BATPAC PLATFORM

We are a general-purpose political action committee (PAC) committed to more functional, responsive, transparent, compassionate, and sustainable local government “best practices” in Austin and Travis County. We formed out of a sense of deep frustration with current officeholders who appear to:

  • consider monied interests, not residents and voters, as their primary constituents, and favor monied interests over residents when their interests diverge;

  • tolerate, support, or encourage a management culture that is disconnected from the community, devalues community collaboration, and provides false or misleading information while leaving out or manipulating critical information in support of pre-determined outcomes;

  • support discrete actions and policies that prioritize short-term private gain over the long-term public interest;

  • support unfair taxation policies that benefit the wealthiest people and corporations at the expense of resident taxpayers and the city general fund;

  • fail to fund and manage our public parks as public parks, but instead treat our public parks as assets to be leased out or traded for private benefit;

  • fail to implement the Austin Climate Equity Plan while taking “business-as-usual” actions that expand our collective carbon footprint and push us farther away from meeting our ACEP goals;

  • support develop-at-all-costs deregulation of land use under the guise of “affordable housing” and in the name of “affordability” that is neither affordable nor equitable and which exacerbates displacement, destroys community cohesions, accelerates the loss of Austin culture and heritage, and accelerates environmental degradation; and

  • fail to follow state law, city ordinances, and adopted city procedures.

Better Austin Today PAC supports candidates for public office (including incumbents) who join in supporting the following good government platform:

Public Participation in Decision-Making

  • Putting people first for a sense of community (those who live here now and future residents) by recognizing that balance is the key for economic development and quality of life;

  • Adopting uniform public engagement best practices;

  • Following state law, city ordinances, and adopted city procedures;

  • Conducting public hearings in compliance with current rules (LDC 25-1-151) allowing the community to hear and respond to staff and applicant presentations;

  • Supporting public speaker rules at council and boards and commissions meetings that put residents on equal footing with developer/project sponsor representatives and, except on rare occasions, allows residents to speak up to 3 minutes on an agenda item (as called for by current city council rules)

  • Scheduling public testimony at a time convenient for working people or providing a reasonable alternative method, and posting all written or digital comments received from the public in the Council Agenda back-up before the council hearing;

  • Opposing any charter amendment that would increase the number of signatures required to place an initiated ordinance review or charter amendment on the ballot, to recall an elected official, or to refer a city council measure to voter review;

  • Requiring proposed ordinances be posted no less than 14 days prior to any “first reading,” ending the practice of “first reading” of proposed ordinances when no such draft ordinance exists in violation of the Austin City Code (§ 2-5-12).

Transparency In Local Government

  • Reforming the public information office and processes to bring them into compliance with the letter (and spirit) of the Texas Public Information Act;

  • Pledging to follow the Acuna case holding that all changes in zoning regulations be subject to mailed notice to affected property owners and to the “valid petition” process required by current state law and the Court of Appeals decision in Acuna et al. v City of Austin, and adopting a resolution establishing as city policy to provide individual written notice and a right to protest whenever land use regulations, boundaries, or classifications are changed.

  • Requiring the timely posting online of all candidate and officeholder personal financial disclosure statements, declarations of conflict of interest, and declarations of recusal, and having such statements remain publicly posted for at least three years from the date of initial posting;

  • Amending public information request procedures to provide that unless the requesting party chooses to “opt out,” the request and all records produced in response to the public information request are posted and disclosed online in electronic form in a publicly accessible public records library at the time the records are produced, and such records shall remain posted on the public online and searchable library for at least 5 years.

Fairness in Taxation and Economic Justice

  • Opposing special corporate “Chapter 380” agreements that award tax rebates and other special benefits to large corporations, as well as the grandfathering of said agreements;

  • Opposing, phasing out, and refusing to debt-fund Tax Increment Reinvestment Zones that subsidize luxury development with tax dollars diverted from the City General Fund, and further reserving Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone financing to only those rare projects located in economically distressed zip codes that provide at least 30%  of the tax reinvestment funding to deeply affordable, onsite affordable housing.

  • Prioritizing hotel occupancy tax funding to support cultural tourism (artists, musicians, and unique locally-owned performing arts venues and other unique or historic locally-owned businesses) and that postpones for at least 5 years any move to tear down and replace the existing convention center (at a projected cost of $1.5 to $2 billion or more). 

  • Ending special  “Planned Unit Development” and other deals that waive or reduce standard development and other fees, require taxpayers to pay for utility or other costs of development normally paid for by developers, or that grant massive variances or other special terms that allow developers to avoid compliance with community standards and or/ annex adjacent park lands into private management or control.

Public Health and Environmental Protections

  • Recognizing the adverse impacts associated with incompatible and environmentally hazardous land uses in and around residential and ecologically sensitive areas across all of Austin;

  • Recognizing that water resources and conservation are essential for sustaining people and development;

  • Prioritizing funding and implementation of the Austin Climate Equity Plan in our next bond package and in “climate impact” statements attached to all significant actions of the Austin City Council;

  • Prioritizing the mitigation of environmental issues such as the increasing heat island effect, increasing localized flooding, loss of habitat, and increasing wildfire threat through the preservation and restoration of the urban tree canopy by enforcement of the tree ordinance and current impervious cover limits and by the maintenance of existing greenspace and expansion of greenspace in new redevelopment projects;

  • Recognizing that neighborhood park pools are no longer an amenity but rather a necessity for surviving summer heat and prioritizing their funding where current pools are missing or lacking;

  • Reinvesting in our parks department, expanding public park lands, and strengthening parks management, while halting the move towards private management and/or control of our public parks for moneymaking purposes;

  • Recognizing that increasing the building density significantly increases the likelihood for wildfires, and that enforcement of the WUI (Wildland-Urban Interface) building code setbacks is vital for the protection of life and property for over 40% of Austin.

Truth and Balance in Land Development

  • Recognizing that expanding the supply of market rate residential units through land use deregulation will not produce housing in the range that is affordable for the majority of our work force but will accelerate displacement of mid and lower income residents.

  • Halting the move toward the subdividing of every single family lot across Austin to stimulate the building of multiple units on each smaller lot, with relaxed setback and loss of other environmental protections that will lead to increased urban heat island effects, localized flooding, and destruction of thousands of heritage trees in all parts of the city.