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Posted
5 minutes ago, Larry T. Spider said:

Not sure how it is taxed but there is a ton of oil out there.

That was the only explanation I could come up with as well, but I also don’t know how it’s taxed.

Posted
5 hours ago, royiv said:

Yeah, I’m trying to figure that one out. It’s more than $200,000 per student that they have enrolled if that number is correct. What the heck is out there that is generating that kind of property tax revenue?

s)

5 hours ago, Larry T. Spider said:

Not sure how it is taxed but there is a ton of oil out there.

 

4 hours ago, royiv said:

That was the only explanation I could come up with as well, but I also don’t know how it’s taxed.

Midland, Pecos, Wink. It's all Permian Basin oil.

Mineral value is added to regular dirt value when it comes to property taxes in Texas, so you get some rinky-dink rural school districts in the Permian Basin with astronomical property tax bases and very few students that have to be educated. That money goes back into statewide coffers in much the same way that Austin ISD has to - just at a different scale.

In the district I attended back in the 1970s-1980s, the boundaries barely reached the city limits. Hell, in parts of town, other districts actually cut into the town proper (still do), which means my district didn't benefit at all from the oil getting pumped out of the ground. We were "property poor," but the district just south of us was based in a town with fewer than 300 people, and they had ALL THE OIL with wall-to-wall carpeting in the high school hallways and an astroturf football field...back in the 1980s. They couldn't spend the money fast enough.

The funding disparities were DRAMATIC before Robin Hood. Shit definitely still needs tweeking/fixing, but the intent at that time was noble because our district boundaries are all kinds of fucked up. San Antonio's very poor Edgewood ISD lawsuit (if I recall correctly) back then was what forced the Texas Supreme Court to declare our property-tax-based system to be unconstitutional because it didn't guarantee even close to an equitable education for all kids.

Personally, I'd do some serious school district consolidation to even things out and then rejigger the formulas once the property tax base disparities were flattened out a little bit after consolidation, but that would never fly politically because suburban districts make out like bandits under the current system.

Where you live in a proximate area shouldn’t dictate whether your kid gets a decent education, especially within a county or metro area, imho. It's kind of dumb to begin with, because what does the value of property in a specific place have to do with funding education, to begin with? I mean, do bigger houses or whatever mean the kids living in them are inherently worth more?

Don't answer that.

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Posted

Anyone have better ideas on how to spend $101M of taxpayer money?

 

https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2025/04/homelessness-strategy-plan-calls-for-101m-in-spending-from-city-partner-groups/

Homelessness strategy plan calls for $101M in spending from city, partner groups

Austin’s Homeless Strategy Office is proposing a funding package totaling just under $101 million for homelessness response efforts in the city’s next budget, with about one-third allocated toward maintaining existing programs, one-third for new city investments, and one-third for initiatives expected to be funded by partner organizations.

The proposed investments broadly break down as follows:

o Roughly $3.8 million for prevention, diversion, and rapid-exit services to keep people housed or quickly rehouse them

o About $5 million for expanded street outreach and encampment management efforts

o Approximately $32.3 million plus capital costs to expand emergency shelter capacity, with a goal to add 550 new shelter beds by 2029

o Nearly $24 million for rapid rehousing programs that connect people to short-term rental assistance and case management

o Around $8 million for ongoing supportive services tied to permanent supportive housing projects already underway

o An anticipated $23 million per year in new spending after 2027 to continue growing the city’s permanent supportive housing inventory through 2034

The presentation emphasized that maintaining the city’s homelessness response at current service levels would require about $22.9 million in addition to new funds to replace expiring federal dollars. City budget officials confirmed that closing that gap on top of addressing a projected $33 million budget shortfall would likely require seeking additional tax revenue through a voter-approved tax rate election that could take place later this year.

 

“Assuming we don’t cut homeless related programs to balance our $33,000,000 deficit, that means we need… about $50 million of new money that we would have to come up for with next year’s budget,” Councilmember Ryan Alter said. “When we’re going to taxpayers, we have to tell them what they’re going to get for that investment. No one’s going to just say, yes. I want to pay more because it feels good. They wanna know, what’s that tangible result? What do they get out of it?”

 

Posted

I wish they'd put together some nice, easy to read graphics, on where all the money is going.  $5.9B annual budget for the city, and homeless services is 1.7% of that.  Curious where that ranks against other services provided by CoA and if there's any oversight planned on any of it.  I feel like we're trying to get rid of ants by spreading around food crumbs as repellant, and keep trying to figure out where we're going wrong.

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  • Haha 1
Posted
7 minutes ago, PvilleStang said:

I feel like we're trying to get rid of ants by spreading around food crumbs as repellant, and keep trying to figure out where we're going wrong.

POTD!

Posted
3 hours ago, crash_davis said:

The presentation emphasized that maintaining the city’s homelessness response at current service levels would require about $22.9 million in addition to new funds to replace expiring federal dollars. City budget officials confirmed that closing that gap on top of addressing a projected $33 million budget shortfall would likely require seeking additional tax revenue through a voter-approved tax rate election that could take place later this year.

Liiving through the last 10 years or so, it seems to me that the more we spend on homelessness:

1. The more homeless we seem to have here in Austin ... when they count it seems to go up.

2. The fewer homeless I see anywhere else in the region ... nice for them because their spending on homeless can go to zero.

3. The more entrenched "homeless spending" becomes in Austin ... meaning more and more orgs and salaries are dependent on homeless spending.

4. The more homeless I see, particularly on streets around the rapid bus line routes.

The Mobile Loaves and Fishes guy seems to have a plan to help.  Everything else seems, just from what I see, to be creating a homeless industry.  I don't see our tax dollars creating solutions to problems, but I may not be looking hard enough.

Posted

My viewpoint on homelessness in Austin has become a bit cynical. First, these people are transient by nature so they are naturally going to gravitate to the areas offering more services. I’m all for spending more money on homelessness but it has to be on a state or national level. One city trying to do more than their neighbors will get a never ending supply of new people and there will never be enough money.

Second, until we have properly funded mental health institutions that include drug rehabilitation, the most at risk population will stay on the streets. There also needs to be a compulsory part when people get to a certain point. I am highly sensitive to civil liberties concerns, but cycling people in and out of jail every 24 hours is no better. We need a plan for the most severe cases first.

Third, where’s the MFing train lines that people voted for? If people are paying ungodly money for something that is being significantly scaled back and delayed, work on that first.

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Posted
2 minutes ago, Larry T. Spider said:

Second, until we have properly funded mental health institutions that include drug rehabilitation, the most at risk population will stay on the streets. There also needs to be a compulsory part when people get to a certain point. I am highly sensitive to civil liberties concerns, but cycling people in and out of jail every 24 hours is no better. We need a plan for the most severe cases first.

This really is the root cause of the vast majority of homelessness. Mix in some domestic abuse, which often has mental health and drug issues intertwined, and you’ve got probably 80% of the homeless population. Until the global we can properly fund mental health and drug rehab, we’re just repeatedly stepping on our dicks.

 

5 minutes ago, Larry T. Spider said:

Third, where’s the MFing train lines that people voted for? If people are paying ungodly money for something that is being significantly scaled back and delayed, work on that first.

Coming up on five years of collecting taxes and not a single shovel of dirt has turned. Voters were insane to think that the city and Cap Metro could pull that project off. 

Posted
1 hour ago, Larry T. Spider said:

Third, where’s the MFing train lines that people voted for? If people are paying ungodly money for something that is being significantly scaled back and delayed, work on that first.

We're probably doing some studies.

Posted
1 hour ago, Larry T. Spider said:

Where’s the MFing train lines that people voted for? If people are paying ungodly money for something that is being significantly scaled back and delayed, work on that first.

Austin Transit Partnership issued a timeline last year that has trains running as early as 2033.

I predict they won't get money from the Trump admin.  There was never an unlimited pile of money for transit and Austin is competing with everyone else in the country for slices.  Seems like the Feds are cutting stuff so I would suspect there will be a big reveal where ATP says that they are not getting a federal match for the train, so we are going to have to scale back the scale back ... or increase the tax going to ATP and pay for it ourselves.

San Antonio got a transit project 60% funded but it's bus rapid transit, not rail, and it's an order of magnitude cheaper.

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