Naked City

Austin-area voters, stung by a 12 cent property tax increase imposed by the Austin Independent School District just six weeks ago, rejected a proposed five-cent tax hike that Austin Community College board members said would have allowed the school to expand its course offerings, build badly needed facilities, and increase financial aid to some of its 26,000 students in Travis and Williamson Counties.

ACC trustee John Worley said the AISD tax hike, which did not require voter approval, was at least partly to blame for the loss. Although ACC's 5 cent increase would have been phased in over four years, softening the blow for property owners, Worley said taxpayers had simply had enough. "People are thinking, 'I just can't handle any more taxes,'" Worley said after the vote, "and they said no."

Worley said he knew the measure was dead when he saw the dismal returns from the central city precincts. "We lost some of those precincts that usually vote progressive," said Worley, a Hyde Park resident. "If you don't win those precincts or if you don't win 'em big, you're probably going to lose."

Worley, who will be seeking re-election next May, also acknowledged that ACC could have done a better job of selling the proposal to voters. "We didn't even have our strategic plan passed before we took this to the voters," he said. "We had some eight vague ideas of what we were going to do with the money."

While Central Austin gave the ACC tax hike a lukewarm reception, ACC trustee Hunter Ellinger said voters in Southwest Austin were adamant in their rejection of the increase. According to Ellinger, Southwest Austin voters were angered by ACC's decision not to build a new campus over the Edwards Aquifer to replace the existing Pinnacle campus in Oak Hill, which ACC has used as its southwestern campus since 1991. "We are still paying a bit of a price" for that decision, he said.

Voters across Texas approved 13 of 17 proposed amendments to the Texas Constitution, including one (Prop. 13) that will authorize $400 million in bonds for college student loans and another (Prop. 17), hotly contested in Austin, that will free up about $20 million for the UT System, and $10 million for Texas A&M by allowing trustees to spend, instead of reinvesting, capital gains from the state's Permanent University Fund.

Other amendments approved by some 1 million voters across Texas included:

Prop. 1, requiring the lieutenant governor to resign that post to fill a permanent vacancy in the governor's office;

Prop 2, authorizing reverse mortgages, which enable elderly Texans to take out credit against their home equity;

Prop. 4, expanding the definition of charitable organizations to include those with "primarily" charitable purposes;

Prop. 6, increasing the maximum size of an urban homestead to 10 acres;

Prop. 7, authorizing courts to garnish wages for alimony payments;

Prop. 12, exempting vehicles leased for personal use from property taxation;

Prop. 15, allowing married couples to convert separate property to community property;

Amendments rejected by voters included one (Prop. 5) that would have allowed state employees (including Austin City Council member Bill Spelman) to receive a salary for serving on local government boards; two (Props. 8 and 10) that would have given the governor authority to appoint the adjutant general and the health and human services commissioner, respectively; and one (Prop. 9) that would have allowed the Legislature to create a commission to set pay rates for state judges. Elsewhere:

· Voters in Houston rejected a proposal to build a new, $160 million arena to replace the crumbling, 25-year-old Compaq Center (formerly the Summit), a decision which NBA Commissioner David Stern has said might ultimately drive the Rockets out of the city -- possibly to New Orleans, which recently built a new arena in hopes of attracting an NBA franchise.

· San Antonio voters approved a new, $175 million arena for the NBA champion Spurs, which should let the team to move out of the six-year-old Alamodome by 2002.

· Voters in Kansas City, Missouri rejected a proposal to install a light rail system like the one that will likely go before Austin voters in May; meanwhile, in Denver, residents voted to extend the city's light rail system.