Hot tax win!! Thank you, stay engaged, it's only round one

Last night, after hours of contentious testimony and city council debate, Mayor Adler threw in the towel with a minor concession from his colleagues and joined a unanimous council in voting to direct the City Manager to move $15 million from this year's proposed budget for the convention center over to fund $3.2 million for promotion of live music, $500,000 for locally-owned business promotion, and $11 million to create an Historic Preservation Fund.  This fund would help protect historic places that we are losing as well as historic preservation activities, such as operation of the Austin History Center.

The funding is only for this year's budget.  However, it sets the stage for future moves to shift even more funding away from the failing convention center and towards live music, arts, parks, preservation, and locally-owned business.

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Help Save Live Music, Arts, History and Parks in Austin

Mayor Pro Tem Kathie Tovo and Councilmembers Leslie Pool, Ann Kitchen and Ellen Troxclair have proposed shifting $10 to $12 million away from the convention center and towards arts, music, and heritage preservation.  Their resolution is Item 60 on this week's August 31 city council agenda.  Please support this resolution with a quick email message to the entire council at this link.  Tell them you support the Item 60 resolution giving more hotel occupancy tax funding to Austin live music, arts, and parks and preservation.  Please attend the Thursday August 31 public hearing to show your support if you are able.   This is an important first step in matching our priorities with our spending of City taxes. The hotel occupancy tax and proposed convention center expansion issues are somewhat complicated, but breakdown to a simple question of choosing our priorities for billions of hotel tax revenues to be collected over the next 20 years.  Please read the pdf attached summary/opinion piece (101 KB) by Bill Bunch for the details.

CodeNEXT Update

If you're having trouble keeping up with CodeNEXT, you are not alone. The City recently put out an updated CodeNEXT timeline that should help a little. Despite overwhelming concerns over a rushed process, the updated schedule still appears to speed along without the time and analysis needed to inform smart decision-making. Please continue to tell Mayor Adler and your Council member that you want to take the time to get CodeNEXT right.

Our land development code is complicated and we always knew that a repeal and replace of the entire LDC would be difficult. We look to experts in other fields and input from the impacted communities to help inform our understanding of issues like displacement and affordability. We can't look at any one section of the code in isolation and above all, we must ensure CodeNEXT is equitable. We encourage you to attend a panel discussion on Displacement and CodeNEXT: Views from the East Side, on Saturday, September 9 at 1:30 PM. Details on  facebook  . Please spread the word.

25 Years of Saving Our Springs

"United We Stand" SOS Election Morning by Eric Beggs, 1992

It’s been twenty-five years of saving our springs. And, “It’s now or never, again.”

Here in Austin we are blessed with a natural wonder of global significance: Barton Springs, the fourth largest spring in Texas, home to two endangered aquatic salamanders, sourced by a cave-forming, karstic limestone aquifer more vulnerable to pollution than any other aquifer in Texas.

The capital was located here in large part because Barton Springs provided a reliable source of drinking water.   Quite literally, we are here because the springs are here.   They are the life-source of our city. If we lose Barton Springs, we lose Austin and our place here on Earth.

More than half a million locals and tourists every year enjoy swimming and snorkeling in and sunbathing beside Barton’s cold clear waters, sharing the waters with largemouth bass, blue gill, cormorants, ducks, herons, kingfishers, the mysterious salamanders and river eels, and many other native species. The springs connect us, residents and visitors alike, to the real world, the one that was here before us.

Since the 1970s Austinite's have banded together to protect Barton Springs from urban development and the pollution it brings. These citizen group advocates have included the Zilker Park Posse; Zilker and Barton Hills neighborhood associations; Austin Sierra Club; Save Barton Creek Association; Earth First!; Clean Water Action; Citizen Action; Hill Country Foundation;   and, since 1992, the Save Our Springs Alliance.

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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.