Parish
Congratulations!
RECEIVED Fri., Sept. 8, 2017
Dear Editor,
I wasn't sure that you had it in you. But Lord have mercy, you pulled it off!
Michael King wrote an entire article about Ellen Troxclair's plan to transfer the HOT fund ["Still Puzzling," News, Sept. 8], without a single word about the rest of her plan – to hold the effective tax rate increase to 6%.
With all the hoop-de-doo about expanding the Convention Center, affordability has been cast to the wind once again. The last thing Austin needs is more cavernous, mostly empty spaces in the Convention Center. There is no urgent need to attract more growth and cram more people into our already crowded and unaffordable neighborhoods.
If you remember anything about high school math, you can see that annual 8% increases in Austin's tax rate will cause our taxes to double every nine years.
Fortunately, plans are underway to put an end to the high-density, traffic-inducing madness of CodeNEXT. A petition drive will soon evolve and it will be put to the voters. They will decide overwhelmingly not to surrender their neighborhoods to the developers.
Council members running for re-election who ignore affordability will do so at their own peril.
I wasn't sure that you had it in you. But Lord have mercy, you pulled it off!
Michael King wrote an entire article about Ellen Troxclair's plan to transfer the HOT fund ["Still Puzzling," News, Sept. 8], without a single word about the rest of her plan – to hold the effective tax rate increase to 6%.
With all the hoop-de-doo about expanding the Convention Center, affordability has been cast to the wind once again. The last thing Austin needs is more cavernous, mostly empty spaces in the Convention Center. There is no urgent need to attract more growth and cram more people into our already crowded and unaffordable neighborhoods.
If you remember anything about high school math, you can see that annual 8% increases in Austin's tax rate will cause our taxes to double every nine years.
Fortunately, plans are underway to put an end to the high-density, traffic-inducing madness of CodeNEXT. A petition drive will soon evolve and it will be put to the voters. They will decide overwhelmingly not to surrender their neighborhoods to the developers.
Council members running for re-election who ignore affordability will do so at their own peril.
Bill Oakey
[Michael King responds:
For the record, proposed property tax rates are not part of Council Member Ellen Troxclair's resolution on the hotel occupancy tax revenue allocations.]
