No new logo for the cops?

But first...Austin's school crisis

Even after voters approved a $160 million tax hike for AISD last year, the school district is being forced to close schools. I am not in a position to comment on the district's budgeting, but there are two obvious long-term problems driving this crisis.

The first is the state of Texas stealing half of Austin's school tax funding. The problem is not necessarily the principle of "Robin Hood" or "recapture," the problem is that the state has simply decided to use property-rich districts like Austin as a piggy bank to REDUCE the amount that the state spends on education. So for every additional dollar that Austin taxpayers send to rural schools, the state spends one dollar less. So in reality, Austinites are not paying high taxes for the benefit of poorer school districts, they are paying higher taxes to pad the state budget. Here is how Al Kauffman, the attorney whose 1984 lawsuit on behalf of a rural school district forced the creation of the recapture system, described it in 2019:

"One of the reasons people don't want to get rid of recapture is the state makes money from it," Kauffman said. "If they don't have recapture, the state would have to replace that with state money."

Here is how a former state district judge Scott McCown put it:

"What the state has been doing is living off rising property values," he said. "The state just isn't keeping up with its share of the overall load, making recapture more and more prominent and unpopular."

In other words, Austinites are paying high property taxes so the state can shirk its obligation to fund education.

The second problem is Austin's decades-long refusal to build enough new housing. If the city of Austin had allowed new types of lower-cost, family-friendly housing to be built over the years, there would be more kids in AISD and therefore more funding for it. There are other factors driving AISD's enrollment decline, but that's definitely a big one.

Another thing to keep in mind is how the historic "new housing on the corridors but leave the neighborhoods" alone compromise doesn't address this problem. The result is single-family neighborhoods dominated by retirees and lots of new apartments on the corridors geared towards singles. The importance of "missing middle" housing is that it provides an option that will be more attractive to a lot of middle class families than an apartment complex (not to knock apartments –– we live in one now) but cheaper than a large-lot, detached single-family home.

A universal city logo – except for the most important stuff

One of the justifications for the much-mocked new city logo is that it will make it easier for residents to identify city assets: vehicles, facilities, etc. In theory enhanced "brand awareness" – to put it in marketingspeak – provides for greater transparency and accountability. When people see Austin Water or Austin Energy workers, the insignia on their uniforms or vehicles communicates to residents that they are city employees, accountable to the public and the leaders they elect.

However, there are three departments that will not adopt the new branding: the police department, the fire department and EMS.