Posted on 04/19/2019 7:22:10 AM PDT by bgill
The City of Austin may be forced to cut emergency services like adding more police officers and firefighters if the state legislature has its way. That's according to Austin Mayor Steve Adler, who adamantly disagrees with Senate Bill 2 (SB 2) and House Bill 2 (HB 2), which aim to cap property tax revenue for all Texas cities. The Senate passed the revenue cap bill earlier this week, which prohibits cities from raising property taxes more than 3.5% a year without a vote. A bill that has yet to pass in the House places a similar cap at 2.5% but includes different language. The House and Senate bills must be the same to change the law. Right now, Mayor Adler is preparing for that possibility. "My sense is that something's going to pass," he said Thursday. If that were the case, Mayor Adler said Austin will lose millions in revenue year over year. Either $35 million if it's capped at 3.5% or up to $52 million if revenue is capped at 2.5%. "If you're cutting $35 million dollars or $52 million dollars out of your budget, it's going to be impossible to do without having some cuts to what we would like to have happen in public safety," Mayor Adler said.
(Excerpt) Read more at kvue.com ...
As for reducing cops, that's horse hockey. He's using the same line as Univ. of Texas' president did over the Top 10% Rule (guaranteeing the top high school graduates a spot in an in-state university) by whining UT would have to lose their football team to follow the ruling.
With RATS, public safety always gets the cut. I bet entitlements for illegals will not be cut.
We are fighting our property taxes.
Go in person with the comps.
They do automatically raise by 10%, otherwise. Crazy.
Just another liberal tactic. When faced with decreased revenue (i.e. taxes), they always threaten cuts in meaningful services like police and fire, and never any of the fluffy stuff that they KNOW is available to cut.
That is how they pressure the electorate to oppose funding cuts and raise taxes.
This Mayor Pete-lover always threatens public safety cuts when our Texas legislators want to cut pork in the urban Socialist programs of Democrat mayors in Texas. How about cooperating with ICE and getting rid of the Central American leeches sucking the life out of urban budgets in Texas’ “sanctuary cities” instead?
https://www.fortunebuilders.com/austin-real-estate-and-market-trends/
From a historical perspective, major Texas metros have remained relatively immune to the fluctuations of the economy. While not entirely void of price changes, cities like Austin have traditionally remained consistent.
However, all of that changed with the onset of the downturn. For the better part of a decade, the Austin real estate market has outpaced nearly every major metro across the country. For all intents and purposes, Austin has seen itself become one of the hottest real estate markets in the country. Thanks, in large part, to a booming job industry, upwardly mobile residents are flocking to the area, Austin is thriving.
These factors, and many more, bode well for the entire Austin housing market in 2015. Having appreciated nearly twice as fast as the rest of the country over the last year, Austin real estate is soaring. The median home price in the area is now $246,000. As a comparison, the average home in the United States is currently priced around $216,567.
In the last 12 months, Austin homes have appreciated 9.3%, whereas the national average was just 4.7 percent. While appreciation rates appear to be tapering across the country, prices for the Austin real estate market continue to grow at a faster rate.
There has been no letup in the growth rate in Austin since 2015, unless my eyes have been lying to me. Just try and drive through the Austin metro area, and you'll see how they're struggling to keep pace with the growth.
Simply put, IMO the mayor of Austin is full of scheisse.
Everyone sees through this game - administrative positions, salaries and benefits won’t be touched. But he’ll threaten to cut front line safety services to the population to scare them into paying more taxes or allowing more borrowing. Its despicable.
Washington state capped annual property tax increases to 1% several years ago. Even at that, conservative eastern Washington cities and counties are reluctant to raise them. And yes the reduction impacted all General Fund reliant departments.
After much pressure, the legislature allowed cities and counties to institute a 0.3% sales tax increase to fund law and justice upon a vote of the people within that county. A city on its own can not get this increase. This pays for courts, prosecutors, indigent defense lawyers, and cops.
Take Austin 200,000 illegal alien parasites to feed and house and port a potty. Austin is a sanctuary city. Put up or shut up.
“Our property taxes are closing in on 4 months pay. That’s highway robbery.”
My property taxes are about $200/mo in FL.
What do you owe that it’s eating a quarter of your annual income?
“With RATS, public safety always gets the cut.”
It seems a simple solution would be to apply cuts across the board.
Well-If they’re feeding and housing, etc. so many illegals, yea...they’re gonna run out of money, here.
Extorting the public again.
Standard political rhetoric. Threaten to take away needed/popular services rather than the reality of slicing off a few unneeded bureaucrats from the payroll.
In this case, HB2 merely says they can’t raise property taxes above a certain threshold without voter approval, meaning they have to let voters decide if they want their property taxes jacked up further.
And if you’ve ever seen a bond election or a tax increase in Austin, they get the support of EVERY pro-tax, pro-government coalition and run it past your eyes at blinding speed and it passes because too many voting clowns decide “it’s not MY money”.
The only time it ever failed was trying to institute blight rail. Even then, it worked once which only illustrated what a poor idea it was.
Most of the money goes for corruption (stealing it), salaries and benefits for top officials, State employees and their benefits and the little that is left over is barely enough to maintain basic services.
Law enforcement and firefighters are always the go to threat by useless politicians. They know that nothing will put the icy fingers of fear down granny’s panties like cutting public safety. Of course I view all city union thugs with equal contempt. So no sell here. However Texas public schools and medical care are spending hundreds of millions on illegal immigrants healthcare and education. So frankly they can all go perform anatomically impossible acts on themselves.
“. Texas allows for property tax to be raised 10% every year. Who can afford that? Does your boss give you a raise of 10% every year to compensate?”
Very misleading statement. since you are in Texas I will give you a chance to tell the rest of the story.
Property tax appraisals are ridiculously outlandish.
Yes, the sprawl is out of control, too. Glad Austin didn’t get Amazon’s HQ but Amazon is still bringing in a few thousand more more jobs.
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