https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfoey638E74

As concerns the land development code, the status quo is our worst enemy. Anyone who loves this city knows we cannot afford the cost of not getting the code revision done right. Everyone in this room knows that CodeNEXT is not what is causing today’s demolitions of existing homes, gentrification, and increasing traffic and unaffordability. It provides the opportunity to find part of the answer.

I am encouraged that the most recent staff recommendation for the mapping is closer to the Austin Bargain of preserving and respecting neighborhood identity and quality of life, focusing our housing supply growth on our major corridors, and establishing the transitions to make it all work. I still want to see more such alignment and more in the way of achieving affordability in housing.

I encourage our volunteer boards and commissions to work diligently to get code revision in good enough shape so when it reaches us, we can give Austin a new land development code that works.

Folks, we’re going to take as much time as we need to get this right. But we have to get it right. Managing growth to preserve the spirit and soul of our city will be difficult, if not impossible, if we don’t get CodeNEXT done right. We can get it done this year. Let’s show the world how to work productively through our differences for the greater good and a better future.

CMs Kitchen and Alter and I have posted over 50 specific goals for Code Next that we think might well identify many of the common goals shared by most of those involved in CodeNext discussions. At our last work session, CM Pool said she was signing on, too. If enough of these goals reflect common ground, then we are well on our way toward achieving a CodeNext consensus. We can do this, together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVFvmVXp9vY

And because we know that we and our children and grandchildren won’t have much of a future if we don’t halt man-made global warming, each of us – as residents of a city, a state, a nation, and the world — must do all we can to save our planet.

As your mayor, I’m proud to have joined almost 400 other US mayors to adopt, honor and uphold the Paris Climate Agreement. I reiterated our commitment last October at the Paris Climate Conference and again in December when I signed the Chicago Climate Charter at the North American Climate Summit.

Last year this Council, thanks to the leadership of CM Pool, upped our renewable energy goals from 55% by 2025 — to 65% by 2027 (and asked for a plan to get us up to 75%). This is one of the most ambitious clean energy goals in the country. And we’re well on our way toward meeting that goal. We’re beginning the process to close our only coal plant and increase our use of renewable clean power at Austin Energy.

Last year we bought more solar and wind to push us over 50% renewables by 2020. The economics of such energy have gotten so competitive, that the last renewable energy contract signed by Austin Energy will serve to reduce the rate-payer cost.

Tonight, we talked about lots of big ideas. Here is one you might not have heard about, but it might be the biggest one of them all. This year, we will work on one of the most important projects in our city’s history and a big part of our future– a 100-year water plan for Austin. This long-range water plan will ensure that as Austin continues to grow we have a diverse, reliable water supply for the coming century.

This plan should have strong recommendations to strengthen our water conservation programs and to expand our reclaimed water system. And, I expect the plan to advance relatively new, but reliable technologies, such as Aquifer Storage and Recovery, as a way of storing large amounts of water underground to avoid excessive evaporation.

The time to fix the roof is when the sun is shining, and the time to prepare for the drought is when the lakes are full.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msKY0eXjDis

After years of studies and resolutions, the Council is poised to do something real about displacement in the eastern crescent. The City Auditor gathered all those reports and ideas, and turned them over to a newly created, Council-appointed Anti-Displacement Task Force.

Our city is eager for this task force to do its work so that those ideas, together with new ones now arising from the community, have a place for them all to go together – to be assessed, compared, analyzed and discussed, so that the best of all the ideas can rise to the top and be reported back for Council consideration and implementation.

The Task Force will review and inform their recommendations with a parallel study conducted by UT Austin, initiated by CM Pool, that maps the vulnerability of displacement for all Austinites, and also offers specific tools that correlate to susceptibility of displacement.

We cannot repeat the mistakes of the past any more than we can afford the cost that the status quo is imposing on our community. Our job is to prevent an unacceptable future.

After years of unimplemented ideas, we need to do something to address displacement. We need the Anti-Displacement Task Force and the UT study to reflect the urgent certainty that their ideas will be taken up by the Council following their deliberative process.

This Council has shown a special willingness to try new things and to put new resources behind the mission of housing the homeless.

I thank Mayor Pro Tem Tovo for all the work she has done over many years to address this challenge. We are all excited about the new innovations you have championed like the inter-disciplinary HOST teams that this Council acted to expand this year, and the “Pay For Success” model around which this Council has begun to rally support.

This city had a successful federal pilot program in helping homeless youth. And we’ve got an in-house innovation team working on a $1.5-million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies to develop smarter ways to help our most vulnerable neighbors. Alan Graham and many in our community are launching the expansion of the very successful Community First model.

This Council, city staff, public safety officers, and community stakeholders has acted to address the downtown drug crisis, and with Council Member Troxclair’s leadership is creating a pilot temporary work program for those experiencing homelessness. We are on track to meet our goal of 400 new Permanent Supportive Housing Units by the end of this year.

But for all we’ve done, there is no doubt that we need to do more to help those experiencing homelessness. We need to set a specific goal, and then we need to fund it.

Let’s make the “ECHO Plan goal” the City’s goal. We should commit to housing the homeless. Not more homeless. Not most of the homeless. Our goal should be finding Homes for all the Homeless, as we find them.

We know how to do it. We are among the cities that have achieved effective zero in homeless veterans. Soon, our City staff will be coming to Council, armed with our Audit Reports and the ECHO Plan, so that the Council can focus holistic policy direction.

Bottom line, we all know we’re going to need to find even more money if we’re serious about addressing the homelessness challenge. We are going to have to find all the new revenue streams possible. That’s why the concept of the Downtown Puzzle is so attractive to me.

Your Council has asked the University of Texas to study the possible expansion of the convention center and report back in the Fall. There are questions to be answered. And if, that study comes back with favorable answers, then we should move forward to capture the associated $10 million per year in tourist dollars that may well be available to invest in re-scoping the ARCH downtown and helping Austin to meet its homelessness challenge at scale city-wide.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=272NnGAvTbg

One of the most important aspects of this Council’s work on affordability is redirecting resources and effort to where they can do the most good. This focus requires us to address racial and economic inequities. The long economic boom we’re enjoying here is not colorblind. Even after years of robust job growth, unemployment in Black and Hispanic households is way too high.

Did you know that in Austin, life expectancy is ten years greater in the West than in the East. Ten additional years to love your family and be loved. Ten more years to achieve so you can leave something behind.
That inequity is something we inherited, but we don’t have to pass it down to future generations. We need to expand opportunity in Austin to include everyone in every neighborhood.

The Spirit of East Austin framework, initiated three years ago by CMs Houston, Pool, Renteria, Troxclair and me, is about to bring to Council the fruits of the most extensive public engagement process I’ve ever seen. This has been a long time in coming.

Under the umbrella of that framework, we initiated the Mayor’s Institutional Racism Task Force. This task force has provided racial equity training for 210 corporate, non-profit, government, education, and grass roots leaders with another 160 to be trained later this week (70 of which will attend training entirely in Spanish). I hope thousands of Austinites get the opportunity to engage in such training.

It is a testament to her commitment to this work that CM Alter opened up her office budget to help other council staffs attend the training.

That task force’s work is also seeing tangible results. Out of 247 unique recommendations from the institutional racism task force, 60 have already been implemented, and an additional 96 recommended actions are either already underway or are planned.

Our city is finally taking actual steps to implement the Colony Park Master Plan II. It is important that this great master planned community is being planned in partnership with the community and is going to serve the holistic needs of the long-time residents. With CM Houston’s continued leadership, that neighborhood should soon have its pool… and more.

A special thanks to the Colony Park Neighborhood Association for their persistent, passionate, and knowledgeable engagement; you have taught us the true meaning of community engagement.

This Council created our Equity Office and it has already begun realizing the vision. It has just completed an analysis of the racism Task Force recommendations; it has begun making racial equity an integral part of each department’s practices and policies, as well as ensuring that equity is embedded in the priority strategic outcomes the Council is adopting to guide its work. Racial equity will be forever something we include from the get-go and not just as a box that’s checked at the end of a process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLKyyd0elgQ

But any truly honest conversation about affordability must also address the rapid rise of property taxes.

We all know, property taxes are going up. And going up too much, too fast. In fact, for the median priced home in most of Austin, all property taxes combined have gone up $1,408 in just the last five years. That’s a lot.

But did you know that $1,023 of that increase does not come from increases in city taxes, or county taxes, or hospital district taxes, or taxes to fund AISD schools, or all of those taxes added together?

This brings me to something that, for my money, I’ve always thought were missing in our State of the City Addresses: charts!

…Actually, it’s a bar graph. It answers the question: Which governmental entity is the out-of-control taxing entity here in Austin?

The answer: It’s the State. Look at that increase over the last five years. (That’s is the part of the school district tax that the state takes and isn’t used to educate children in Austin.)

$1,023 of the $1,408 property tax increase you are feeling over the last five years comes solely from the increase in the State Property Tax?

Let me show you another bar graph. Here, again, you can see that the total property tax bill has gone up from $4,653 to $6,061 in the last five years.

You can also see that the city property tax has gone up from $1,041 to $1,250 or a total of $209 over the last five years.
The county property tax, the hospital district, all other property taxes, except schools, added together have gone up about $242 over the same period of time.

The property taxes to fund AISD schools in Austin has actually gone down from $2,032 to $1,965 over the last five years.
But, look at the State Property Tax (again, the money the State takes from the AISD property tax and spends somewhere else). Five years ago, it was at $355. This year, it’s at $1,378. That is an increase of 288% over the last five years.
Did you realize that this year, the State of Texas will keep more of your local property taxes than the City of Austin? ($1,378 vs. $1,250)

When people in most of Austin, inside the AISD, say that property taxes are going up too much too fast, we are not talking about the City or the County or the Hospital District or even AISD’s cost to educate Austin children.

When people say that property taxes are going up too much, we’re talking about the State Property Tax.

It is hard to believe that the Governor is even talking about trying to limit city, county and school district tax increases to 2.5% per year (without a vote), when the State Property Tax has increased by 288% in just five years.
It is high time the State legislature finally does something about increases in property taxes. And, if they’re going to really do something, then our State leaders cannot try to divert us away from the real problem. It’s the State Property Tax. To fix its runaway tax, the State must fix and appropriately fund the school finance system. Nothing else will actually give us property tax relief in Austin.