Why Paige Ellis's signatures were rejected

It's been three weeks since Paige Ellis's petition for a third term on City Council was rejected by the city clerk due to an insufficient number of valid signatures. Today I finally got a look at the reasons the signatures were rejected.

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According to the clerk's calculation, Ellis needed 3,044 valid signatures from voters in her district (5% of District 8's registered voters) to exceed the city's term limits.

When she turned in her petition, Ellis said she had 3,409 signatures. According to the clerk, however, there were only 3,317, leaving a margin of only 273 signatures above the minimum.

A valid signature must include a printed name, a signature, the date, the address of the signatory and either their date of birth or their voter ID number.

Here are the reasons the clerk listed for disqualifying signatures:

Considering that the campaign was collecting signatures until the very last minute, it's not surprising to see that it didn't spot certain glaring problems, notably all of the duplicate signatures or signatures lacking required info, such as date or date of birth.

In the campaign's defense, there was no way for it to know that 23 of its signers had also apparently signed opponent Selena Xie's petition.

Candidates who aren't trying to exceed term limits don't have to submit any signatures, but they can get around the $500 filing fee if they submit 250 from voters in their district. Xie, no doubt knowing that any signature she got would make it a little bit harder for Ellis to qualify, collected 500 signatures over the past six months.

The bottom line is that Ellis's campaign would have gotten more than enough valid signatures if it had begun a little earlier. She had six months to collect them but didn't hiring paid canvassers until two months before the deadline. Had she begun a month earlier, a 10% error rate wouldn't have been a problem.

It's a valuable lesson for the next Council member (or mayor!) who tries to run for a third term. Any idea who that might be?

Budget cuts are hard, Exhibit 1,000

I've often made the point that there really isn't a lot of low-hanging fruit to cut from the city budget. The city's chief fiscal challenge is the escalating salaries of cops (especially cops), firefighters and EMS medics. These are the three functions that everyone seems to agree are "needs" instead of merely "wants."

But it's worth noting that a big part of what makes Austin special are its public spaces. Barton Springs, Zilker Park and the Central Library are the first three that come to mind, but its many lesser parks, pools and libraries are also treasured as vital neighborhood assets.

When city budget officials or Council members are trying to balance the budget, it makes sense that they'd see a little cut to pool hours or park programming as a relatively painless way to do it. But these moves invariably prompt intense backlash, often forcing the city to retreat.

The most recent example is Austin Park & Recreation's decision to cancel the city-run adult basketball and volleyball leagues to save $400,000 a year. From KUT:

But this week, following backlash from people who play indoor sports at the Austin Recreation Center, the city reversed course, announcing that the basketball and volleyball programs will continue.

The leagues remain under the city for now and will be outsourced in the future.

“The city needs additional time to find a suitable third-party vendor so the leagues will continue until further notice,” the city wrote in a statement.

Reporter Luz Moreno-Lozana talked to longtime league participants, including a woman who has been coming with her husband for 25 years, describing it as a "cheap date night."

Alina Scott, who plays for another team in the league, said players become part of each other’s lives.

“The team that I currently play with, we’ve played together for almost three years now,” she said. “We’ve gone through different life cycles with each other. We’ve seen graduations and weddings and trips.”

Many who play in the league shared the same story, saying it gives them a sense of community.

APR tells me there are 138 court volleyball teams, 10 beach volleyball teams and 101 basketball teams. They don't track the number of participants (only teams) but that number of teams implies an absolute minimum of 1,353, but likely far more. Closer to 2,000, if I had to guess. That's a pretty good value for $400,000!

It's been a quarter-century since the publication of Bowling Alone, the seminal book about the decline of social connection in America, a symptom of which was the decreased participation in social organizations and group activities, from Moose lodges to bowling leagues. It's only gotten worse since. If anything, I think liberal city governments should be doing whatever they can to stimulate more communal activities.

Instead of cutting the programs entirely, APR has said it plans to eventually outsource them to a private vendor. The price to participate will probably go up significantly as a result.

Tough times call for tough measures. I get it. But similar to closing down a library or a pool, I don't think money saved by cutting popular programs like this is worth the blow to citizen morale.

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