Texas Jeff

You can see the quote in context here: http://austintx.swagit.com/play/09182019-1665/0/ Starting around 2:14:10 minutes into the video (4:35 pm on the video clock) She was speaking in support of the council's original path, urging the council to hold firm on their current path.

Seriously, why would a private investor go for this? Southwest Airlines has a market cap of around $30 billion today. Before 2016, Southwest was worth much less than that. What is the pitch? You invest $14 billion which probably becomes $28 billion once you start building the thing and you end up with a route that serves two locations that are also served by Megabus ($15 a ride), Southwest ($120 a ride if you plan a bit ahead) and your own car.

Will there be any loops? Will it run through any abandoned mines? Asking for a friend...

Alumni band marches up there without complaint. Well, without any complaints that can't be fixed by ibuprofen:

That person has six children, is a single head of household, and makes $9 per hour. That is going to be a rough life. I'm not sure what I would do in that situation. I would probably try to get my kids to work as soon as they were old enough to increase the family income and find as cheap of a city to live in as possible.

I think Travis is already there ... you can vote wherever you see the Vote Here / Vote Aqui sign.

The Texas Election Code governs elections. It sets some things like voting days and hours and delegates some powers to county election clerks, for example number and locations of polling places. The code does have some rules specifying polling places (for example, having one in each voting precinct on Election Day) but the county election clerk has some power to determine places. Travis County elections are really well run. You can vote at any polling place. You can get an online customized ballot you can print and bring with you. In the last election they had a map showing which polling places had lines with a red/yellow/green stoplight indicator.

The lines will suck because many of the usual straight ticket voters will discover that there is no longer straight ticket voting when they reach the booth. They are going to have to figure it out on the fly. I plan on voting on the Sunday between the first and second early voting weeks, always the lowest voter turnout day of the election.

Large pieces of the upper deck fall off and TxDot's advice is to use the upper deck? Might be a nice time to check out Mopac or SH130.

Technically anyone can administer the Oath of Office, so even Roberts is not needed. If you really want to worry about this, all of the envelopes with the state's votes in them are opened by the President of the Senate, aka Mike Pence. Pence could just not open the envelopes. That would be pretty much unconstitutional behavior but it would put a wrench in the process.

I agree. The nice thing about electing a new president is that it does involve the old president ceding power. The house opens the ballots from the states and the winner is the president elect. The president elect take the oath of office from the chief justice and that is that. New president. After he leaves office, Trump will continue to tweet and continue to hold rallies and continue to be on TV as much as possible as long as he can. He will probably sell tickets and merch for the rallies. They will be more outrageous and offensive than they are now. He just won't be president.

This will be Proposition B on the November ballot. Here are some articles and news reports talking about the petition and the convention center: https://www.kut.org/post/pac-files-petition-put-austin-convention-center-expansion-public-vote https://communityimpact.com/austin/central-austin/city-county/2019/07/26/petition-proposing-austin-convention-center-expansion-be-put-to-public-vote-heads-to-city-council/ https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2019-07-19/to-expand-the-convention-center-or-not/ The petition states what city code would change if passed: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6191474/Convention-Center-Petition.pdf Ultimately, the text in the petition is what you are voting for or against. The city council wishes to raise the Hotel Occupancy Tax and use the money to improve the convention center. They want to tear down the current convention center and replace it with a new $1.2 billion convention center. The city believes that money spent on the convention center will attract additional convention business, thus generating more economic activity for the city. This is part of a package called the "Downtown Puzzle" that includes changes to the Palm School and Rainey Street districts. The petitioners want to limit the percentage of the tax that can be spent on the convention center and require voter approval for any change to the convention center that costs more than $20 million. They want to reserve part of the tax for other cultural activities. They want voter approval for major convention center changes. The city council could have passed it once the petition was valid, but they did not. Petitions don't get to the voters unless the city council fails to adopt them, so the city council is likely to always oppose any petition that comes to a vote. Here is an article showing what the new convention center might be. The city council selected "Scenario 5", which is a complete rebuild: https://communityimpact.com/austin/central-austin/city-county/2019/03/29/new-austin-convention-center-expansion-report-envisions-the-venues-place-in-a-modernizing-downtown/ Here is the design document from UT describing "Scenario 5" (start at page 162): https://issuu.com/utsoa/docs/frameworks_for_placemaking_utsoacsd?e=2095123/68762342 The city council is responsible for drafting the ballot language for the petition. Here is the ballot language they created for this issue: "Shall an ordinance be adopted that limits, beyond existing limits in state statute and city ordinance, the use of Austin’s Hotel Occupancy Tax revenue, including the amount of Hotel Occupancy Tax revenue that may be used to construct, operate, maintain, or promote the Austin Convention Center requires any private third-party entity managing such funds to comply with open meetings and public information laws applicable to the city; and requires voter approval for Convention Center improvements or expansions of more than $20,000,000 at an election for which the city must pay." If you vote for Proposition B, you are voting to limit the percentage of the HOT tax that can go to the convention center and you are requiring the city to get voter approval before they spend more than $20 million on the convention center. You want a check on city council's power to allocate the HOT tax and you want to vote on major convention center expansions. You are voting to change city code as specified in the petition. If you vote against Proposition B, you are voting to allow the city council to determine the best hotel tax percentage to be spent on the convention center and you are giving them the power to replace the current convention center without a vote, at a cost of $1.2 billion. You believe they are doing the best thing for the city based on the data available. You are voting for no change to city code. You are not voting for or against a new convention center. You will not pay the hotel tax unless you stay at an Austin hotel. There is another wrinkle not related to this petition. Travis County is preparing to call for an election to also raise the HOT tax to improve the Travis County Expo Center. The city council and Travis County are racing to increase the hotel tax, so that each could claim the revenue for their desired projects. City council's action to raise the hotel tax will deny Travis County the ability to also raise the tax, for hotels that are located in Austin. I think I got all that right, but I encourage everyone to read about it on their own before voting for or against...

Donald brings so much more energy to fanning the flames than putting out the fires. Four of the top ten mass murders in the US since 1949 have occurred on his watch.

The cost of living in San Jose is somewhere between 30-100% higher than Austin, depending on what data you pick. Silicon Valley is full. Austin is a cheaper near-shore alternative. Companies can put jobs here and pay people less, and Austin is affordable for those people in those jobs. Silicon Valley will continue to put jobs here until the cost of dealing with the distance is higher than the cost of putting a bunch of people in California, or until some other Silicon Valley-like place is cheaper than Austin or until an economic disaster reduces the tech population. Many Bay Area companies have some charitable fund. Employees can donate to charities and get a match. Many of those donations go to organizations that the employee's children are in, like a school or church non-profit, because that's where the employees donate. Most of them have some local charity drives, like helping with Meals on Wheels, park cleanup or collecting school supplies for a low-scoring school. These are often seen as site wide team-building exercises. In my opinion, the tech companies mostly want to put more 22-35 year old tech workers in cheaper, yet "cool enough" locations, with reasonable access to the home office. There are some that are headquartered here that care more, but the ones HQ'ed elsewhere mostly want to reduce their costs as they expand their company.

I would be willing to listen to actual data on who these riders are, what options they have for transit, where they work, etc. There is a park and ride near the Leander station. During the day, is it full of cars or empty? Could these folks live closer to work or did they move to Leander to trade a longer commute for "better" schools? I suspect many of them drive to the park and ride and get on the train to go downtown, rather than drive downtown, but I could be wrong. There is lots of empty land around that station. We have some employers (for example, the state of Texas) that can build offices anywhere. Could they build on land near the station rather than asking folks to get on a train for a long trip downtown? Could we have a train system where most people take it for just a few stops rather than coast to coast from Leander to downtown, maybe by building some new, high density office and residential developments in Robinson Ranch? You are correct that we should accept that these projects will initially operate at a loss (and probably will always operate at some loss). I voted for the Red Line because I thought it was a reasonably low cost way of trying rail transit in Austin. After a number of years, I don't see a plan to ever significantly reduce the cost.

Either way works for me... If it costs more to have people living close to the job site and the business is willing to pick up that cost by paying employees more, that's great. If the business wants to save money by moving to where the people are, that's great. But right now we are subsidizing the cost of having low cost housing in one area and higher paying jobs in another area.

Crazy idea: Move those 472 jobs to Leander, where the people who have the jobs live. What is the point of having everyone get up every day, move halfway across the county, sit for eight hours, and then move back to where they started?

This is only a tuition thing ... there are other costs. Here are typical expenses for an undergraduate year at UT, for a Texas resident, for two semesters: Tuition: $10,100 - $11,600 Room and Board: About $10,000 for housing and food. First year dorms are probably a lot cheaper than second year off campus housing at Texas. Miscellaneous Expenses: About $6000 per year according to UT. So even with zero tuition a student still needs about $16,000 per year to go to Texas. Free tuition is a major discount but not 100% of costs. Parents are weird about this stuff. I have seen parents trumpet the idea that their kid got a $100k four-year scholarship to a school that costs $200k in tuition over four years, and I have seen parents brag about their "full ride" kid who is really getting full tuition, but paying for everything else. They love the idea of getting a discount or getting something for free but often don't look at the total cost of the degree.

Well, we've been doing the college tour this summer and seen UT, Texas A&M, and UTD. Looking only at STEM majors, I would say that any of those schools is going to put out a decent undergrad. The UT system is now publishing actual outcomes (salaries) for their graduates by major and campus, and UTD and UT are comparable. Texas A&M is publishing outcomes to some degree but it's hard to compare directly. Texas and Texas A&M have a "college feel" that is still pretty thin at UTD, but UTD is trying. UTD focuses on getting you an education, an internship and a job offer and on into grad school or a corporate job with as little student debt as possible. Before our tour, I never realized the small-town great advantage Texas A&M has. Few students are from College Station, so everyone is forced to live on campus or in an apartment. A lack of commuter students really helps the on-campus vibe. Texas has all of the west campus high-rise construction and students are packed into a dense neighborhood. Lot of folks live just blocks away from each other. Different ideas, but both help create a great environment. Simple things like planting shade trees, having more students on-campus or really close, and closing off parts of campus to auto traffic really make a campus feel more comfortable. If you haven't been to UT in a while, Speedway is now a pedestrian walkway and it feels totally different to walk through campus than it did in the 80's. Campus is no longer covered in grackle shit... Long term, the UT system should extend the free college idea to all of their campuses and put money into making their campus look and feel great for students.

He gave us the 22 class size limit in elementary school and no-pass, no-play. In 1984, I remember him talking about Texas' amazing collection of high school football palaces and our need to focus more on education and less on extracurriculars. We have come a long way ... those 1984 era stadiums look like crap compared to what we have today! My Eagle Scout award came with a note of congratulations from Perot. I heard he paid for all of the awards for Texas Eagle Scouts, but I'm not sure if that's true.

He stole this speech from Bill and Ted...

There's an eclipse going on this afternoon in Chile. If you're there right now, look outside! If not, you can watch various livestreams, some are shown here: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/7/2/20678735/solar-eclipse-2019-south-america-live-stream-how-to-watch-start-time-nasa In 2024, the eclipse is coming to Texas ... but today is Chile's day in the sun, then not in the sun, then back in the sun...

Man, I'm happy to be early Gen X at this point. Too young to be stuck at home addicted to Fox News, too old to be stuck on my phone with pressure to maintain a constant online presence. I know I got gifts from low tuition, a rising stock market, emerging technology jobs, and a relative lack of warfare from 1975 through 2000. However, student debt does not happen accidentally. People sign up for it. We need to tell folks the implications of borrowing money for school before they do it. Here is what you are going to borrow, here is the job you will get if you pass your classes, here is the chance of getting that job and here is what it pays and how long it will take you to pay off the debt. Everyone should see that before they receive the money. Also, today's students have a ton of options to learn on their own, for free. You can go through all of the math most people would ever need on Khan Academy, watch crazy amounts of free lectures, learn on YouTube, whatever. It has never been easier to learn for free, if you are motivated. My high school had exactly 5 computers for 2400 kids. No dial up connections, bring your own floppy if you wanted to save something. Everyone in my kid's high school has a Chromebook with free Wifi access to an Internet that is the largest repository of information ever created. Almost all have a personal phone they can use to call or message almost anyone anywhere for no cost other than the monthly fee for the device. They have cheap access to more music than they could listen to in a lifetime. It has never been easier to collaborate. My high school offered one AP class. Today, kids may graduate with 8-10 AP classes and a big start towards a degree. There are "early college" high schools that guide kids through associates degrees by the time they graduate high school. Bill Gates had to sell software by creating software, floppy disks, manuals, getting distribution, having inventory. Today, a smart kid can write an app or create something on the web for almost no upfront costs with no inventory. The path to success is there, but the spoils for this generation are likely to be more narrowly distributed. Some will get through college in three years, start an online something and be flush with cash by 30. Others will spend $250k on a degree for a job that pays $40k and wake up at 30 wondering what the heck happened. I wish we did a better job of explaining this to 18 year olds, so they could see the future impact of their choices.

Did the current vendor completely fill out all of the paperwork and just fail to sign it? If so, the intent to renew was there. Why would reasonable person who has been on that property for 70 years file for an extension, but decide not to sign the form? Couldn't anyone at the city just say "Hey, you forgot to sign this and we are going to ignore this if you don't sign this". It seems like an oversight and once the mistake was made, it seems like the city used the error to make sure another vendor got the job.

It's a little confusing, here is the ordinance before it went to the council, I'm not sure if any text was changed in the meeting. The changes only apply to areas that are NOT designated by the City of Austin as camping areas but ARE considered public areas. It relates to camping in non-camping areas. Parks (aka Zilker Park) are considered public areas. "Public area" means any outdoor area to which the public has access, but streets, highways, parks, parking lots, alleys, pedestrian ways, or common areas of schools, hospitals, apartments, office buildings, transport facilities or shops are specifically called out as "public areas". Under the old rules, you could not camp in a public area that was not a camping area at all. Under the new rules, a person can't camp in a public area if they are are "materially endangering the health or safety of another person or of themselves" or are "intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly rendering impassable or impeding the reasonable use of a public area making usage of such area unreasonably inconvenient or hazardous." If you are not doing one of those two things, you can camp. Also, you must be notified of your violating by a police officer in writing before you are in violation, unless there is some immediate danger to someone's health or safety. No police officer present to write a notice, no violation... Now, both of those clauses are kinda up for interpretation. So, yep you can probably camp in Zilker so long as you stay within the bounds of those two clauses. Or, pick your favorite school or office building and go for it. Has to be outdoors, so you can camp outside the library but not in the stacks.