SOS Promo Video

Support More Green for Travis County

Please take a few minutes to send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.telling the Travis County Citizens Bond Advisory Committee to prioritize funding for more parks and open space in its recommendations for a proposed November bond election. The CBAC is finalizing its recommendations to the Commissioners Court. SOS is specifically urging the CBAC to recommend that (a) at least half of the likely total of $100 to $120 million in proposed bonds be allocated to buying more park lands and conservation easements; and (b) the proposed Reimer Peacock Road, between Hamilton Pool Road and SH 71 west should not be funded. The only real purpose for this road is to support development in a priority protection area. Please help us urge the county to buy more open space now, before it’s too late.

Tell Council to Support What Makes Austin Austin

HOT facts; Convention Center Follies – Today Austin Mayor Steve Adler is announcing a convention center expansion proposal that would tie up more than 80% of our tourism hotel tax dollars for the next 20 years, even though convention visitors make up less than 2% of Austin tourists. Meanwhile, the people, places, and iconic, local Austin businesses that make Austin exciting to tourists and residents alike will continue to get little or nothing under the proposal.
Barton Springs, a top tourist draw, gets nothing from the hotel tax revenues. Struggling Austin musicians and artists, live music venues, and iconic Austin businesses get a few extra dollars while the proposed convention center expansion would lock in more than a billion dollars in funding over the next 20 years.
Check out this folder Hotel Occupancy Tax and Convention Center Fact Sheet – because you sure won’t learn the facts from Austin City Staff or the Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau. Let your councilmember know that it’s time to support what we say we love and stop pouring money into the failing convention center.

Celebrating 27 years of citizen advocacy to Save Our Springs

Twenty-seven years ago on June 7, 1990,  over 800 Austinites showed up at City Hall to protest the proposed 4,000 acre "Barton Creek PUD" development. The City Council heard public testimony all through the night, and voted as the sun rose the next day to deny the project. That night sparked the "Save Our Springs" movement, and led directly to Austin voters approving the citizen-initiated Save Our Springs ordinance in August 1992.

Watch excerpts from the Barton Creek Uprising here . Check out Austin photographer extraordinaire Alan Pogue's photos from the uprising here.

Read more ...

Tax Black Hole Discovered Downtown!

According to NASA, “a black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light cannot get out.” If gravity was limited to pulling in money and light, then the Austin Convention Center is the biggest black hole in Travis County.

The downtown black hole is pulling in so much money, barely a spark of light can emerge on the true fate of $75 million in City funds sucked into the Convention Center hole this year alone.

If you ask the Austin Convention & Visitors Bureau (ACVB) or the Austin Convention Center Department (both funded by the City of Austin’s hotel occupancy tax, or “HOT” tax) they will tell you the Convention Center is a roaring success, and we need to expand it with another $400 to $600 million expansion in order to keep visitors coming to Austin. If you ask them to show their success and where all the money is going, they hide the ball, change the subject, or claim the information is “private.”

Thankfully, KXAN TV’s investigative news team began to shed light on the Convention Center black hole with an in-depth report that aired last Friday evening.

So what does this have to do with saving Barton Springs and keeping our home waters clean and flowing?  By state law, the HOT tax must be used to support and promote tourism. This includes supporting the arts, historic and cultural preservation, tourism promotion, transportation that primarily serves visitors, and, yes, convention centers.  But fewer than 2% of Austin visitors come for conventions at the convention center, yet the convention center collects over 70% of the HOT tax. That’s over 70% investment for less than 2% of the return. The people and places that attract tourists to Austin—the arts, musicians and music venues, iconic local businesses, cultural festivals and events, historic preservation, parks—get about 15% of the money--for all of those areas combined.  Barton Springs is reported to be the number 2 tourist attraction next to the State Capitol. Barton Springs preservation gets zero ($0) from Austin HOT tax revenues.

Read more ...

Please help kill aquifer polluting bills

Read more ...