I plan to vote no on Austin Prop A and yes on Austin Prop B. I predict neither will win. The city council turned both of these petitions into word salad for the ballot that makes it impossible to understand what you're voting for or against. The wording is designed to convince you to vote against it. At some point a citizen proposition needs to make it past this city council or we need to give up on the idea that we have actual citizen petitions.
For example, here's the wording that was used to create the 10-1 council, pretty easy to understand:
Shall the city charter be amended to provide for the election of council members from 10 geographical single-member districts, with the mayor to be elected from the city at large, and to provide for an independent citizens redistricting commission?
The city council is now asking you to vote on this Prop B wording:
Shall an ordinance be adopted that prioritizes the use of Austin's Hotel Occupancy Tax revenue by continuing the City practice to spend 15% of the Austin Hotel Occupancy Tax revenue on cultural arts and 15% on historic preservation, limiting the City's spending to construct, operate, maintain, or promote the Austin Convention Center to 34% of Austin's Hotel Occupancy Tax revenue, and requiring all remaining Hotel Occupancy Tax revenue to support and enhance Austin's Cultural Tourism Industry to the potential exclusion of other allowable uses under the Tax code; and requires the City to obtain voter approval and public oversight for convention-center improvement and expansion costing more than $20,000,000?
If you want to limit hotel tax used for the convention center to 34% of the HOT and require voter approval for an expansion that exceeds $20,000,000, then vote for Prop B. If you are OK with not requiring those limits, then vote against it. This is coming up now because the city is proposing to demolish the existing convention center and build a $1,200,000,000 larger replacement in the same area of town, on a bigger footprint, as part of an overall redo of that area.