The City of Austin was selected as one of seven finalists cities poised to win up to $50 Million for mobility innovations by U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx in a ceremony at the C3 Connected Mobility Showcase during South by Southwest in Austin today. Continue reading
Category Archives: Big Ideas
White House names Austin TechHire Community
RELEASE: White House names Austin a TechHire Community
Microsoft, Google & IBM to provide paid tech internships in Austin for 200 veteran and low-income graduates from accelerated training programs at ACC, Texas State University, Zenith
In the run-up to the President’s trip to Austin to speak at SXSWi, the White House announced today that Austin had been designated a TechHire Community. The White House’s year-old TechHire Initiative is designed to develop homegrown information technology workforce.
“In my State of our City address last month, I promised to make workforce development in tech a special focus of this year. The White House designating Austin a TechHire Community reflects the real progress we are making. The TechHire Initiative will help us create the best, most-effective job training ecosystem in the country. Austin is good at creating jobs. This will make us better at getting our own people ready to take those jobs.”
What’s your reaction to the #YearOfMobility?
Mobility ATX just posted the #YearOfMobility section of the State of our City address. I love Mobility ATX. It’s like Reddit for Austin public policy nerds, and it encourages productive discussion which is exactly what we need to have right now. As I said in the speech on Tuesday, we need to do big things on I-35, transit, bikes and rail, or we’re just going to end up like Los Angeles. (In fact, traffic on I-35 has gotten so bad that people in Houston feel sorry for us now.) And while work is ongoing on sidewalks, street lights, and crossing signals, we need to get a lot of public input now before we consider what projects we put before the voters as soon as November. So read up and spout off.
Statesman editorial: Tax swap “makes sense” & “an idea worth exploring”
In an editorial post
ed on Feb. 19, 2016, The Austin American-Statesman keyed on a short portion of his State of our City address that could make a big difference in your property tax bill:
“When AISD taxes you a dollar on your tax bill, a big chunk of it leaves and isn’t available to be spent here for services. But if the city taxed you for that same dollar, all your money does stay here. Austin taxpayers could save money or get more for the taxes we pay by having the city and the school district engage in a tax swap.”
The Statesman wrote that the tax swap was “one of the more interesting proposals Austin Mayor Steve Adler cited in his state of the city address” and “an idea worth exploring as the Austin school district is expected to send evermore of its local tax revenue to the state in an arrangement that shortchanges taxpayers and students.”
If done right, a tax swap would present taxpayers with the promise of a tax cut, schools with the possibility of more money, or a combination of both, because it would result in sending less of our school tax dollars to other school districts. Right now, AISD (where 60% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches) sends $181 million in tax revenue our of town in 2015 because of our broken school finance system. This is equal to a quarter of the school districts total Maintenance and Operations tax collections.
Meanwhile, AISD taxes the average homeowner an average of $1,000 a year. People in Austin have a lot to gain from a tax swap, and this could go a long way toward addressing our affordability crisis.
On Feb. 11, 2016, the Council approved Resolution No. 201602011-015 directing the City Manager to explore a tax swap, including the legal issues and a cost-benefit analysis. We’ll keep you posted on how this goes.
Photo credit: Stephen Spillman