building things
Austin, TX
Joined August 2014
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That’s the way government works - first they take the citizens’ money away quietly & destroy livelihoods, and then they give some of it back flamboyantly - to make themselves look benevolent.
If they didn’t tax everybody into oblivion we wouldn’t have this problem.
Michael Magner retweeted
So… what exactly did TxLege Republicans prioritize when they still had power?
(Without video, no one would believe me.)
🤦♂️
Michael Magner retweeted
🚨PRIORITIES: Instead of dealing with property taxes today… the Texas House will decide which cut of beef is the official state STEAK.
No, this is not a joke.
(I wish it was.)
Is this true @KirkPWatson ?
Austin is paying $1.3 million to advertise its convention center on a local PBS TV show.
The original convention center, which cost $145 million to build, was demolished last year and is being rebuilt for $5.6 billion.
The ad money goes to KLRU, which will give the city department a 15-second “sponsor acknowledgment” on both sides of the show, and a the convention center department’s logo on the ACL webpage.
Michael Magner retweeted
🚨 I call on Gov. Abbott to IMMEDIATELY convene a special session to REIN IN EXECUTIVE EMERGENCY POWERS… before Gina Hinojosa is sworn in!
Republicans lost last night, but Democrats were not sworn in.
We still have total power in Texas, and we must act like it by using the remaining ten weeks to restore separation of powers and limit the emergency powers that Governor-Elect Hinojosa is set to inherit, which would allow her to destroy liberty in Texas by executive fiat.
I’ve warned since I was first elected that NO governor, Republican or Democrat, should have unchecked emergency powers!
Now that Texas has elected a Democrat Governor, the urgency is undeniable… and inaction is intolerable.
Without action, Governor Hinojosa will inherit the powers of a DICTATOR.
Due to the absurd (and almost certainly unconstitutional) Texas emergency powers laws, Gov. Hinojosa will literally have the power to modify laws, ignore laws, or create and enforce laws – including criminal laws – on a whim!
Today is a day for ACTION, and bold leadership.
The Texas Legislature must immediately pass, and Governor Abbott must sign, legislation like HB911, which I filed in 2022 and warned at the time, that “Never ending emergency powers are antithetical to representative government and render people powerless. Legislative bodies allowing a single executive branch official to both write and enforce laws is the biggest threat to our constitutional system of divided government and should be opposed irrespective of which political party runs the executive branch.”
My legislation would protect liberty from executive fiat by, among other things, taking the following actions:
1. Prohibit the Governor from suspending or modifying statutes
2. Sunset emergency orders in 30 days if the legislature does not ratify the order
3. Prohibit the governor from reissuing emergency orders that expired or the legislature rejected
4. Require emergency orders to be narrowly tailored
5. Subject emergency orders to expedited judicial review
We have TEN WEEKS LEFT to protect Texas from near total Democrat rule.
I encourage every elected Republican in Texas to join my demand for Gov. Abbott to call a special session.
The future of liberty in America is literally on the line in Texas, and Texans deserve leadership that acts accordingly.
@GregAbbott_TX
I think the craziest part of the Austin elections is that ppl voted for $300,000,000 in additional spending/tax increases?! I don’t buy it. Prop Q was OVERWHELMINGLY voted down just a year ago and now all of a sudden ppl want their taxes to increase?! Doesn’t make sense.
If you live in District 8 go vote for Bowen!
Polls open tomorrow, 7am to 7pm.
District 8 waits 16.1 minutes for police on Priority 1 calls. Slowest in Austin. Citywide: 12.4.
37 years here. I don't take developer money. They have more money. We have more neighbors.
Vote, then bring a neighbor.
district8dispatch.substack.c…
TSA at @AustinAirport is hostile. Opt out of their radiation machine & they make your life hell. They tell you “you’re making our job harder, we have to work, we don’t have time for this” & intentionally force you to wait 20 mins to deter you from opting out. Classic Government.
A massive school funding scheme is going on in Texas and Austin is getting screwed.
Austin ISD taxpayers alone will send $630mm to the state through recapture aka “Robin Hood” so the state can divvy that up to “poor” districts.
But how does the money actually get spent?
My gut says there’s some shady things going on behind the scenes here. Hundreds of millions of dollars being stolen from Austin (and many other cities!) and sent to private companies to host online schools is bullshit and worth an investigation. @GregAbbott_TX
The biggest scam is escrow - they keep your money hostage all year for two events - your property tax bill and insurance. It just sits there not being put to work. You could easily structure the escrow into 13 week t-bills and earn some money on your money.
HOME creates the opportunity for more housing supply, which helps on that side of the equation. But supply is only part of the equation. There are other costs directly driven by the city and our local tax system: property taxes, permitting, and building restrictions.
Property taxes are destroying affordability. We have created a completely backwards incentive. When someone fixes up their house, replaces the roof, paints it, installs new siding, or otherwise improves their property, we reward them by making it MORE expensive to continue living there. Why?!
We should be encouraging people to maintain and improve their homes, not penalizing them for doing it. If anything, we should be lowering the tax burden on homeowners who invest in their properties.
Then there is TCAD. We’ve made it next to impossible for an ordinary person to effectively challenge an appraisal without spending days or even weeks gathering evidence and learning an incredibly complicated system. Most people simply don’t have that kind of time. When people do protest and win, they should adjust ALL properties in that area. The entire appraisal system is broken, rigged, and ridiculous.
Finally, one way Austin makes construction expensive is with its obsession with trees. Don’t get me wrong, I ❤️ trees. I try to keep as many as possible when building. But there has to be a middle ground. Right now if the permitting department has to choose between preserving a tree and making a home significantly less expensive to build, the tree wins. There are undoubtedly lots where tree restrictions add so much cost, complexity, or uncertainty that builders simply pass on the property altogether.
Every additional restriction has a cost, and ultimately that cost gets passed on to the person buying or renting the home.
I subdivided a lot in Austin once and it cost $150k! Took a full year. That’s what drives the cost of housing up.
We have to address the entire cost of creating and owning housing.
This commentary on “HOME failing to provide affordable housing” is just getting exhausting, and I think a disqualifying misunderstanding of markets
Let’s talk through the economics….
A single-family lot in a “decent” neighborhood in Austin with a house that has outlived its lifespan goes for about $500k, if it is a fairly new home (1 home on 1 lot), it’s probably $1.2M or much more.
On the lot where we need to build a new home, assuming average Austin lot size of 8k sf, with 0.4 FAR, you’re building a 3200sf home that will sell for $500/sf+ (that’s the market). That’s $1.6M on the low end, often much higher due to land prices, not a starter home but somehow an ok status quo for the anti-HOME crowd.
Now let’s take that same lot, build 3 homes at 0.65 FAR. That’s a 1750sf home, selling for probably closer to $400 per sf. That home is a great starter home, sells for between $600-$700k, 3 bed, 2.5 bath, less than half the cost of the 1 home on 1 lot.
When you factor in land costs, we typically see a HOME starter home closer to 1/3 the cost of a new build 1 on 1 lot.
Sure, there are examples of HOME homes going for $1M, but that’s not the average and those are often in neighborhoods where the land basis is much much higher.
Affordability is a very specific term that is related to MFI, not your feelings on what’s affordable. Developers build market rate housing, and the factors I describe above drive what the market rate is.
HOME just makes it easier to build more with less (necessary in a growing city), and increasing the supply of smaller homes with lower land bases is the number one thing we can do to lower market rates.
Michael Magner retweeted
Want to know how we got Travis County Central Health?
Here is a documentary all about how they came about.
youtube.com/watch?v=M8iu0Hso…
The more you know, the better informed you become.