Bicycle Austin forum

MichaelBluejay

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From: Austin, TX

Registered: 2008-05-26

Posts: 1,455

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What happened to the 2000 bond money?

Roger Baker wrote this in 2006:

On March 7, 2006, Raul Alvarez asked the city to reveal how the $150 million in city bond money for transportation passed in 2000 (Proposition 1 back then) has been spent so far. I got the results of his request in response to my own recent similar open records request made to reveal how our bond money had been spent.

This bond money was supposed to be allocated in portions at $15 million a year for ten years. So far $84 million has been spent with $66 million in transportation bond authorization yet remaining.

Guess where the first five years worth of Austin bond money went? The first $67.2 million ALL went for SH 130 right of way, and not a penny for any of the the other things promised to the bond voters on the ballot! Meanwhile those of us who live inside Austin are additionally paying a lot for Williamson County toll roads, like SH 130, via our Travis County property taxes.

In the last year, for the first time, some of the $150 million has been used for other purposes like widening roads (to widen roads like one that leads to SH 130 for example), but not a penny has yet been spent for the promised bike projects, although $10 million was recently proposed in response to Alvarez's request (with about $5 million so far for sidewalks). If you read the Chronicle article, you will see that $20 million was being promised for bike and ped projects just before the election. The exact ballot language and more background on these bonds is below.

To me, this kind of tightly held information and bait and switch bond stuff is proof of why we need to pass the Open Government charter amendment, Prop 1.

Well, Prop. 1 was a non-starter, but what finally happened with the 2000 bond money?  Did anyone watchdog it?

The 2006 ($103 million) and 2010 Mobility Bonds ($90 million) seem to have better oversight.  The City set up a Bond Oversight Committee to oversee the 2006 and 2010 bonds, and there's a City web page detailing the specific projects for the 2010 bonds.