Texas Jeff

Do you have any experience pouring concrete for downtown drainage tunnels and forgetting the rebar? If so, let's talk...

Forget the Zilker train ... it's time to gondola-ize the town, aka "The Wire" idea from a few years ago. Kids love gondolas... I have no idea how to do it, no experience doing this, and I am willing to throw out an unrealistic projection based on jack ($500 million for a 400 mile system that goes from wherever you live to the airport, feds will pay for half, opens in three years). Who's with me? Let's vote! A small caveat -- in a few years I may have to adjust my cost, timeline and scope a bit based on changing market conditions, but hey you voted for it...

You are correct, for the part of school finance that pays for daily operations (like teacher pay). The part of school finance that is related to building schools is not part of Robin Hood. For operations, money comes in to the state based on property tax rates and money goes out to the districts based on a funding formula. The funding formula is the key to how teachers get paid in Texas. Right now the Robin Hood plan is bringing in more money than the state is obligated to give out. So if you live in Austin or Eanes or any other "rich" district, some of your school tax money is going to the state and just staying there as a budget surplus. It's not going back to the schools. So, there is room for property tax "reform" which might mean "compressing" tax rates more, which would mean that your school tax goes down, Robin Hood payments go down, and excess school tax doesn't just pile up in state coffers or go to other state programs. Balance the equation... Alternatively, the state could increase the funding formula. Keep tax rates where they are but raise the "entitlement" for districts so that teachers are paid more. This would also balance the equation. We would have to replace a few teachers that died of disbelief that this actually happened, but most would survive and be able to pay their rent. Or, the state could find a new source of revenue, like maybe a 1% state sales tax. They could lower property taxes and raise teacher pay. Right now there is a mismatch between the money coming to the state and the money going out to the schools. Most of the proposals that I have seen relate to resolving that mismatch, or shifting tax burdens between property tax and other taxes.

I used to be involved with a non-profit and this will kinda suck for them. We had some cash flow from the Randalls card, but it was declining along with Randalls. The Smile proceeds were a hockey stick during COVID and they had already replaced our Randalls revenue and were becoming significant. It was easy revenue compared with other fundraisers.

I don't think many folks are reporting infections these days. Testing poop may be the best measure we have: https://biobot.io/data/

City council folks only run for re-election once and odds are in their favor. You get elected ... you serve four years ... you get re-elected ... four more years ... you're done. I think you can get a petition going to serve longer and you can come back later if the terms are non-consecutive, but for the most part that doesn't happen. Council members have a huge advantage when running for re-election. They are a known name and they have had four years to make inside connections. They usually run against maybe one worthwhile opponent and a handful of crazy people, or run against no one at all. Of the 11 people elected in 2014, five made it all the way to last week, one is now in the the Texas Leg, one left for the US House, and one left to become the county attorney. Of the three others, one didn't run for re-election and two lost re-election bids.

I have no idea, but he’s leaving and she’s staying. Maybe he had a nicer office and she’s moving. He was there before she was. I have had many jobs where I finagled my way to a nice cubicle and watched someone pounce on my last day.

The Dust Bowl…

My suggestion to help pass the time:

Here are factors that I believe are causing this: Most of the the targeted school districts have "places", not "districts". So all candidates are running at-large. This allows PACs to create slates of candidates with similar views, since a single voter can vote for everyone on the slate. This can make it impossible for a minority viewpoint to have even one seat on the school board. I like Austin ISD's approach, where they have seven district trustees plus two at-large to look at the district as a whole. Most elections are in May, a time of historically bad turnout. In the May 2022 Grapevine-Colleyville ISD election, about 11,700 people elected 2 board members with almost identical results. County wide turnout was about 8.6%. The margin of victory was 300-600 votes. You only need a majority on the school board to do what you want. In GCISD's, the PAC has four out of seven members. The four in power are ignoring the other three when drafting policy and suspending normal procedure during votes to limit discussion. In one case, discussion was limited to one minute per trustee before a vote, which is the same amount of time the public gets to speak on an issue. These factors consolidate power into the hands of the majority that vote, and those elected leverage that power to disregard the other elected trustees. The solution, of course, is to show up and vote, then change the system.

Almost anyone can: * Contribute to a 401(k) plan while at work (or similar plan - 403(b) plan, etc) * Convert your 401(k) to an IRA when you leave that job * Roll the IRA into a Roth, if you are willing to pay the tax to do so You are deferring income to when you want to take it, with the advantage of it ending up in a Roth where it will grow tax-free. You can wait until your assets are low and convert at a lower value, or wait until your income is low so you are in a lower bracket.

PSA for anyone trying to fly out of Austin for a non-cancelled flight ... there were zero parking places available yesterday at both the on-airport parking and the offsite parking vendors. So, if by some chance your flight is not cancelled, you might want to ask for a ride to the airport.

It's Dec 23rd and I'd like to wish a Happy Festivus to everyone! For those that celebrate, enjoy a moment around the aluminum pole prior to your airing of grievances and feats of strength...

Texas offered school districts and businesses something called a Section 313 plan, that was supposed to make us more competitive as a state in attracting local businesses. I am not an expert on this but I'll tell you what I know from what I've read. The Section 313 program is getting sunset on Dec 31, 2022, so many businesses have been preparing applications this year to make it in before the program sunsets. But, if you really want to know, here are the basics: Under the program, a school district can voluntarily reduce the size of a taxable new development for ten years. This reduction is done for the O&M part of the taxes .. the part that is to pay teachers and maintain buildings, but not for the I&S part ... the part that goes to pay for buildings. So, for example, a company could invest $1 billion in property within AISD boundaries. AISD agrees, for ten years, to reduce the value of the property for O&M purposes to $100 million, but the I&S valuation remains at $1 billion. If the school district has a tax burden of 90 cents for the $100 million part, the company pays $900,000 in tax per year to the school district for that part, rather than $9,000,000. If the school district has a tax burden of 10 cents for the $1 billion part, the company pays $1,000,000 in tax per year for that part (what they would normally owe). So, you would think the school district would be short by about $8,100,000 in tax to pay teachers. But that is not how school taxes work. In Austin, we collect way more taxes than we are allowed to keep ... this is Robin Hood. In Texas, a school district collects taxes based on a tax rate, and gets to keep a portion that is based purely on a funding formula. So no matter how much or how little tax we collect, we get exactly the amount allocated to us by our funding formula. If we are "entitled" to $500 million per our formula and we collect $900 million in tax, $400 million goes to the state. If we collect $500 million in taxes, we keep it all because our entitlement is $500 million. What Austin ISD would or would not collect in taxes from NXP has no impact on the money we would receive for education. Now the extra money we would have collected from NXP *would* have gone to the state, not to Austin ISD. And, in theory, it would be spent on education for others. But that is not how the system works. The Robin Hood money coming in does not go directly to other school districts. They get their money based on the funding formula, not from Robin Hood dollars. Currently the state is collecting more in Robin Hood dollars than they are spending on other school districts, so some of your Robin Hood tax dollars are going to the state as a state surplus. Currently this state surplus, from Robin Hood and other funds, is about $27 billion for the next two years. Austin ISD, through Robin Hood, might contribute $1.5 billion of that from our Robin Hood surplus. So, that is a lot of numbers ... but the lost NXP tax revenue would not have affected the money that AISD had to pay teachers, nor would it have affected the money going to other school districts. It would have slightly shrunk the state surplus. In addition, the new investment would have been taxed at the full I&S rate, which would have lowered the amount of tax that we all pay for bonds to build new schools. I did some rough math, and the tax from the development would have roughly paid for a new elementary school over about 20 years. In addition, this agreement allowed NXP give back some of their tax savings directly to the school district, without going through the recapture system. This amount was up to some debate, but it was between $66 million and $44 million of new money to the district over ten years. This would have been absolutely additional money to the district. If NXP decides to build somewhere else, all of this has no value for Texas. No additional money to AISD and no additional tax revenue to help pay off bonds. No fab manufacturing jobs for our newly graduated high school kids to take. All of that might be in Arizona, a state that already has a lot of fab infrastructure and expertise in place. Finally, NXP's investment would bring construction jobs and fabrication jobs to the Austin area. That would have meant more local taxpayers to help spread the tax burden to more people, which would have lowered everyone's school, city, county, and ACC taxes. It could have sparked a wave of fab facility development in Austin, as the US tries to reduce our dependance on foreign suppliers. More info here for those that are interested in Section 313 and it's sunset...

Austin ISD just say no to somewhere between $44 and $66 million for teacher pay, plus additional revenue to build and repair schools, because they didn't want to give a tax break to NXP. NXP is considering building new fabs in the US and looking for a location. Obviously they want to build at the lowest cost, so they are looking for tax incentives. Austin is competing against other regions of the country for this facility and because of this denial, that facility and the jobs that come with it may go elsewhere. This was free money for the district, with nothing held out for Robin Hood, and the trustees voted no. IF the facility is built here, which is now an IF, then the additional tax revenue that NXP would pay without the agreement would NOT go for education elsewhere, it would just increase the state surplus. The deciding votes against it were cast by new trustees, who were all endorsed by Education Austin, who in theory represents teacher interests. There are lots of things wrong with education in this state, but don't count on your local officials to be fiscally responsible.

The part of Austin that is in Williamson County

Travis Co now has Israel ahead by 17 votes. Hays Co has Watson ahead by 22 votes WilCo has Watson ahead by about 800 votes

Mayor's race: https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/TX/Travis/116892/web.307039/#/detail/0004 All CoA races: https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/TX/Travis/116892/web.307039/#/summary

Watson has a small lead after early voting, 51.75% to 48.25% (37,333 votes vs 34,811).

Order direct from perhaps the only running back related mustard shop out there: https://bijanmustardson.com/ Mustard isn't going to make it for Christmas but he has other merch out there....

Well, Apollo 11 left a mirror up there. Anyone can bounce a big enough laser off it and get a return ping. Anyone can measure their distance to the landing site, assuming you have the engineering chops to build the laser and the detector. So yep we went to the moon. At last the mirror did. :-)

Random bolt of lightning, you had ONE friggin’ job… ;-)

Travis Co has six video livestreams showing what is probably the vote counting area. first time I have seen that…

Blue is a color associated with calmness and trustworthiness. That's what those signs are selling.

It is AISD’s fault for asking that Eastside be moved up to 5A, where everyone knew they would be crushed by all opponents, even other Austin ISD schools and especially LBJ. Eastside has the enrollment of a 4A school but is playing 5A schools. LBJ is also small but they have a strong athletics program.