Austin City Council members Vanessa Fuentes, José Velásquez, and Mike Siegel held a town hall in mid-November, two weeks after the defeat of Proposition Q, the proposal to increase property taxes to pay for public safety, social services, and other city needs. The Council members told the crowd that they had heard the will of the voters. It was time to take a hard look at spending.
Robin Rather, an informed citizen who regularly attends meetings of this kind, took the mic to ask a question, hoping to better understand why city leaders can’t move money from some of the ambitious and expensive projects the city has approved over the last five years. The projects she had in mind included the “cap and stitch” plan to beautify I-35, which is expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars. They included Project Connect, the plan to bring a metro rail system to Austin, at a cost of between $5.8 billion and $10.3 billion, though much of that figure may be covered by a federal grant. They also included the creation of a new convention center, which is well underway and projected to cost over a billion dollars.
Rather said she knew that these endeavors are capital improvement projects – infrastructure projects like a highway, a building, or a train station – and that the funding for such projects comes from its own pot of money. That money is prohibited, by law, from being used for the city’s ongoing expenses, things like paying its police officers or maintaining its parks. The costs for such ongoing services are paid through the city’s General Fund…