT score will knock tuition down to close to in-state levels. They have the big football stadium and a great gameday atmosphere, but are not as pre-programmed and as money oriented as UT athletics. We visited UT-Dallas and Texas A&M, and before our visits I had UTD ahead of TAMU. Afterwards, I would have been OK with my kids picking TAMU but not OK with them choosing UTD, even with a scholarship. During our visits, we started talking about the "Rah rah" of each campus, meaning how much did it feel like you were part of a community while you were there, how much school spirit did you see. A&M did that better than anyone else. UTD tried but didn't have it. UTD felt about as exciting as going to college in Richardson sounds. However, UTD put an emphasis on the low cost of education, via scholarships, and how they tried to connect students to job opportunities. If you are poor in Texas but smart, want an engineering or business degree, and just need a cheap place to get a good education and get started in the world, UTD may be for you. Your kid may miss out on the "college experience". They really need a walkable "west campus" student housing area to get more energy on campus. We visited NC State for our engineering kid. Great engineering school. Not so great everything else. A huge engineering campus, but it was a short bus ride from the "main" campus. The football stadium was miles away, but they had a nice softball stadium right in the middle of campus and it seemed like the entire campus was at the game when we were there. Everyone in Raleigh will offer you a biscuit with your meal. They should all be 400 lbs just because of the biscuits. The airport was small and kinda sucked, but they do have direct flights from Austin. Trees and plants everywhere at a time when Austin is just starting to dry up. I tried to get both of my kids interested in Cal Poly .. a STEM-ish school in a great location in California. No interest. I still think it looked like a nice place to go to school for a kid that wants to "get away". I would rather have my kids at Texas State than Texas Tech, if they whiffed on the better Texas schools. San Marcos vs Lubbock is no contest IMHO, and we know a lot of kids that are enjoying Texas State. In Lubbock, the dust dusts you. UTSA -- never been but had to go pick up a car near there in May. Much nicer than I thought it would be. They are working on the "rah rah" and becoming San Antonio's team. Seemed very promising and I was happy it was part of the UT system, but I don't know much about the academics. I work with a UTSA grad who loved it. Will be interesting to see if they ever build an on-campus football stadium or keep using the Alamodome. UDub aka Washington -- beautiful campus, awesome stadium, great transit. Kinda cold and dark in the winter. They mentioned that counseling was free and would be available for anyone that needed it during the winter. Yikes. The closest thing we saw to UT. Their homeless are way, way crazier than our homeless. Their museums are way, way cooler than our museums. And, for your engineering kids ... some schools let them directly into engineering their freshman year and some delay the decision on getting into their major until their sophomore year. My engineering kid did not want to go through an entire senior year of college apps and a freshman year of competition just to get into an engineering major. Texas A&M and Washington do the delayed thing, Texas does not. If your kid is choosing engineering and headed to a school that has a competition for different engineering majors during their freshman year, be sure to have that conversation with your kid. They might go to a school intent on a chem E major and get slotted into civil engineering. UT had an interesting listening session. It was all kids who had changed their major. They all told their stories about what they thought they wanted to do when they got to school and what they actually learned they liked while they were there. Lots of kids do that and don't be surprised if they go to school to study one thing and pop out on the other side with a different major.

In the tech industry, I would say commuting is no longer a factor. I work downtown-adjacent, near Mopac and 6th. I have an easy drive to the office. My office is empty on Mondays and Fridays, and mostly on Wednesday. I could collect 24 monitors on my desk and no one would notice. Tuesdays and Thursdays are "work from the office" days, but most employees come in around ten and leave around three to avoid traffic, and work the rest of the time at home. No one drives during "commuting" hours. Before COVID we were in office Mon-Fri, eight hours a day. Most of my co-workers have kids in school, and would never consider putting their kids in Austin ISD. They live in Hays, Dripping Springs, Steiner Ranch, Leander, Round Rock, etc. My company would get better in-office attendance if we had smaller offices in the suburbs, and even then I doubt people would be there more than 8-12 hours a week. Personally, I'd like to see more people in person but I am clearly in the minority, and I think this is the new way of working in tech. If Austin is going to be a tech town, I think commuting traffic is a diminishing problem. Great for the environment, but (in my opinion) not great for collaboration, but hey what do I know. Now, we do have new college grads that come from all over. Our northern transplants just went through their first summer and they're a little shell shocked. The new grads pretty much want to live wherever the other young people live. And right now that's the Domain, East Austin, apartments in South Austin, a few live downtown. They don't want to come to the office either, but they do want to live near other young, childless people. Those are the people that will buy or rent these apartments in neighborhoods. They can out-spend any teacher, or first responder, or poor family of four. They do not think that Austin is expensive. Companies are moving them here because it's cheaper to park them here than in Silicon Valley. For my industry, commuting is dead.

Hey, if it were up to me we would be up-zoning the areas closest to transit, particularly close to the rail system and close to the 801/803 lines. Think of the university overlay extended north and south. Lots of 8-20 story towers with everything you need along the rail route. A train that goes all the way to the airport. Two or three neighborhoods in the Robinson ranch filled with towers with Red Line trains connecting them every five minutes. Stations that are protected from the elements so that it's possible to wait for a train when it's 105 outside or raining. I'd rather do that than put small apartment complexes in residential neighborhoods, but I understand why developers want density. Just my opinion.

The recent proposal was to reduce the minimum lot size from around 5000 sq ft to around 2500 sq ft, allow three houses to be built on each lot, and for those lots that do, consider reducing lot setbacks or impervious cover or McMansion restrictions or required parking. Here's an article: https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2023/07/council-considers-code-amendments-to-relax-single-family-zoning-rules/ So, someone could in theory buy an existing home on a 50x100 lot, tear it down, subdivide it, and build six homes, IMHO apartments, on the site. The could also build less density, like one house per 2500 sq ft lot, or just rebuild on the lot like today. Portland up-zoned a few years ago and has some of this stuff going up today. The council did not pass these rules, but directed the city to come back with proposals for change. Unlike CodeNext, these proposals would affect every single family lot in the city by changing the definition of single family zoning. This is not "missing middle", where some lots near transit were considered for up-zoning while inner neighborhood house were spared. This would be the rules for any single family lot in the city. There are devils in the details. For example, historic zoning is probably not affected, nor places like Mueller that have a special overlay, nor places with HOAs that have rules against this stuff, nor places with deed restrictions ... so long as the owners next door are willing to pay to fight for the deed restriction in court. The HOA would possibly have to fight the developers to enforce the HOA rules and those without an HOA would probably have to organize more one-on-one. This is great for builders and realtors, since they get to sell a house six times ... great for investors who can build out a lot and then rent out the apartments ... great for young, high tech folks looking for a place that they can use for WFH on Mon/Fri and drive to the office for a few hours on Tue/Wed/Thu. Not as great for neighbors who have to live next to a giant building with the extra cars, A/C units, trash cans. This will not create affordable housing for teachers. Expect the normal arguments from all three sides of the issue: those for it, those against it, and those that will profit from it. In the end, nobody's riding Cap Metro -- it's all cars and WFH, poor families will continue moving to Pflugerville and Hutto, Austin ISD will continue to shrink, and the city council will continue to ignore Robinson Ranch. But hey, I could be wrong.

Honestly, I would contact UT admissions about this, or the Plan II office. The link I posted is not "official" info, it's just a guy who used to work in admissions that now offers consulting services. https://admissions.utexas.edu We took a campus tour with both of our kids. The first time, the guy's tour was pretty much non-stop advice about how to fill out the application. The second time we talked a lot about freshman research and the canoe sculpture. If you find the right person they will talk you to death.

College admissions sucks. Best of luck. This guy's site has some of the only info out there that I have seen specific to UT admissions: https://texadmissions.com/blog/2019/2/25/recommended-ut-austin-majors-rank-and-test-score-minimums Auto admits are 75% of admissions, out-of-state is 10%, so that leaves 15% for everyone else in Texas outside of auto-admits.

Austin passed a $2.4B bond last year on top of a $1 billion plus bond in 2017. The district is just in really bad shape. They are rebuilding schools and spending some on athletics, but they are digging out of a big hole.

I think they lost the election and said "Hey, maybe we can win if we add even more stuff in". It's kinda crazy that you can just vote for stuff year after year until one side wins. Meanwhile, tonight across town, Austin ISD's board of trustees approved their tax rate. Under Texas's Robin Hood plan, Austin ISD will get to keep 45% of the tax raised and 55% will go to the state. I'm not bashing LT for building stuff -- mostly poking fun, but it is absurd that a school district can build crazy athletic facilities if they wish, but can't raise and keep funds for teachers and staff.

Last year, Lake Travis ISD had a bond proposal to build $93.8 million in athletic facilities. They are opening a new school and want to revamp their old stadium at the original high school, plus build a new stadium for the new school. They lost the vote with about 63% against. At the same election, they did approve $609 million for schools, just not for stadiums. So hey, now it's 2023. And Lake Travis ISD has a bond proposal to build the same stuff, but a year later it's $143 million. Inflation is rough... Also they are sick of losing to Westlake. Lake Travis is about 1/5th the size of Austin ISD, and in about 10 years they will be between 1/5th and 1/4th the size. If you scale up the LT proposal to Austin ISD, this would be like Austin ISD proposing a $600-$750 million bond just for athletics facilities, mostly for high schools.

Speaking of the Cotton Bowl, how about a video of Longhorn Band marching out of a half-empty stadium?

All that planning and noise and crap and we were up 10-7 at halftime against ... Wyoming. Wow what an impact... Right before the halftime, a guy in a yellow shirt with STAFF written on it and carrying a radio appeared in our section. He said "OK everyone we are going to do the wave! 1,2,3 .... go" and a few people tried to start the wave. I think I yelled "Pathetic!" but it may have been something stronger. He tried to start it two more times and got frustrated with the crowd. The reason he could not start the wave was that he was being overrun by mostly drunk people leaving the stands in search of more beer. The drunks were not organized but they were goal oriented. He left after about four attempts. Someone somewhere in the athletic department had probably decided that the stadium would do the wave at exactly the end of the 2nd quarter. And they penciled it in to the game script. And that's how some idiot ended up in our section trying to start the wave while being run over by drunks. I don't think Bob Cole isn't trying to be annoying, I think he's being held hostage. Someone somewhere in the athletic department has decided what he's going to say and exactly when he's going to say it. Everything is pre-planned. I knew it would be loud and I brought earplugs to try to knock it down. Still too much. My phone measured 94-98 dB from the PA between plays. I left after halftime and was pretty happy to be out of the stadium and away from the PA system. But hey, the stadium was packed. It's hard to say if people were there because of all of the extra crap or in spite of all of the extra crap. I thought the visuals on the Jumbotron were well done, but the constant barrage of noise was more than I could take.

Well, in this one case, I dug in to it a bit expecting to be outranged it's hard to tell exactly what happened. There is an email from a nutrition director saying that kids can no longer charge to their accounts directly from the cafeteria. But, they do have a free and reduced meal program like everyone else: https://www.davidson.k12.nc.us/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=800358&type=d&pREC_ID=1189912 They also have a school cash online program, which is what we used to pre-pay for meals for our kids when they were in school. For non-free-lunch kids, the parents put money into the accounts via cash deposit or a credit card and the kid has so much money in their account. When the money is depleted, the account adds some via a credit card or the parent/kid can go add some via cash or check. It's possible that this was a change in policy to not allow a kid to charge to an account at the cash register if their account would go into a negative balance. If you were not on free lunch and you could do this, then there would be no incentive to fund the account at all. Just keep running up a tab and never pay it. If everyone did this, the cafeteria might not have money to fund operations, free, reduced, whatever. It's possible that someone posted this email out of context and folks interpreted it to be something different than what it was. Personally, I think we should just have free food for all kids in the public schools, just to make everyone equal and not have anyone stigmatized. On the flip side of that, kids waste a ton of food at school and we should try to cut down on food waste where we can.

Texas 49 Wyoming 17 333 yards LEDs will be activated...

Austin city council?

Looks like the East Mall Fountain to me, back when it was a fountain. They were headed towards the Alumni Center.

CM Leslie Poole has passed a resolution to direct the city to create code amendments that will allow RV's on single family lots as housing. Austin, Texas ... where the shitter is about to be full.

I told my kids during COVID vaccinations that when the university decides to do something, they drop the hammer. Just watch. The city of Austin will be talking forever about who gets in line first and where we can equitably and sustainably have COVID shots. The website will suck. And UT will have eight lines moving swiftly with phone apps, good signage, and cheerful folks helping out. I was right. CoA eventually figured it out, but UT was a vaccination machine. If UT wants to water a field, watered it will be. Having said that, the previous grass sucked by the end of the season. We probably needed 2-3 more Aggies to tell us what was wrong. But I’m confident that if Texas decides to do it, it will eventually be done well.

It’s going to be a party and at times folks may forget that Wyoming is there too. The team deserves a celebration. 45-17 Texas once the team remembers that a game is in progress. It’s going to be a party and at times folks may forget that Wyoming is there too. The team deserves a celebration. 45-17 Texas once the team remembers that a game is in progress.

About 3.5

AISD schools are used to it. Some of them have Westlake and LT in back to back weeks. It is not fun to watch and I'm sure it's not fun for the players. You root for the clock to run and kids to get out without injury. Dripping Springs joined the district as the third school to pound away on AISD. It's harder to get kids to participate when they know they are signing up for at least three public ass kickings per year and have little chance of making the playoffs. It would be nice, at least from the Austin ISD perspective, to have some kind of regional relegation process instead of drawing leagues based on number of kids. Even within the school district, LBJ would be better off playing Anderson, Akins and Austin High than playing Eastside, Northeast and Navarro. Last year, LBJ was winning games by margins approaching 90 points at halftime. AISD brought some of this on themselves by not updating facilities. I marched at Burger Center in the early 1980s in state marching prelims and I was impressed by what it was at the time. Other than adding turf and maybe a power wash, it's the same stadium today. AISD is finally adding a turf field to all high schools, after Westlake already has four fields and a swim center. But hey, Westlake, LT, Drip, Hays ... y'all invested in your programs with nice results. Enjoy it ... but it would be nice for our teams to play competitive games.

Today I learned that Texas has a private high school named Smoking for Jesus and they have a football team.

Nuke that CVC. It's a relic of the 80's. What view is being protected: 1. The view of the capitol seen by new arrivals at the Robert Mueller airport that vanished 20+ years ago, or: 2. The view of the capitol seen from inside a car on the IH-35 upper deck that will soon no longer exist. Even if they keep the CVC from Mueller, I think it goes over the parking garage by the baseball field, so you have at least that amount of height to work with. Further south near downtown, there are a lot of CVCs that were originally intended to provide a view from IH-35, and IH-35 will no longer be there. Time to revisit and revise...

IMHO they go where the bus lines go, and/or where they can camp out of the view of most folks. There is little bus service in Tarrytown. Used to be a nice loop route to downtown and campus, but no more... Some stuff for students but that's mostly from married student housing and those apartments on Enfield to/from campus. There are some homeless camped out under the highway, in the woods around 5th/6th and Mopac. Easy to hide along the creek. I tried hiking Shoal Creek a few years ago and ran into several camps along the creek. The trail running under the street smelled so bad of urine and other fluids that I gave up and walked street side. The parking lot by House Park is a mess. Folks are car camping there overnight, which doesn't bother me, but there is a ton of broken glass and other trash all over the lot. If you have bus service, some fast food or convenience stores, and greenbelt with shade, you're going to attract a homeless camp.

As others have said, this would not be tax avoidance, just tax deferral. And at 8% I would pay the taxes rather than defer. I'm not sure you have to pay off the mortgage to do this, but I'm not an expert. You may be able to keep the mortgage and just tell the county you are deferring taxes. Since the taxes are frozen, they are being eaten away by inflation now so they'll be cheaper every year. I think the deferral is until death or until you sell the property, which ever comes first, but again I am not an expert. There are other things to think about. If she keeps the property until death, whoever gets it will probably get a step up in basis on the value of the house at the time of death. It's potentially a big capital gains savings. But, do you think she will own the home until death? The last years of life can be expensive and difficult, particularly if you don't have a younger spouse as a caregiver. And as an aside: We are NOT prepared for what is coming in eldercare. Today we are caring for folks born in the depression and early war years. The first of the baby boom is just now getting to the point where things are really going wrong. The first boomers are maybe five years away from the wheels coming off. It will be rough for the middle and late boomers, because we don't have the facilities to take care of them.