Austin mayor casts lone votes against budget increases

"I am disappointed that City Council twice struck down my proposals to reduce the property tax rate at today's budget meeting," Leffingwell said in a written statement after the meeting. "The latest calculations of property tax revenues demonstrated excesses that were previously unforeseen. I wanted to give this new revenue back to tax payers. My proposals would have reduced the property tax rate by 0.36 cents per $100 of property valuation (approximately $4.5 million). This would have reduced the property tax rate from 48.09 percent to 47.73 percent."

After Leffingwell's efforts were thwarted, City Council members began proposing amendments to fund various projects. Leffingwell voted against almost all of the project proposals up for consideration.

"I'm going to vote against a lot of items today. [Funding these projects] is going to result in a tax increase," Leffingwell said during the meeting.

Before council entered into executive session around noon Sept. 8, its members had agreed to add almost $623,000 of one-time charges to the budget and a little more than $1 million of ongoing costs to the budget.

By the time City Council recessed at 5 p.m. Sept. 8, more than $3 million intended for one-time spending was approved. The general fund now has less than $400,000 left, while the Austin Energy and Austin Water Utility's enterprise fund took a hit of more than $700,000.

Programs funded through Sept. 8 approved increases:

• $112,241 of general funds to Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP)
• About $26,000 of general funds and $321,796 of one-time funding for an additional EMS Demand Unit
• $400,000 of single-use spending for Austin ISD after-school programming
• $151,000 from enterprise funds for advertisements regarding citywide flood prevention, protection and preparedness
• $133,700 from general fund for aquatics winter hours at Bartholomew Pool
• $55,000 from general funds and $55,000 from enterprise funds for municipal employee's same-sex partner health benefits