A tax revolt brewing in Travis County?!?

"But the former governors who were before me laid burdens on the people, and took from them bread and wine, besides forty shekels of silver. Yes, even their servants bore rule over the people, but I did not do so, because of the fear of God."
Nehemiah 5:15

You spend one weekend out of town and all heck breaks loose:



But, it gets better, this person spoke to the statesman over the weekend:

“I’m at the breaking point,” said Gretchen Gardner, an Austin artist who bought a 1930s bungalow in the Bouldin neighborhood just south of downtown in 1991 and has watched her property tax bill soar to $8,500 this year.

“It’s not because I don’t like paying taxes,” said Gardner, who attended both meetings. “I have voted for every park, every library, all the school improvements, for light rail, for anything that will make this city better. But now I can’t afford to live here anymore. I’ll protest my appraisal notice, but that’s not enough. Someone needs to step in and address the big picture.”

That quote has been rightly mocked (including by Glenn Beck this morning), but it illustrates how the situation in Austin is changing.    Affordability has become a major issue (and was one of the reasons we were able to beat the school bond last year.)  The usual suspects of big business/big government facists might have finally asked for too much.