Austin City and AISD budgets

Slicing up the Austin taxpayer pie...

The Austin city budget pie chart is shown below. This does not include the $300 million plus spent by Cap Metro; nor does it include the AISD budget of over $700 million; nor does it include the ACC budget of $157 million; nor does it include the Travis county budget of $400 million; nor does it include the Healthcare Tax district budget of over $50 million; nor does it include the Austin Energy slush fund. So what's left? Police, firemen, parks, and ... well, what exactly does transfer/others mean? Graft, corruption and waste?!? (the Chronicle says: "This nebulous category accounts for project funding and support staff in offices like sanitation or the law department. The budget proposes an increase for funding these offices, including council offices.")

Chart courtesy of Austin Chronicle. More on the budget here.

AISD: The AISD budget message shows the art of OBFUSCATION: What bureaucrats trying to hide the huge spending increases they are engaging in. The message says everything about the budget except the one essential thing - how big it is. Reading the full budget we find: The budget funding totals $748 million, an increase of 13% over the previous year; appropriations come in at $727 million, an increase of nearly 7%. Notably, state funding is doubling from $47 million to over $100 million, but local funding is not going down. AISD did the max tax increase they could without going to the voters, 4 points (from 1.34 to 1.37% valuation) and along with property value increases, that is keeping the local property taxpayers soaked. The cost per pupil is $9,700, but there is a chapter 41 recapture amount of $126 million for net cost per pupil of $8,000. The bottom line: A K-12 education for each single student in AISD costs over $100,000. PDF of full AISD budget.