
Texas Jeff
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Everything posted by Texas Jeff
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The college application/choice process
Texas Jeff replied to Brisketexan's topic in Can You Help Me With This?
If your kid is admitted, they have an admitted students' day that is on a Saturday at the peak of cherry blossom season. If you can, go a day early so that you can see the campus (and the cherry blossoms) without 20,000 other people trying to do the same thing on the same day. We didn't realize you had to preregister for this event, so we showed up on Saturday with everyone else and registered late. We were always a step behind the horde of people. If you go to an out-of-state state school, most everyone else will be from that state. That makes sense, but I had to experience it to realize that almost everyone else we talked to was from some town in Washington, and we weren't. It's a beautiful campus but my daughter ended up choosing Texas over Washington. If we lived in Washington and were picking, I bet she would have picked Washington over Texas. The schools are similar, but your "home state" school will always be cheaper. Cost of living in both Seattle and Austin is high, but in-state kids get that great tuition break. Out of state kids pay high tuition and high housing costs. Both of my kids started out looking nationally and both had stats similar to your kid, so they had UT and A&M in their pocket if they got into their major. And both eventually decided to go to an in-state school. Washington does have nice train system already in place .... a "west campus" stop and a "stadium" stop, both underground, with underground stops through downtown and connections to the airport. I thought it was funny that Seattle is building an underground train system with the cool weather they have, and Austin is forging ahead with a surface system that will bake in 110 degree weather, that does not connect to the airport. The train system also gets you to NFL or MLB games. I was annoyed that Austin seems incapable of attracting professional teams, building stadiums for them, or planning train service to the venues we have. Seattle seems to be 30 years ahead of us and has spent some time thinking about how the parts of a city work together. But I digress... -
Nueces is the road that will "replace" Guadalupe when Project Connect closes Guadalupe to vehicular traffic. Imagine everyone moving in while the traffic previously on the Drag tries to go up and down that street.
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Mike Pence did the right thing on Jan 6th, but I'm still not sure he's three dimensional. Every time I see him I think "man, it's like Flat Stanley was vice president." Chris Christie is definitely three dimensional.
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Yes ... and no ... and yes again, I would say: Yes it does! The district gets X dollars per student and raises Y dollars from property tax. Recapture is just Y - X. Y and X are not correlated. It's a little more complicated than that, because I'm not telling you that part of the Y dollars goes for bond payments and part goes for teachers and gets recaptured. So when the number of students goes down, recapture goes up even if the number of property tax dollars collected remains the same. No ... because they still get X dollars per student. They get fewer dollars but they have fewer students to educate. Their buildings are in bad shape, but their large property tax base allows them to raise big bucks for improvements, for a declining student population. AISD took about 30 years off from doing basic improvements, and they will be playing catch up for the next 25 years. And yes again, it does hurt because AISD is closing only a few schools as their population declines. So maybe last year they had a school with one principal, one football coach, one nurse, one college advisor and so on ... now they have a smaller school with the same one principal, one football coach, and so on. They are still maintaining the same number of buildings and these one-per-school positions, but across a smaller population base per school. That leaves less for classroom teachers. AISD could help themselves by closing some campuses and figuring out what size of student population is most efficient, but they will not. Also: The X dollars per students does not include consideration for cost of living. It costs more to live in Austin than it does in Temple. The teachers receive nothing extra in AISD for cost of living. Also, AISD is one of a few districts that pays into Social Security. So teachers receive less now and in theory, get more later when they have a pension and social security coming in. But right NOW, when they need to afford basic rent or a starter home, they start off with less pay because they pay into social security while most districts around them do not.
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I was checking out the Austin IH-35 site. Who exactly is in charge of green lighting funding for caps for this thing? TxDOT says "funding provided by others" ... I'm ready to vote for it right now... Here's MLK/IH35 without caps: Here's MLK/IH35 with caps: And here's the old East Avenue, before IH35 existed: Seems obvious to me to include the caps and restore some green space to that area.
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It would be nice for the Colorado for the storm to spin to the east a bit. Whatever falls in these boundaries will help: (Darn it, I was not the first to post this!)
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McCallum is getting $66,549,000 for "Phase 1" of a 3 or 4 phase effort to completely renovate the school. At max speed, 4 phases will take 20 years -- one phase for every bond package, about one bond package every five years. https://bond.austinschools.org/bond-projects/mccallum-high-school "Phase 1" is supposed to be "open" in Jan 2027, which means any new construction will be available then. Some improvements will roll out earlier, like maybe replace the HVAC and keep raccoons from raining down upon the students. Austin High got "Phase 2" of a projected 5 phases, so about 2040 to finish renovations starting from 2017, but phase 2 was less money than planned so really they are either going to have to spend more later or stretch out renovations longer.
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At least one AISD high school had their AC fail yesterday, on the first day of school. It’s working today. Two years ago they had month long failures in parts of the same building. Bond money will be paying for a complete upgrade of the HVAC, but they haven’t had time yet to replace it. Thank you to everyone who voted for the last two AISD bonds!
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It would be cool if they built a big ass pedestrian/bike bridge across IH-35 when they redo the highway. Connect Moody to the Disch-Falk parking garage area, either south of Moody or north, in between the soccer stadium and the new arena.
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How many wins will Texas have this season? (2023 edition)
Texas Jeff replied to perfectchaos007's topic in Football
Texas takes an early road loss to Alabama, and avoids a late road loss to TCU or Iowa St, but it's close. Texas over OU in the Big XII title game. Some announcer makes a mistake when calculating how many teams will be in the Big XII next year. Big XII rumor mill has them going after UTSA to secure the San Antonio market and maybe adding Rice to keep it an even number. Texas plays Michigan in the Rose Bowl in the 1st round of the CFP. I hope they win but it will be another Rose Bowl shootout. -
Som numbers: Austin ISD has 13 high schools, and this year they are projected to drop below 20,000 high school students. About half of them attend four schools. By 2032, they are projected to drop under 18,000 students. At an average enrollment of 2000, they need 10 schools now and 9 later. The school district tried to consolidate schools a few years ago but got pushback, so little happened. Austin High, a few years ago, sent 300-400 kids to LASA and took in 700-800 kids from other schools. My numbers are a little old, but kids are already transferring all over the district. They could manage some schools under the 6A limit. The district, though bond packages, is trying to beef up the quality of the under enrolled schools, but still there are fewer students for the same number of schools.
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Austin High, Anderson and Akins should really be 5A schools playing other Austin ISD 5A schools. Other than Bowie pulling out the occasional win, there is no reason that AISD schools should be in the same league as Westlake/LT/Dripping Springs or even Hays Johnson.
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Markets still falling like whoa
Texas Jeff replied to Llano Estacado's topic in Business and Markets
Congress: I will need an aide to hold my Heineken -
I take it the Longhorn band will appear in Tuscaloosa
Texas Jeff replied to Bama Llama's topic in Football
In today's college football, the home team doesn't give the visitors enough tickets to merit bringing a full band, especially for out of state non-conference big games. The visiting tickets go to high dollar alumni. I'm impressed that LHB is getting enough tickets for TCU, Baylor, and UH on the road. It's like a final year SWC tour. Texas usually takes a small pep band to far away games, but at least they get to fly. In the 1980s, the entire Longhorn Band bused to Auburn. The trip there was two days, but the trip back was one long bus ride. The A/C on my bus gave out somewhere around Mobile and never returned. The giant drum (Big Bertha) was replaced last year with a larger, less radioactive version, but I doubt it will travel to Alabama. Speaking of the MOB, their answer to Big Bertha was to create the world's longest tuba, which was pretty funny to see. -
Prepare for parents driving insanely large SUVs and minivans who: Kinda suck at driving Have no idea where their kid's apartment is or where they can park Have never been to West Campus before Have packed 3x what the kid needs to make it through the year
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Flight disrupting assholes Thread of Shame.
Texas Jeff replied to crash_davis's topic in Daily Texan
Not trying to defend the woman here, but if you are having a mental breakdown on a plane and/or you are drunk or high, and you look around the plane during your rant, and you see this: and you instinctively yell "that motherf***er back there isn't real" ... ... I mean it's not right do that but I get how it might happen ...- 2019 replies
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Austin should be replacing and repairing their neighborhood pools as needed. Westenfield Pool was redone around 2015 for something like $3 million, at about the same time as the city redid Bartholomew Pool for about $5.5 million . Westenfield looks almost exactly like the pool in the picture that was posted. Seems like chump change for a city that is spending $7 billion on a rail system. In 2018, the city created a master plan to renovate pools and build 3-4 regional swim centers around town, with some capable of hosting swim meets. The 154 page proposal, with hundreds of pages of appendices and comments, is here: https://www.austintexas.gov/sites/default/files/files/Parks/Planning_and_Development/Austin_Aquatic_Master_Plan_Final_reduced_March_2018.pdf It's sitting on the shelf, nothing is happening. Seems like a reasonable investment to me. Why the city creates these master plans and then does nothing with them is a mystery to me.
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IMHO, for those just starting out: Build savings up to the point where you would not panic if you lost your job. Something like 3-6 months of income with easy access if needed. Fund a 401(k) if you can, especially get the employer match if offered. Invest any excess in low-cost indexed mutual funds. Wait. If you are in a low marginal tax bracket and have access to a Roth 401(k), consider the Roth 401(k).
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What savings scheme do you use for a kid?
Texas Jeff replied to 52-80's topic in Business and Markets
Hmmm, I don't know all the rules but it's true that you don't have to stop contributing just because they have started school. If there is money left, you can do the Roth thing, but there are rules on that. Something like the account has to have existed for 15 years and you can't roll over money you contributed in the last five years, and I think you are still limited to yearly Roth contribution limits. You can't just dump $35k into a Roth for the kid on one day, you have to stay under the limits, currently $6,500 per year. Here's a post with more on this: You can change the beneficiary of a 529 plan to a "qualified family member", who can then use that on education. So you could let an excess sit there for a generation and pay for college for grandkids, or another one of your kids, or even yourself. -
Atlanta, Georgiorida
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Unbelievable...
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We all want to go, I suggest:
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Does Zoysia come in a Char-Broil brand because it seems like it should... Whatcha planting there Bob? Oh, it's the new Char-Broil Zoysia. Pre-scorched and permanently brown for grassy softness year round.
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What savings scheme do you use for a kid?
Texas Jeff replied to 52-80's topic in Business and Markets
A 529 plan means that you just invest money and years later, if there is gain, you are not taxed on the gain. The longer you have until college the more time you have for tax-free growth. It's all about avoiding tax on the growth of the money between the time you invest it and the time you take it out. In our case, the best part about the 529 was that we had an account ready to spend on college when the time came. I am a saver and it is hard for me to spend down accounts. However, in this case, we had invested funds long ago for this purpose and mentally it was easy to start spending it as college bills started to roll in. We enjoyed the college transition much more so than if we were just writing checks from our funds. There are a few wrinkles. You want to plan a bit and try to put what you think the kid will need in there, but not a ton extra. We planned for four years of in-state school and figured that we'd either hit it about right for in-state or at least not have to pay so much for a more expensive school.
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