Why Austin is unaffordable: major obstacles to building    Headline stories and political polls all validate the obvious — Austin is expensive. Much of the affordability problem is associated with housing. After all, housing costs are the largest single budget item for all but the most elite.   
Not that long ago, Austin was one of the most affordable communities in the country. Today, it is the most expensive major city in Texas.   
“Why?”   Our answer: “The City of Austin’s hostile attitudes toward building or remodeling homes and apartments. It is hard to build single-family homes. It is unimaginably difficult to build an apartment project.”   
Consider the process to build a home. Start with an empty plot of land. In most Texas cities it would take six months to convert that small tract to 100 lots. In Austin, this is a two-year, very expensive process.   
In most communities, rules are straight-forward. Austin has voluminous ordinances and supplemental rules contained in eight, very large books of legalese that change every three months. As one example of the complexity, Austin currently has over 400 zoning permutations.    Virtually all south central Texas cities have online plan submittals. Reviewers can forward plans, make notes, receive updates and collect payment electronically. Austin? Sorry.   
Anyone who deals with the city of Austin has experienced the culture of “no.” If you are a homeowner wanting to make an addition or renovate, be ready to discover that any past work may be deemed incomplete, that you may need new public safety inspection, that your plans may “penetrate a vertical easement” or you busted “impervious cover” limits. The wait for plan approval is more than a month for a remodel or custom home. That is down from a three-month wait more than a year ago. Austin policymakers seemingly enact whatever restrictions come along without regard to the impacts on average citizens or the difficulties in administering them.    Last year alone, the city added more than $10,000 to the cost of building a home in East Austin. An added $650 plan review fee, exceeding what most cities charge to both review and inspect; $5,600 in new water and wastewater connection fees; $2,000 in electrician work practices (prohibited journeymen subcontractors); and $2,000 mandating that all new homes provide handicap ramps and a no step entry. Soon, the electric utility will enact a new line extension fee, adding another $2,000 per home.   
Few people realize how many layers of fees are involved in building and remodeling: subdivision fees, plat fiscal guarantees, subdivision construction plan, inspection fees, connection fees, sidewalk fees and tree fees. One recent townhouse project with only trash trees had $200,000 in tree mitigation. Did we mention mandatory sidewalks to nowhere? Few people realize is those costs come back in the form of higher rents or mortgages.   
In the end, renters and owners alike pay escalating property taxes. Less recognized are utility bills that raise rates for conserving and subsidize taxes — a hidden tax in their own right. Also on the utility bill are storm water fees, litter fees and transportation fees — all costs levied in the most regressive manner possible without regard to ability to pay. Little wonder that the total cost of housing is increasing so rapidly.   
The city has limited the supply of housing, thereby increasing your costs to purchase your home. Then overt costs in high taxes and utility fees “pile on.” Policy makers have shown little regard for the impact on tenants or owners — be it a single-family home with a yard or a multifamily, high-density unit.   
No wonder we are the most expensive city in Texas.   
HARRY SAVIO IS VICE PRESIDENT OF PUBLIC POLICY FOR THE HOME BUILDERS ASSOCIATION OF GREATERAUSTIN.

Austin Energy criticizes renewable goals’ costs Utility warns of impact on users while council awaits task force plan.
By Lilly Rockwell LROCKWELL@STATESMAN.COM     
Austin Energy is fearful of one thing: becoming the next Germany.  
The European country set an ambitious goal in 2010 of producing 80 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, such as wind and solar, by 2050. German rooftops were blanketed with solar panels. Germany built solar and wind farms. And it decided to shut down its nuclear plants by 2025, motivated in part by concerns about nuclear safety.   
But Germany’s quick embrace of renewable energy has been disastrous for the country, causing utility rates to skyrocket and still leaving a reliance on carbon-producing gas and coal plants during high-demand times. The Daily Telegraph reported that Germany released more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 2012 than in 2011.   
“They have a new term — energy poverty,” said Khalil Shalabi, the vice president of energy market operations and resource planning for Austin Energy. “Forget rent. They can’t pay their electric bill.”   
Austin Energy officials worry about becoming the next cautionary tale of energy policy as the Austin City Council is poised to consider a new plan for ramping up how much of the utility’s power generation comes from green energy. A report by a city-appointed task force issued this week called for a Germany-style goal of going carbon-free by 2030.   
The report by the Generation Resource Planning task force also calls for a heavier reliance on solar energy, to shut down the natural gas-powered Decker Power Plant by 2016, and to change the ownership of the city’s share in the Fayette coal-fired power plant to make it easier to sell or shut down.   
Though the recommendations haven’t been formally presented to the council yet, Austin Energy has already begun a campaign against the report. The utility pushed back against many of its conclusions, saying too much renewable energy too quickly can be prohibitively costly for ratepayers.   
The City Council had previously set a goal of generating 35 percent of the utility’s energy from renewable sources by 2020. But Austin Energy is on track to reach that goal early in 2016. So the City Council set a new goal of becoming carbon-free by 2050, and it created a task force to study what the utility’s renewable goals should be.   
But the utility hopes to persuade the council to back off the hard deadlines, and it is presenting its own plan in September for future power generation.   
“It’s important what Austin Energy thinks,” said Michael Osborne, the chair of the Generation Resource Planning Task Force and a former Austin Energy executive. “But it’s the City Council that sets the policy.”   
And the City Council is facing pressure from renewable energy advocates and environmentalists to reduce the utility’s dependence on its coal, gas and even nuclear-powered plants, which make up 79 percent of the utility’s power generation.   
“When we have acted in the past as first-movers, with the biomass plant and Webberville solar plant, we are locked into long-term contracts at above-market cost, and it’s not entirely clear what the value of those investments was,” said Mark Dreyfus, the director of regulatory and government affairs at Austin Energy.   
The Webberville solar farm, just east of Austin, was approved in 2009, and it costs the utility 16.5 cents-per-kilowatt-hour, vs. a new solar energy contract the utility just inked for around 5 cents-per-kilowatt hour.   
Proponents of renewable energy, however, are deeply skeptical of Austin Energy’s conclusions.   
Task force members interviewed by the Statesman said they don’t buy Austin Energy’s argument that investing heavily in renewable energy would be more expensive than so-called “brown” energy sources like coal or natural gas.   
Osborne said information provided by Austin Energy about the cost of its gas generation shows it is nearly twice as much per megawatt-hour as solar energy.   
“Any fool can see looking at these numbers provided by Austin Energy that (renewable) is cheaper than gas or coal for energy in the future,” said Tom “Smitty” Smith, the state director of watchdog group Public Citizen.   
Smith said the utility isn’t making price comparisons based on the future cost of renewables and brown power.   
“The thing that Austin Energy is ignoring, and that City Council has directed them to do, is to take every step they can to reduce their carbon emissions because of the greater risk to our community of global warming,” Smith said. “It’s time for Austin Energy to grow up and act responsible for their emissions.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Austin, Texas 7-23-14

Contact:
Dean Wright
The Austin Texas Tea Party
3267 Bee Caves Rd Ste 107 #222
Austin, TX 78746-6773
V: 888-676-7221 x:701
F: 888-676-7221
Dean@NewRevolutionNow.org

Travis County and the City of Austin Should Not Support Housing Illegal Alien Children

The humanitarian crisis at the border with Mexico and now deep within our country is a direct result of President Obama’s 2012 executive order, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Tens of thousands of Central American children have left their homes and families to illegally enter America. The majority of these children have been subjected to harsh and inhumane treatment while traveling to the border. Many have died trying to cross the border. There is great public concern not only for the illegal alien children but for our own children and the communities we live in.

“People are quite concerned about how this is going to impact our nation’s sovereignty, and how it is going to impact communities,” Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said. “The public health security of our nation, issues with smallpox and scabies and TB—those are true concerns for Americans and for the Border Patrol working to end this, and the National Guard who are on the border, and for the direct-care providers in these facilities trying to care for these children.”

Do we, the citizens of Travis County, really want to house and support these illegal alien children or should they be immediately sent back to their homes and families? In response to Austin Interfaith’s urging of our county and city officials to aid these illegal aliens, we would like to ask our county and city officials the following questions:

1)      Does this Council/Commission have any advance information concerning any illegal immigrants coming to our city/County? Are there any coming here and, if so, how many?

2)      Where are these illegal aliens to be housed or detained?  Will there be any public debate offered regarding the locations chosen for housing illegal aliens?

3)      Has the city/county enough financial resources to manage an influx of hundreds or thousands of non-English speaking, indigent people?  Are the enough law enforcement resources, hospital and medical services, and other civic resources funded and available to manage illegal aliens re-located to our communities?

4)      Does the city/county have a contingency/emergency plan developed to cover this specific scenario?

5)      Will the care and services available to citizens in this city/county be affected by the sudden and large influx of illegal aliens?

We encourage our county and city official to be forthright with answers to these questions and more. We encourage our county and city officials to hold public hearings and debates before acting on this important issue. We encourage all candidates running for city council and mayor to take a public stand.

We urge our local, state and federal official to take immediate steps to resend/defund DACA, to secure our border with Mexico and to send the illegal alien children back to their homes and families.

###

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Austin, Texas 7-15-14

Contact:
 Dean Wright
The Austin Texas Tea Party
3267 Bee Caves Rd Ste 107 #222
Austin, TX 78746-6773
V: 888-676-7221 x:701
F: 888-676-7221
Dean@NewRevolutionNow.org

The Texas Border Crisis

In response to the illegal immigration crisis on the border between Texas and Mexico, the Austin Texas Tea Party endorses the following statements from Texas U.S. Senator Ted Cruz.   “We are witnessing a humanitarian crisis unfolding that is the direct consequence of President Obama’s lawlessness. When the President of the United States prevents the Border Patrol from following the law, and enforcing our immigration laws, when the President of the United States announces to the world amnesty for those who have broken the law, the consequence is people respond to that, and the way they respond to that is handing over their children to drug dealers and vicious cartels.”

With that said, we make the following points:

1. Our hearts go out to all the children involved in the massive flow of illegal aliens to the United States but we refuse to be a party to the enabling of policies and behavior that contributes to the mutilation, rape, brutalization and even death of children attempting to reach the US border in their belief of amnesty.

2. We cannot bear the thought of human trafficking for the purpose of prostitution, child pornography, and indentured servitude.

3. We are not prepared to spend our limited budgets and resources to fight an unrestricted drug trade and multi-national crime as the result of US border and immigration policies.

4. We do not want to see the health and safety of our own children, seniors, and communities suffer at the expense of pro-amnesty, open borders ideology promoted by the Left.

5. Our issue isn’t with illegal minors, but with a federal government whose policies promote horrors upon the “trail of tears” for which these people are lured from their own countries.  Our issue is with a U.S. federal  government that entices illegal immigration with a veiled promise of amnesty.  Our issue is with a federal government that packs kids into detention centers in conditions worse than prison.  Our issue is with a federal government that bypasses State and local governments, who fires agents, medical personnel and care givers who speak out about detainee conditions, and censors media in the name of “protecting” the children above the right of the people to know the truth.

We call on the Austin City Council to answer the following questions:

1. Does the city council have any advance information concerning any illegal immigrants coming to our city? Are there any coming here and, if so, how many?

2. Where are these illegal aliens to be housed or detained?  Will there be any public debate offered regarding the locations chosen for housing illegal aliens?

3. Has the city enough financial resources to manage an influx of hundreds or thousands of non-English speaking, indigent people?  Are there enough law enforcement resources, hospital and medical services, and other civic resources funded and available to manage illegal aliens re-located to our communities?

4. Does the city have a contingency/emergency plan developed to cover this specific scenario?

5. Will the care and services available to citizens in this city be affected by the sudden and large influx of illegal aliens?

###

Contributed by Dan Short

Who really loves liberty? Is it the American public that votes for communism and the totalitarian control of our lives by government? On the other hand, is the real identifier of those who loved liberty the peasants of Russia who died by the millions, in the genocide of communism, enslaving their nation?

Watching America today by acquiescence – or in more honesty, stupidity – elect a communist, not of our ethnicity, not of our culture, not of even the race of the society of this nation one can only wonder what happened to this nation.

Is it the peasant that is required to understand liberty, that a society of men with liberty –and the enumerations of legislative relief from government, preserving his freedom –cannot seem to comprehend? Why is it in the history of man, it has never been the aristocrat, the royalty, the dictator that has ever strived for man’s liberty? Yet the history – even the distorted bastardized history of what passes as history today – emphasizes that it is the lowest of society, the working man, the average American that goes to work every day, does what has to be done, raises his children, worships his God, and ask but one thing. That the government leaves him and his alone and just preserves the nation, the culture, and the ethnicity in which he lives. That’s it, nothing more.

Perhaps it is that in this nation so many do not comprehend the philosophy of liberty. Perhaps there is some absurd concept that if government steals in your behalf, then it is liberty. Little realizing that in that theft, the destruction of freedom of those being robbed destroys the liberty of the victims. That in a nation of ‘we’ inclusive of us all, what you are to have is that all others are to have, nothing more.

We are experiencing the nihilism of the state destroying this nation. There is no reasonable person, who is cognitive in this nation that could refute that reality. Today the same scenario that was advanced by Lenin in the destruction of Russia is being advanced in this nation with one exception. Lenin had resistance; this advancement of destroying this nation has none.

Yet there are some similarities, though not in the absolutes that occurred in Russia. The Russian problem was the same as the white’s – the name of the opposition to the Bolsheviks Reds – in this nation have. The Whites of the Russian revolution controlled most of Russia, but they were fractured. There were many different leaders, many different ideologies, many who wanted the anonymity to make independent and separate nations. Their vote was not to vote for a nihilist who was wishing to destroy their nation, their vote was to take up arms and oppose the communist nation of the Red Bolshevik Communist dementia.

The advantage of those of the communist dementia, they never wavered, never varied, never ever veered from the objective of totalitarian sovereignty of the ‘state, the government,’ to dictate the lives of the citizens. They also had no concept of anything but control, control, and more control. The only objective ever in the administrative concept of communism is, and has always been, the same as Satan, earthly domination of even the lives – the power of life and death – over the population they ‘CONTROL,’ not govern.

It was death that they brought, death in every way imaginable. Death by starvation, death by destroying the very means for society to sustain sustenance, death by criminal actions, legislative actions of draconian courts to eliminate those opposed, death, wholesale death – the one any only result know from the communist advance until the current illusion of damn-o-crazy and universal suffrage.

It is the empirical facts, the truth that the dementia of communism has the record of the death of more people than every disease except one, smallpox. It as a dementia of mankind has led to the deaths of more humans than anything else, and the record holder of political deaths to heights unknown in the annals of civilization.

How those in this nation are so beyond reason to think that communism will succeed here without force is beyond comprehension. Show one example. In the annals of history, in the annals of the society of man, there is not today anywhere on the face of this planet where to have the final achievement of communist domination force has not been applied.

Perhaps it is the fact we think that as long as we – the populace of this nation –are not being rounded up, transported to a pit … as the Polish officers captured and then exterminated in the Katyn forest massacre under the approval of Joseph Stalin … we are not under the assault of the state. Is that fact, can we believe that? If so why is every agency of government being equipped with weapons? Why does the agricultural department need or require automatic rifles? Why them, is it the average citizen has to jump through hoops and financial penalty to gain access to the same weapons for their final preservation, to take action preserving their individual liberty? As Lincoln eloquently said … ‘we (those who love this nation, who would put their lives for its preservation) take increased devotion to that cause which (so many before us, those who have given their lives for this nation’s preservation) take increased devotion to that cause (that cause of this nation’s preservation, ideals, philosophy, principles and religion. (Would) give that last full measure of devotion … their very lives … and resolve …this nation shall not die in vain – that this nation, ‘UNDER GOD,’ shall not have a new birth of freedom from government tyranny. It shall remain the land of the free and the home of the brave – as its philosophy and idealism has stood … since our founding … above all other nations known in man’s existence.

The siren song, the temptation of the ignorant, the self-interest of every man advanced that the government is an agent of theft on your behalf. That in a society where government has all the power, it can steal from all, for the redistribution to some. The fallacy sold worldwide to those who acquiesce to recipients of stolen wealth from others.

The theft is spread to all. The legislation that creates income disparity is today and has always been … the actions of legislation. Confirmation that if the government is involved in anything it should not be … the result is, and has always been dismal failure. The reason, the why, our nation, this wonder of THE united STATES of America enumerated … restricted and identified … the powers of government.  

The legislation of corporate considerations is as caustic against the ideals of men are equal as the civil legislation of affirmative actions. The application of tax codes, and the control of every aspect of society is … with the application of control and deduction as draconian as the KGB, or any other totalitarian arm of dictatorial government … as controlling as those who round up citizens, under the guise of government orders and summarily execute them.

In the fantasy and fallacy of socialist damn-o-cratic Europe, and this central planning of THE anti-American nation now existing in this country, many believe this nation is different. Some magically way we will be able to go through some metamorphism to communism without suffering the pain of all others. There is no way to make this prognosis, this hypothesis, or this absolute illusion perhaps hallucination. The opposite is the fact. For our demise will be of greater pain and suffering than the millions upon millions of those killed to advance communism in other nations. For our nation will – as our elected nihilist, Americas god Silva of our destruction, our Mea Maxima Culpa, our greatest error – will bring the destruction to this nation making the salting of the earth, the slavery of the populace of Carthaginian’s by the Romans – seems as if but a slight inconvenience of their society in comparison.

For our society – our ethnicity – our laws – our mores, morals – and most importantly the religion of this nation will be destroyed. The enterprise of this nation will cease to exist. The very culture of society will denigrate to something that only those who believe in the incomprehensible concept of evolution would acknowledge – the society of beast – not man.

This is not some theorem, some fantasy of possibility. This is the fact that can be confirmed by reason … the most propagandized press and journalism … even known to man outside of Hitler’s Goebbele Germany, or Lenin’s control of all press and publication in Russia … by the journalistic fantasy of distortion and absolute lies in this nation.

So we are left with  absolutely fallacy that there is not one statement, one release, one comment of our president, the government, or the bureaucracy of our current government that cannot be proven as lie, with just the slightest effort or attempt.  

Our future is known, for it has occurred before. The Weimar Republic of post WWI destroyed the wealth of the nation, all in the name of saving society. The result, millions of lives made destitute. Futures and past of generations destroyed in the blink of an eye. This is the same thing occurring in this nation today with the devaluation, and the debauching of our currency, our nation’s wealth by the incompetence and communism of government design. Our nation today is facing the same as the Tribe of Abraham, as we watch the Chinese buy our nation, the islamist invade our nation, and cultures and ideologies are protected by our laws, while destroying the very culture of our society, the foundations of our culture and the wonder of the ‘WHITE ENGLISH’ design of our nation.

As the tribe of Abraham experienced, slavery, so shall all – even those who are in the illusion that it is for their benefit this is happening – experience a slavery without future, a slavery without dreams, a slavery whereas most in communist countries learn. They begin to pray, not to a god to send them someone for a salvation, but for death … the final escape from the tyranny of government … and the totalitarianism of the state.    

We are just in the beginning throws of degradation the nihilism of this man who hates our nation, our culture, our government, and even the race of those who inhabit this nation. For so many to not see the obvious is beyond the comprehension of reason mankind. Yet daily, in our society, by actions of our government, by the words said to our nation’s populace. The obvious is obvious. We are in a war. It is the war between the preservation of this nation, or witnessing its destruction. The nihilism, the destruction, the debauching of Christian civilized society is occurring all around us in every imaginable way.

The result, today more and more say, it is not the survival of this absolute disgrace of an administration that we must survive. The question is can we survive as a nation with all of the poison pills … the seeds of our destruction … that are now inundating our society, continuing on an exponential continuum?

Contributed by Paul Gelenscer

So...... the City of Austin is in discussions with the openly racist Eric Holder Dept of Justice (DOJ) over how much the DOJ is going to strong-arm out of our pockets over unsupported claims that minorities were discriminated against in hiring by the fire dept.  Since both sides of the negotiation are manned by rabid liberals, I'm sure we can expect the city to fold like a cheap suit and agree with the DOJ that minorities are victims of City of Austin oppression.  We're talking nearly $800,000 here - that's serious money for a ridiculous claim.

At issue are the results of standardized tests for firefighter jobs, which resulted in proportionately more white candidates than black or hispanic candidates passing the tests.

The DOJ letter to the city essentially acknowledges the city may have standards in place which result in disproportionate hiring of whites as long as the standards are relevant to the job.  However, in the letter the DOJ claimed that a "statistically significant" low passing rate by minorities on standard professional tests, written by a national board, is sufficient reason to conclude that the city of Austin - rabidly liberal, and inclusion obsessed Austin - has discriminated against minorities.  See the circular logic?  We can have hiring standards that result in racial imbalances as long as the process was fair, but the racial imbalance proves the process wasn't fair.  As for whether the test was relevant to the job, the DOJ doesn't include that in their determination.  They just acknowledge the law allows this, but then they ignore this requirement.

You might recognize the words "ignore" and "law" get used a lot when discussing the Obama administration.  The Obama administration ignores the law when using the IRS to intimidate political opponents, and when declaring exemptions to Obamacare when that law starts to fail, and when the law gets in the way of their desire to let illegal aliens stay in the country.  Now they're adding laws regarding valid hiring practices to the list of laws they ignore.

According to the DOJ letter to the city, the DOJ did not consider differences in time spend studying for the test, which might have shown whether the test results correlate with effort by candidates to prepared for it, rather than with racism.  Maybe the white candidates just tried harder.  By then this is Eric Holder's style - whites are assumed racist until proven innocent.