City legalizing obscure agenda items

January 20, 2018

The mayor is asking city council to change the rules relating to how an item gets placed on a city council agenda.

Basically he wants any item that a city council member wants on the agenda to have the signature of at least two city council members.

This language would continue to be part of the ordinance:

Adequate Back-up For Agenda Items. All submissions from City Council Representatives
and the Mayor must be accompanied by adequate back-up to provide the council members, public
and City staff with sufficient information to ascertain the details of the topic and action that will
be requested. The City Clerk will not post an item on the agenda if the request for submission is
not accompanied by a fully completed “Agenda Summary” in the form provided by the City Clerk.
The Agenda Summary shall be the minimum amount of back-up acceptable.

The “Agenda Summary” is the mechanism they use to get around disclosing details if they don’t want to.

The ordinance says that the summary is the minimum amount of back-up acceptable.

The summary does not tell us much.  The very agenda item that contemplates the proposed changes has this agenda summary:

In other words they don’t really have to let us look at the legal and business documents relating to an agenda item.

They just need to file a form that says something like “We plan to take some action relating to doing something”.

We deserve better

Brutus

9 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

SXSW–do we get anything by being there?

January 18, 2018

We learned the other day that county commissioners and city council have agreed to each spend $50,000 of our money to send a delegation to South by Southwest.

The wikipedia article about South by Southwest reads:

South by Southwest (abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By) is an annual conglomerate of film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences that take place in mid-March in Austin, Texas, United States. It began in 1987, and has continued to grow in both scope and size every year. In 2017, the conference lasted for 10 days with SXSW interactive lasting for five days, music for seven days and film running concurrently for nine days. Comedy and gaming components to the festival are particularly fast-growing.

The city and the county evidently feel that our attendance will be good for the community.  Maybe it will.

The city and county attended last year.

Results

Did our community get any positive benefit from their attendance last year or is this really an opportunity for our employees to have a party?

We deserve better

Brutus

16 Comments | City government, County Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Egg-beaters

January 17, 2018

One of the comments the other day made reference to the egg-beaters on I-10 out by the airport.

Aren’t they supposed to twirl?

There is a video of them spinning at the bottom of this web page.

Does anyone know the story here?

We deserve better

Brutus

11 Comments | City government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

Sales tax rules

January 14, 2018

This comes from the Texas legislative council web page:

The sales and use tax (referred to herein as “sales tax”) imposed on most taxable goods and
services consists of a state sales and use tax and a local sales and use tax. The state sales tax rate is
6.25 percent of the sales price of taxable goods and services, and this rate is uniformly applied to
taxable retail transactions throughout the state. Local jurisdictions, including cities, counties, and
some special districts, may also impose a local sales tax after voter approval, but the sum of all local
sales taxes may not exceed two percent anywhere in the state. The maximum sales tax paid on a
taxable item anywhere in Texas is 8.25 percent.

The imposition of a local sales tax must be approved by the voters residing in the jurisdiction in
which the sales tax is to be imposed. Local sales tax revenues can be used for a variety of purposes,
including general fund purposes, property tax relief, health care for the indigent, crime control,
economic development, support of public libraries, emergency services, street maintenance, and
support of public transit. Because of the variety in local sales tax options, not all Texans pay an 8.25
percent sales tax. Some might pay only a 6.75 percent rate; others might pay a 7.75 or 8.0 percent
sales tax rate, depending on where they purchase a taxable item. This variation reflects the different
kinds of services and levels of services approved by the voters to be funded by local sales taxes.
Cities may levy a local sales tax of up to two percent; counties, up to two percent; transit
authorities, up to one percent; and special districts, up to two percent. State law governs the order in
which these taxes take effect, so as not to exceed the two percent cap on the sum of all local sales
taxes at any location in the state.

In our case 1.5% goes to the city general fund and .5% goes to Sun Metro.

We deserve better

Brutus

4 Comments | City government, County Government, State Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

City loses refinancing options

January 10, 2018

According to this slide from the recent special presentation to city council the new feral tax law will limit the city’s ability to issue tax refunding bonds:

In prior years the city had the ability to issue tax refunding bonds to purchase old bonds that had unfavorable interest rates.  In short, when the cost of bonds went down the city could buy new bonds and use the money to refund old bonds thus lowering the annual interest costs.

Unfortunately the city often used the opportunity to make the new bonds expire later than the existing bonds.  They were kicking the can down the road so that they did not have to pay off the principal on the original bonds.

Before the new law the city could evidently use this trick whenever they felt that interest rates justified the action.

Evidently under the new law they will only be able to do this within a window 90 days before the published call date for the original bonds.  According to the chart above the call date on bonds is typically 10 years after the bonds were issued.

Bond interest costs fluctuate.  The city will now only be able to use refunding bonds 9 3/4 years after the bonds are issued.  Interest rates might be higher or lower at that time.

This will have a significant impact on the city budget.

The spendthrifts on this and prior councils have put us in a box.

We deserve better

Brutus

4 Comments | City government, Federal Government | Permalink
Posted by Brutus

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