*****Weather*****
What a nice bit of weather! I got .45 inch yesterday and over half an inch so far today. That's known as GREAT news. Looks like more is possible over the next couple of days too! And to top it off, the temperatures are much better - high of 83° yesterday and a high of 86° so far today. Maybe we'll have a wonderful fall! As always, the current conditions can be seen here at the 15th tee of Live Oak.
*****City Stuff*****
It appears the city is continuing on its mission of spending more of our tax dollars. They have spent hundreds of thousands on consultants in the last couple of years with little to show for it.
Now they want to add positions to staff. This is really expensive, not only do you pay a salary, but also benefits and generally the positions never go away.
For instance - a Planning Person. I guess I'm confused, I thought we had a committee of citizens called ZAPCO. ZAPCO stands for Zoning and Planning... For 50 years it's worked pretty well - so let's change it.
They want to hire a Grant Writer. Well, how many grants can we get? Would it be more than the salary of a full time Grant Writer? I've heard that there are many Professional Grant Writers that will work for a percentage of the grant. Unless we are looking at at least $100k per year, this seems like a waste.
They also want an Emergency Coordinator. That was handled by the Mayor (with appointment of a council member) and the Police (Captain Crowder). In the event of an significant emergency, the Fire Chief is actually in command and Police and Elected Officials follow his direction.
They are also talking about needing Police vehicles - I agree with that and a plan was in place to retire and purchase vehicles every year to keep the fleet renewed. That has stopped. They gave the police 1 vehicle last year and plan 1 this year. With a fleet of 30? vehicles, if you replace 1 a year we will soon have some very old police cars....
I think they need to tighten the budget, lower tax rates and spend the money wisely! What do you think?
*****Open Record Request 3*****
Let's talk about the YMCA project. Haven't heard about that for a while have we? The council passed a resolution (MOU) to work on it months ago without much public input.
Here is a link to the presentation the YMCA did for us about 5 years ago. If you read through it, a lot is good stuff - many things that would be nice.
If you dig a little deeper here's what you come up with. The facility will cost about $20 million + property. The city is on the hook for this and then the YMCA gets a lease on the building (minimal cost) and runs the facility. The city tax dollars pay for all this.
As far as representation, 78734 would make up about 10% of the membership. If you add 78738 and our other zip, it works its way up to about 25%. So that means citizens pay for 100% but 75% of the members live outside the city limits and don't pay Lakeway taxes. That's why we dropped it 5 years ago.
I'm not sure if the current administration even looked at this - they had a hard time finding it to give it to me. But a lot of attorney and council time in executive sessions went into it. More tax money.
To be fair, the school district is involved and I'm sure will put something into the pot, they want the swimming facilities. I'm not sure it's really worth it.
+++++++++++++++++
Our local Judge, Kevin Madison, was just awarded a plaque of their
8th Traffic Safety Award for Lakeway Municipal Court of Record! congratulations for a GREAT Judge!That's all for right now. I'll be concentrating on the Charter Review Amendments very soon. I think we need to take a hard look at what our current council is trying to do. I have some significant ethical concerns with what is going on. So stay tuned!
I will be doing some more church pictures soon - maybe some more inside! I'll post them when I get them.
If you would like to be added to the blog email list, please send a note to lakeway@bain.us and I'll get you added!
Joe Bain
lakeway@bain.us
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