Austin

Capital Metro's commuter rail line, set to begin operation in a few months, still doesn't have approval from the Federal Railroad Administration.

Wear: What's in rail name? Tougher rules

Looks like former rail director, Rich Krisak bailed for Atlanta just in time.

Capital Metro's commuter rail line is (not surprisingly) running behind schedule. The rail line running from Leander to downtown Austin is now not expected to open until March.

One more broken promise from CapMetro. First, Austin taxpayers get soaked with annual operating costs that are double what they voted for, now the project is months late.

Austin's Health and Human Services and Police departments paid UT $48,000 to survey Austin's omnipresent panhandlers. I'm sure they were shocked to learn that these people have problems:

Panhandlers in Austin want regular jobs but confront multiple barriers, including mental health problems and lack of identification materials, that make it hard for them to secure them, according to a study conducted by University of Texas researchers for the City of Austin.

I'm more than a little skeptical of the "want regular jobs" part.

This comes after caving to homeless advocates on stricter panhandling. If you haven't been to Austin lately, imagine a busy intersection - just about any intersection in any part of town - and then imagine at least two panhandlers, sometimes three. There are multiple well-established homeless camps under several bridges just in Northwest Austin alone. Even more downtown. Apparently, the police can't do anything to remove them.

Welcome to the hobo capital of the southwest.

Update: much more on this at Quid Nimis

Austin Bloggers News and Announcements: Zero Tolerance:

In the past week, I've removed six real estate blogs from the portal for violating the guidelines of this site. I intend to remove on sight any real estate blog (or, for that matter, any non-personal blog) that violates the guidelines.

I was wondering when this was going to happen. As the housing market has gotten tighter, real estate agents are obviously trying to squeeze all of the exposure they can out of every possible medium. Unfortunately, they've been pushing it too far on Austin Bloggers lately - in many cases using the aggregator as a free listing site. Austin Bloggers usage guidelines prohibit commercial/promotional posting.

Our mayor and city council... the bigger the price tag, the more they seem to like any proposal that comes to the chamber.

The Travis Monitor: Up in Smoke - Austin's BioFuel Boondoggle

This story seems to run counter to the commonly-accepted doom-and-gloom narrative for the Austin real-estate market:

The Austin-area real estate market continued to outperform the nation in the second quarter of 2008, a new report from the National Association of Realtors said Thursday.

Median home prices in the Austin area rose by 4.1 percent, to $194,200, from the year-ago period, while the national median fell 7.6 percent, the real estate group said.

Dallas, Houston and other Texas cities aren't doing so well.

A closer-analysis though, reveals that while median prices may be up, the market still sucks.

For such a "green" city, Austin is really behind on a lot of things. We will finally getting single stream recyling this fall.

Single-stream recycling allows you to place all of your recycables into one container rather than having to sort them out into multiple bins. In our case, we'll be getting a 90-gallon cart. For my wife and I, that's going to be really handy. We recycle pretty aggressively and I have to drive our four bins down our long, steep driveway to curb currently. Yes, Republicans do recycle.

But probably the best thing about the new program is that you can now recycle more items, including mixed paper - cereal boxes, soda/beer cartons and the like. Before we had to take that stuff downtown to Ecology Action.

Blue Dot Blues alerts us of a MoveOn.org stunt to deliver a "petition" to Congressman Michael McCaul's office today at noon opposing off-shore drilling. Liberals are watching what's happening with the Don't Go revolt and they're getting worried. Not only are conservatives beginning to embrace and make effective use of social networking technologies once the exclusive domain of the left, domestic drilling has real traction with voters.

Update: Voice in the Wilderness is on it.

Getting a chance to hear Texas Public Policy Foundation education policy analyst Brooke Dollens Terry speak at last night's Austin Townhall Conservatives Meetup was fortuitous because I learn this morning that AISD bureaucrats are looking to raise property taxes this year in a referendum that may go to voters in November:

The Austin school district is proposing a $862.5 million 2008-09 budget, 8.8 percent larger than the current budget. The plan calls for an operations tax rate of $1.0765 per $100 of assessed property value. Including the portion of the rate used to pay off debt, the overall rate would be $1.1995.

The district is already at the highest operations tax rate, $1.04, that can be set without going to the voters for approval in a rollback election. Because property values on average went up this year, staying at that rate would mean more revenue as tax bills increase. However, new school finance laws require that Austin send more of that revenue to the state to give to property-poor districts, $61 million this year. So to raise additional money that the district can keep, administrators are seeking the tax rate increase.

AISD's proposal, which includes a 3% pay raise for teacher salaries, would raise property taxes on an average-priced home ($233,324) in Austin by about $340 per year, but the union wants more:

Teacher groups and a school board subcommittee met Tuesday to discuss the teacher salaries and benefits after reaching an impasse in negotiations.

Education Austin President Louis Malfaro said the Fort Worth, San Antonio, Dallas and Houston districts pay their teachers $5,000 to $6,000 more than Austin on average. He said teacher pay in Austin lags behind that of other Central Texas districts by up to $2,500. His organization, which represents more than 4,000 local teachers and staff members, wants a 5 percent salary increase, family health coverage and a $10 minimum wage for hourly employees.

The union's proposal would raise property taxes on an average-priced home by more than $430 per year.

Here's an idea: we'll give you the money, but reduce the across-the-board rate of increase and use the rest to reward teachers who perform.

Update: somewhat surprisingly, the Austin American-Statesman has come out against the tax increase:

Both proposals are too high. The union's plan to squeeze 8 more cents from taxpayers is particularly egregious, given the economic slump in which many people are struggling to pay for basics — gasoline, housing, utilities and food.

Give them — and the rest of us — a break.

h/t: Texans for Fiscal Responsibility

No doubt a glimpse of things to come for Austin drivers, North Texas officials will ask the legislature to approve a huge hike in vehicle registration fees to pay for expansion of light rail. And to rub a little salt in the wound, they're calling it a "user" tax:

While it is being billed as a "user tax," it is nothing of the kind, because it would fund a rail system, not roads. A user tax would be if rail riders paid the cost of the system, but because the costs of rail almost always exceed the benefits, proponents seek to shift the cost to non-users. While it is true that constructing rail requires an enormous initial outlay, that also applies to toll roads, but whether or not one agrees with the policy, the private sector is willing to invest in them because the benefits are proven to exceed the costs over the long haul.

Currently, the only cities in the world where a rail system operates profitably are Tokyo and Hong Kong, and they each have at least 10 times the population density of the Metroplex.

In the article, rail advocates also describe the possibly triple-digit increase in the vehicle registration as a "sin tax," but even someone who purchases a hybrid car would pay and many people are trading in their cars for more fuel efficient vehicles, but they would be punished by this tax.

Wendell Cox, a leading expert on transportation policy, has noted, "The annual cost per new rider of virtually every light rail line built here in the past 20 years has been more than the annual cost of leasing each new commuter a new car. Light rail has no part to play in a transport system, because of its expense. Rapid transit busways virtually equal light rail capacity, at a fraction of the cost."