Texas Jeff

Outstanding. Stuff flying off as it went up. In case you missed it:

Assessed value means nothing except the amount of taxes you owe as a percentage of the overall tax base. Last year my appraised value went up about 90%, my assessed value was limited to 10% rise, and my overall taxes actually dropped. Inflation made it drop even more. Renters took it in the shorts, because they have no 10% cap. This year I think homesteaders are going to feel it more, since more will get the 10% assessed increase even if their appraisal is flat. Their overall percentage of the tax base will rise. Renters will feel it less. The law really limits tax increases. I think it's 2.5% for school districts and 3.5% for cities. Inflation is higher than that. The limit used to be 8%. You need something like a Project Connect tax increase -- a city voting to voluntarily increase city taxes by 20% -- to really move the needle.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1OmWNgmriRu9gDHuwrrVaRxb03W8&hl=en_US&ll=30.27928613673917%2C-97.73165425896954&z=16 I have seen CVC 27 (aka the one from the LBJ Library that is now totally blocked by trees and the stadium) defined differently. In one view it does not completely cover the proposed practice field, in another view it does. You can also play with them in Google Earth: http://1nsane.info/map/cvc.html I challenge anyone to walk around the LBJ library or school and catch a view of the capitol building. You can see it from the soccer stadium by the scoreboard, but walk a bit towards the LBJ school and it's hidden.

The entire Social Work building area is under a Capitol View Corridor, as is the Moody Center, so that we can preserve the view of the capitol building from the upper deck of IH-35 -- a place that will soon no longer exist. But ... the CVC persists... Perhaps UT is exempt from CVCs. UT could build up and have some killer views of downtown, if they could get the CVC shortened to start at the practice facility. 🙂

I'd imagine there are some pissed off strippers holding bags of loose change that could ID the perps....

The Statesman has an article up about protesters blocking and swarming cars in earlier protests, on June 27th and July 4th, prior to the shooting on July 25th. One of the swarming stopped because the driver showed a gun. This is dangerous behavior. Guns make it more violent. Do it at night and it's even more dangerous. I support people protesting or marching in the streets, and I don't think that anyone should drive into any group of people with the intent to harm or threaten. But the protesters and the police need to do more to ensure that everyone gets home safely at the end of the protest. Mixing cars and people on streets, having guns on display, swarming cars is unsafe. Having the police shoot anyone with beanbags or anything else is unsafe. We need to learn to talk to each other better. I'm not sure how to do that, but guns and cars and people mixed together is not the way to go.

The best place to be is where the clouds aren't. One little teeny cloud can turn you into an old man shaking your fist at clouds. It's hard to control this factor unless you are mobile ... but I'm going to check the weather a few days before and aim for clear skies. You don't have to be exactly on the blue line. The amount of totality drops off just slightly as you move away from the blue line, for miles. It drops really fast as you get to the edge of the shadow. You want to be kind of in the middle, but you don't have to obsess about being right on the blue line. I'm concerned that the hill country folks will do little planning for the exodus after, and we'll have an epic traffic jam once it's over. So either plan to stay or plan to be stuck in traffic on the way back.

You can watch two angles of the shooting side by side here, if you are interested in seeing what happened. It happened very, very fast. Less than 15 seconds from the car starting the right turn to shots fired.

A fair point, and especially at the elementary school level it makes sense. At the high school level, if you want all schools to be equal and all schools to offer all athletic teams, all AP classes, all grade level classes, all fine arts, engineering programs, etc ... that is tough to do with 700 kids in a high school. Austin ISD has about 100,000 seats and 70,000 students. The latest demographic report projects enrollment of 66,000 students ten years from now. They are trying really hard (and voters are helping) to fix up those 100,000 seats -- but it would be helpful to aim for a capacity of 80,000 seats rather than try to keep all 100,000 open.

What a circus! He's OJ now...

Not in Austin ISD. At the high school level, I saw all kinds of kids, teachers and parents being who they wanted to be and it didn't matter to most everyone else. The kids that I saw were a lot more kind to each other and accepting than when I was in high school. They are under a lot of pressure to do well now and there is a ton of anxiety that my generation didn't have. The magnets are fine but you can find greatness at the neighborhood schools too. While I was a parent, Austin High put kids into MIT, the Naval Academy, UC schools, lots of east coast schools, Plan II and STEM majors at UT, lots of kids at Texas A&M, and others. There were, and hopefully still are, a core group of teachers that helped push them along towards their goals. My fear is that they will eventually lose their teachers simply because it costs more to live in Austin than the school district can pay. We collect plenty of money to pay our teachers enough to stay, but Robin Hood takes that away. You mentioned a few things that might also drive teachers out of teaching -- large class sizes and online teaching -- that's a roadmap for burnout. Imagine if you're a top-notch STEM teacher at a magnet high school. Each year you bust your butt to teach kids who aren't always grateful, but sometimes are awesome. You teach 'em up and help them get good grades on AP exams, spend extra time in office hours with them, sponsor clubs, and write recommendations that help them get into a good college. And five years later that kid returns to Austin, gets a tech job, makes twice as much as you do right out of college, and buys the house that you had your eye on. How long could you do that without tapping out and looking for a better life for yourself, even if you love teaching?

Austin ISD isn't going to get ground into paste. AISD is gradually replacing their schools after a generation of neglect, and the new schools are great. The district is shrinking because no one can afford to live in Austin, so they have too many schools, but no one wants to close any of the schools. They could help themselves financially by consolidating schools, but it's politically impossible. The district is gradually getting more affluent because those who can stay have more money than those who moved out. Their #1 problem is Robin Hood. For every dollar they spend locally on salaries and such, they send one more dollar to the state. It's too bad that the Lege won't give local communities the option of raising local taxes to pay local teachers. I think folks in Austin care and if given the chance, they would raise their own taxes to pay teachers more. Right now there is literally a formula capping what teachers can get paid, and in a high cost town like Austin, teachers are bailing out for cheaper towns or higher paying jobs.

Town Lake Lady Bird Lake Lake Beyond-This-Point Has an Austin ring to it....

Austin Light Rail Plan, from 100 years ago -- this was in place from 1891 to 1940: Not that different from the five plans that were unveiled last week. More here if you'd like to read about it: https://notevenpast.org/austins-first-electric-streetcar-era/

Also, people with a passion project push hard to get on commissions and boards and councils. If a group wants more stuff, they organize and go lobby for more stuff. When the city gauges "interest", these folks show up at meetings and speak for hours, repeating the same points over and over. They dominate online polls and get appointed to groups that have power to recommend or not recommend more stuff. Of course, they max out the stuff they want no matter what the cost. Years later we end up building the stuff they "planned" and are surprised that the usage doesn't match the rosy predictions. I'm not saying don't build more stuff, just wishing that the deciders would be more careful with money before committing to projects.

Can you just add another bus to the route? I have two kids on the UT campus now that ride the bus. Their big compliant is that the bus driver takes a 15 minute break in the middle of the route while the students just sit there. West Campus's density is a good place to think about rail. I *am* concerned that Project Connect will make West Campus a good spot for young professionals and retirees to live, and they will price out the students.

1. Kill the Red Line and don't even think about starting the Green Line (rail to Manor). In a 2004 presentation, Cap Metro described the Red Line as costing $60 million and having possible ridership of 17,000 daily by 2025. The eventual cost was over $100 million, which is cheap for rail, but 2022 ridership was around 1,300 per day. Ten times less than the proposal. One round-trip counts as two boardings, so the Red Line is moving 700 people to and from work each day. That is the population of an elementary school. 2. Or, make a deal with the Robinson Ranch people. The Red Line goes through a lot of empty space when crossing the Robinson Ranch. Turn the ranch into a really dense, tall city with 2-4 rail stops connecting parts of the city. There is plenty of room to design a rail-first city. We already have the rail. No one lives there. 3. Kill or reduce any Cap Metro route with fewer than 10% of seats occupied. I'm not setting a high bar here. If a 40 person bus is regularly passing a station with fewer than four occupied seats, you don't need a bus. You need a minivan. This rule might prune a large portion of Cap Metro's bus system, but at least it would focus their efforts on areas of the system that are working. 4. Expand the Pickup zones to touch the rapid bus routes. We have Pickup in our neighborhood (a circulator shuttle like you see at airport parking lots). You have to be picked up and dropped off in your "zone", which for us mostly covers residential areas. It doesn't go to commercial areas or the rapid bus routes. The north/south rapid bus routes are pretty good. Make the pickup zones bigger to cover more local destinations and give people a chance to take Pickup directly to a rapid bus station. 5. Enhance services for seniors and the disabled. There are areas of Cap Metro that pay taxes but have no service. My parents are getting older and can still drive, but they live in one of these areas. Eventually they are going to need Uber to get around. Cap Metro could help people that have limited transportation options by providing point to point service. They partially do this today, but not for their entire service area. 6. Forget about Project Connect until current bus systems are well used along the route. You can get to the airport today from large parts of Austin by taking one of the rapid bus routes to central Austin, and then riding the 20 bus to the airport. This is the route that the rail would follow. Service already exists. If you really want to build rail so that you can get buses out of traffic, just reserve lanes for buses. Cap Metro used to provide express buses from the airport to downtown/campus. They canceled the route because of low ridership. That should be a warning of what rail ridership to the airport might look like. Today, Cap Metro has no incentive to build efficient systems. They get tax money regardless of their performance. So we get inefficient systems that are hard to kill once in place. They have no reason to offer honest projections about cost or ridership, so we get the rosiest, dreamiest projections possible and should not be surprised when they are off by 10x. Whatever alternatives we pick should be backed up by data and able to change if it's not working.

Congrats on that system! I think as prices come down more of us will be doing this. Just curious (if you are willing to share), what is the ballpark total price of a system like that, including installation? Or half of a system that size? I've been a GreenChoice subscriber for 20 years and liked the idea of pooling money to buy wind or build solar arrays, where they could be moved with the sun. Then Austin Energy left me in the dark for a week. Now I don't trust the grid because of 2021 and I don't trust AE because of 2023. I'm don't need a system as big as yours, but I could get by on half of it. That would allow me to limp along on battery/solar during a power outage. Not power everything, but enough to heat or cool part of the house, keep the lights on, keep the fridge going, etc.

The Austin Symphony was playing at the Long Center from about 8-10:30 Saturday night. The show was almost sold out so the building was nearly full.

For the record, I’m on day 6 with no power. It sucks. Sorry I struck a nerve about the generators, but my neighbor fired up three of them yesterday .. the constant noise on top of no power is really frustrating.

The generator noise is getting to me. If it’s freezing cold then ok, keep your furnace on to keep your house warm. It’s a mild night it Austin but the generators just keep blazing away… Imagine the sound if we all had them.

Not sure if this was covered earlier, but you can help if you don’t have power now by turning off switches, thermostats, etc around your house and leaving one light on to let you know that power is back. This lowers the “cold load” on the system when they re-energize a circuit and helps them by bringing load on gradually, rather than all at once. Once your one light comes back on, turn your stuff back on.

In the past that was true. Intel today is a behemoth in decline. TSMC ran right past them on process technology, to the point where I think it is a national security issue. Intel continues to see the world through an x86 window, and the world has moved on to ARM and later will move to RISC-V. Intel is going to lose the client business (laptops) to ARM and probably eventually the data center too. They will go down trying to sell x86 version N+1 as long as they can. Apple did the right thing by moving on.

Future Aggie alums are going to have to live with disappointment for a long, long time.

I read a book on this recently, I think it was Empty Planet. The authors talked about most countries being on the same curve. Once women are educated, have birth control, and are reasonably assured that kids they do have will survive childhood, reproductive rates go below replacement value and population declines. Some countries are ahead of others on the curve, but almost all countries are headed towards lower birth rates and eventual population decline. I don't see fewer people as a bad thing, to be honest. Less stress on the planet. We need to figure out how to handle old people without overburdening young people. If we really want more people we need to be nicer to those of us who can create more of us.