
Texas Jeff
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Everything posted by Texas Jeff
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Austin City Government - Circus of the Insane
Texas Jeff replied to skittlebrau's topic in Daily Texan
I am not advocating that everyone vote for 6 of 11. I am trying to point out (perhaps badly) that a citizen today can go to only two people that need his or her vote. Everyone else on council has no reason to care. Lobbyists have time and money to give to causes they care about, and they are free to twist the arms of all eleven. I believe that some of the conflict we are seeing today is happening because groups that are lobbying city council are not aligned with the citizens of the city. Compromise is difficult, because two opposed groups just go to the rails when conflict happens. Honestly, I did approach CodeNEXT with a goal of learning about it and hopefully putting in my opinion. I took time to read the drafts, look at the maps, comment online and attend sessions that the city promoted as ways to offer my input. I am not opposed to reasonable change in my neighborhood. I thought R2C zoning was mostly acceptable, before the lot sizes and parking restrictions were changed. I would really love to see more taller development like the university overlay, especially in areas like the Domain, where development can happen without fundamentally changing neighborhoods. I liked Adler's Austin Bargain, where he said the goal was "not to force density in the middle of neighborhoods." The end of the CodeNEXT process was pretty crazy, with tons of amendments and changes and factions divided pretty evenly down the middle. It was impossible to keep track of the latest proposal. To me, it felt very out of control. So yes, if we are going to change zoning I would like the Prop J protections in place, to allow the voters some time to see the final work product and decide if this right for Austin or not. -
Crazy numbers. One acre-foot of water is 43,460 cubic feet of water. Today, the Llano River is dumping 3-4 cubic acres of water into Lake LBJ per second, or around 13 thousand cubic-acres per hour, or around Jimmy's number of 310K acre feet per day. Lake Travis was 77% full yesterday and it's full today. Rain is in the forecast off and on for the next four days. Time to root for the forcefield.
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currently rising about a foot every 45 minutes, crossed 677 at 12:45 pm
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We’ll see if Longhorn Dam can take it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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A pic of the Llano bridge washed out by the previous flood of record in 1935:
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Austin City Government - Circus of the Insane
Texas Jeff replied to skittlebrau's topic in Daily Texan
In Austin under the 10-1 system, you vote for only 2 of the 11 city council members, your district rep and the mayor. Any six council members, voting the same way, can pass something. It is possible for the city council to vote for something that both your rep and your mayor voted against, and you have no way to counter that at the ballot box. They can and do make decisions in the middle of the night at the end of all-day city council meetings. If you are a special interest group or stand to benefit financially from something the city council passes, you can lobby or donate to six of the council members, get them on your side, and get something passed that benefits you or your group. This benefit to you may be at odds with what the majority of voters would choose, if given a vote. Prop J was created as a response to CodeNEXT. Citizens petitioned the city council to require a review period and a city-wide vote prior to adopting CodeNEXT, as a check on the power of city council. The city council had two choices: adopt the ordinance proposed by the petition, or put the proposed ordinance up to a vote. Instead, a majority of the city council, mostly those in favor of CodeNEXT, decided to ignore the petition. The petitioners sued the city and won the right to put the ordinance on the ballot. If you vote in favor of Prop J, you are voting to have the protection of the ordinance. You are giving power to the voters by giving them a waiting period to review any major changes to the land development code proposed by the city staff and the city council, and the power to vote for or against the changes. You are helping to ensure that the majority of the voters in the city are aligned with the decisions created by staff and council. If you vote against Prop J, you are voting to not have the ordinance. You are giving power to city council and city staff by not requiring that their plans align with the wishes of the majority of the voters and not requiring periods for citizen review proposed by the ordinance. You are OK with the decisions of city council and staff possibly being at odds with the wishes of the majority of the voters. If you are aligned with a special interest group or business that may benefit from the majority decision, you can lobby behind the scenes knowing that plans created will not have to face the voters. I support Prop J because I want the people proposing major land use changes to know that they do eventually answer to the voters. I think it is important for the city council, the city staff and the citizens to be aligned on major revisions to our land development code. After meeting with CodeNEXT city staff members, I do not trust them to learn about neighborhoods or listen to city residents without the Prop J protections. Changing the land use code is a big decision, affecting almost everyone. I want the city council and staff to know that they can plan and propose, but ultimately they need voter support to pass. -
Every time I see this, I notice the generic tiki torches (in addition to the crazy people), probably made in China and purchased at Home Depot on the way to the rally. Imagine the guys before the rally: "Hey man, we can get a ton of tiki torches for like forty bucks at Home Depot, just pick them up on the way to the thing." Imagine, some HD manager sets up an end-cap display with weekend party supplies, and is suddenly short several hundred torches. The manager is feeling great, thinking "man, we are really moving these things!" Later that weekend they turn on the TV and say "Oh crap ...." By Monday, the supply chain has kicked in to refill the torch display, and the same manager is taking delivery of boxes and boxes of new generic, imported, cheap tiki torches.
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My wife and I were talking today about how much younger Beto looked against chunky Cruz. I had no idea so I looked it up.... Cruz is exactly 1 year 9 months and 4 days older than Beto. I would have put the gap at 7-8 years.
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I have seen that blue line somewhere before ... where was that? Oh yeah, it's the failed rail proposal from a few years ago. And that orange line seems familiar ... sure looks a lot like the Metro Rapid 801 route from the "All Systems Go" plan that was supposed to solve our problems a few years back. But maybe the yellow line is new? No, that's the Metro Rapid 803 route... Hey but what about that green commuter rail line .... to Manor? Cap Metro spends $25 per rider today to put someone on the red line and it goes to a place where lots of people actually live. What will be the cost per person to put someone on the green line to a much less populated area? Cap Metro spends $6 per person to put someone on a bus. And that purple line ... do we expect people to drive to the Expo Center, park, and then wait for a bus to take them to downtown? Rail has show to be really, really expensive per passenger and while Metro Rapid ridership is up, it's still about 12% of all Cap Metro trips. Most people want a point to point experience to get to and from work at the lowest total economic cost to them, a sum of factors like trip cost, an air conditioned vehicle that is in good condition, safety, total trip time, ability to handle schedule exceptions and others. Right now for most people that means taking a trip alone in a car from their house to their job. Take away car lanes and you will make their life more miserable and more will take the bus because you change their economic cost, but that does not mean they are happier people. We do have a great untapped resource for transportation, and you can see it everyday when you drive around town. It's inside your own car. You probably have a four seater car with one butt in one seat most of the time. In that scenario, we are only using 25% of the transportation system everyday. We have a ton of capacity to move people. We just need some way of changing the total economic cost so that people start to use that extra capacity. Uber and Lyft are a start but there is much more than could be done with apps to support carpooling and perhaps paying Uber and Lyft drivers a Cap Metro subsidy to pick up people that might normally ride a bus. Self driving cars will lower the cost of shared transporation and increase the capacity of today's roads. The best future system might not be rail and bus but instead a better utilization of the cars we have today and the automated cars to come tomorrow.
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Austin City Government - Circus of the Insane
Texas Jeff replied to skittlebrau's topic in Daily Texan
Pasken: I was team Steve in the last election and after four years of Steve I do not support him now. That leaves me with team Laura. During his time in office, ride sharing became a thing. An improvement in transportation at no cost to the citizens of our town. Pick up your phone, push a button and your fellow citizen picks you up and safely takes you home. More convenience, less parking congestion, fewer DUI's, better ratings systems for passenger and driver. Under Adler's leadership, the city council ran them out of town. People that were driving for these companies lost income. We then had ride sharing chaos and confusion for a year until the lege stepped in. Now scooters are a thing .... would a re-elected Adler lead a city council effort to run them out of town too? Steve came into office talking about affordability and transportation and we ended up in a place where the solution to affordability was to increase taxes and try to clog my street with cars. Not everyone's street, just certain streets in this town. The tax increases and the proposed CodeNEXT changes have had the biggest negative affect on me in the time I have lived in Austin. In 2017, Mayor Adler said: "For starters, let’s agree we will not force density in the middle of neighborhoods. There’s no sense in shoving density where it would ruin the character of the city we’re trying to save in the first place, where it’s not wanted by its neighbors, and where we would never get enough of the additional housing supply we need anyway." He said that but his actions did not match his words. I am not opposed to any change for my neighborhood, but I am opposed to change without any reasonable input from the residents who live there. I also believe that under four more years of Steve we will see maximum tax increases and additional bond packages to support a long list of projects, which will generally continue to make Austin less affordable for the average citizen. I feel will also see attempts to implement CodeNext, in smaller chunks and behind closed doors as much as possible, limiting public involvement in the process. Mayor Adler could go a long way towards rebuilding trust in this community by keeping his Austin bargain, focusing development "along our major corridors like Lamar, Burnet, and Airport Boulevard and our major activity centers like the area around the Domain, Mueller, and downtown." Will he do that or will he push for pieces of CodeNEXT that hurt Austin citizens? I don't want to find out, so I am team Laura. -
That's a problem as well, IMHO. We are a large country with differences in thoughts and perspectives. Our courts should reflect that.
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It's a little jacked up that if BK is confirmed, two Supreme Court members out of nine (Gorsuch, Kavanaugh) will be graduates of the same small, private high school. Tuition at Georgetown Prep is $37,000 per year; $60,000 if you are a resident -- with an enrollment of about 500. In a country that is supposed to be a meritocracy, this hints at elitism.
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She did not plug her gofundme campaign. She was asked if someone had paid for her polygraph test, her lawyers responded that they had paid for the test. She was then asked if she expected to have to reimburse the lawyers for the test. She said that she was not sure, that she had relocated twice and was behind on the specifics of what she would have to do. She was asked if someone else was going to assist her with these costs. At that point she mentioned that she was aware of several gofundme accounts that have been set up, mostly for her security detail, but said she did not know how to collect the money or use the site, but she was aware of those sites. That is a truthful answer to the question asked. Had she given out the name or a link to the gofundme site in her prepared statement, you could say she was plugging her site. But she was asked a question and answered truthfully, and demonstrated a lack of knowledge of how gofundme works in her answer. Watch it yourself here, around 6:45 into this clip: https://www.c-span.org/video/?451895-102/professor-blasey-ford-testifies-sexual-assault-allegations-part-3
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To me this feels a lot like the OJ trial. To me, it was obvious from the evidence that OJ was the killer -- but plenty of people thought that OJ was not guilty because of some trial technicality. I don't mean not guilty as in reasonable doubt in a court, I mean they believe that OJ did not kill anyone because a glove was too small. This feels like the Republicans' OJ moment. Find a small flaw in a story to win the case. From watching this, I believe this person is telling the truth and what she says happened did happen. But for some, a gotcha moment like a witness being afraid of flying yet flying means that she is lying about all of this. If BK's nomination is pulled, those folks will hang onto those gotcha moments for years.
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I believe Beto gets your vote and R's get your vote in all other races. See Sec 65.007 of the election code, section (c). (c) If a ballot indicates a straight-party vote and a vote for an opponent of one or more of that party's nominees, a vote shall be counted for the opponent and for each of the party's other nominees whether or not any of those nominees have received individual votes. Straight ticket voting in Texas is going away on Sept 1, 2020, just in time for the 2020 election. You may want to vote early in that election. I suspect that many people who only vote every four years choose straight ticket. Those folks are going to be really confused when there is no R or D button and they have to either punch all of the votes one by one or think about their choices. Expect long lines of confused people on election day.
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Coming Soon: The Theranos Of Higher Education
Texas Jeff replied to TwiceHorn's topic in Daily Texan
As a hiring manager, I saw hundreds of Chinese and Indian resumes with an undergrad from some place I had never heard of in their home country, but a master's degree from a US university I had heard of. This is a common path into the US. Most of those with US BS degrees go get a job after undergrad ... but those outside the country have to come get an advanced degree, then start working the visa system to get a path to stay here. I could open a requisition on a Friday and have 80 foreign born fresh MS applicants by Monday, no matter what the posted job qualifications required. -
Texas State Board of Education (Republicans, again)
Texas Jeff replied to Pancho's topic in Cloak Room
You can read the draft changes to the social studies TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) here: https://tea.texas.gov/Academics/Curriculum_Standards/TEKS_Texas_Essential_Knowledge_and_Skills_(TEKS)_Review/Social_Studies_TEKS_Streamlining_Work_Group_Drafts/ These are marked up documents showing the changes, one each for elementary, middle school, and high school. Other subject area reviews are here: https://tea.texas.gov/curriculum/teks-review/ -
I agree, find someone in their mid 40's to mid 50's, bring in some new blood. Carter was 52 at the start of his presidency. Johnson was 55 at the start of his, which is about the median age for new presidents. Only two presidents have been over 70 at the *end* of their presidency; Trump will be the third. Other than Obama, the president has had a 1946 birthday from 1993 through whenever Trump leaves. That's too much time for one generation to have power.
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Texas State Board of Education (Republicans, again)
Texas Jeff replied to Pancho's topic in Cloak Room
You would think they would want to delete Nixon. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk -
Austin City Government - Circus of the Insane
Texas Jeff replied to skittlebrau's topic in Daily Texan
Isn't it a little bit YIYBY (yes in your backyard) -- that's how I felt about CodeNEXT. -
Austin City Government - Circus of the Insane
Texas Jeff replied to skittlebrau's topic in Daily Texan
Also Burnet Rd, Lamar Blvd, the Bouldin Creek neighborhood, Barton Springs and other things that have names that might have been associated with someone who may have owned slaves or been involved with the confederacy. Here's the powerpoint presentation from the equity office: http://www.austintexas.gov/edims/pio/document.cfm?id=302508 How do you distinguish between someone in the past who did something wrong and thus should not be recognized by having something named after them, and someone who followed the customs of the day that are wrong by today's standards? Do you draw the line at everyone who owned slaves at a time when that was legal and a common source of labor for land owners, or do you draw the line at people who demonstrably abused people during that time? -
Are you old? Are you Republican? Are you old and Republican? If so you will really fit in. The "town" itself has a nice yet small one-street downtown just west of 281. It is surrounded by a lot of housing that is pretty poor. Meadowlakes is the exception close to town. Horseshoe Bay is really not "in" Marble Falls, it is a resort community on the south side of the lake. You can also live out from town a bit on a bigger lot maybe with a view, out 1431 or 281. There are traffic bottlenecks at 1431/281 and through downtown, but they're not anything close to Austin traffic.
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I think it is an amenities floor (the 34th floor of the building): http://www.independentaustin.com/the-building/ A fitness center, board room, theatre, outdoor lounge, owners lounge ... for residents only.
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Tennessee Tech @ Texas: Austin Super Regional Thread
Texas Jeff replied to Horny Bull's topic in Baseball
Parking in the garage was $5 I think for the regionals. The worst part was getting out after the game, but the garage is a very short walk and folks are tailgating in left field and in the garage. You can also be entertained by watching about 60 people trying to sort out who's uber is who's. If you want free parking or want to leave quickly after the game, yep street parking is probably the way to go.
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