City Government Coming to a Home near You!
The latest craze in government is the “going green” fad. The City of Austin is taking this fad to a new level by proposing to require existing homes to meet energy ratings before a home owner can sell their home. These point-of-sale energy efficiency upgrades is part of Austin Mayor Will Wynn’s Climate Protection Plan.
The intent of the plan may sound reasonable. After all, energy efficient homes will save homeowners money in energy costs and would prevent the City of Austin from purchasing additional coal to keep the power plants operating. (Let’s forget about the South Texas Nuclear Project again, by the way.) But, what is unreasonable is for the city to mandate that certain items must be upgraded in an existing home that meets all other building and fire codes before the existing home can be put on the market. In essence, the City of Austin is now adding a “green code” to the existing building codes in place.
Who pays for these additional codes? First is the existing homeowner who must pay for a city audit to determine which items need to be upgraded and then pay for the upgrades before putting the home on the market. Second is the new homebuyer who must pay an additional cost for the home at the point-of-sale and then that new homeowner will pay higher property taxes as their appraisal is increased due to upgrades to the home. Third to pay is the rest of the taxpayers as the cost of additional home inspections, energy audits, and bureaucratic red tape will cost money.
The unintended consequences of this plan will be a decrease in housing sales in Austin, higher appraisal values (they went up quite a bit from last year already), and a continuation of higher home prices. Pretty soon, the average Austinite will be priced out of living in Austin by government regulations and restrictions. In a time when Mayor Wynn’s party is crying out against “predatory” mortgage lenders, it is in fact these same government officials that are creating policies to increase the value of a home and raise taxes to the point that individuals cannot afford to purchase a home.
The environmentalist movement is an anti-capitalist regime that is attempting to convince mainstream Americans who make this country great that they need to make sacrifices to counter the affect of global climate change. The planet was here long before we came here and it will be here long after we leave. Our quality of life on this planet is altered more by tax-and-spend politicians seeking to generate more revenue than it is by choosing to replace your light bulbs with mercury-based fluorescent lights.
The Austin Board of Realtors is right in its opposition to the point-of-sale energy efficient regulations as proposed by Mayor Will Wynn. Once this code is created, there is nothing that will check the growth and intrusion of government into future home sales in Austin for environmental reasons. The further manipulation of the free market by the environmentalists will only work to drive home prices higher.
What can you do, you ask? There are three Austin City Council candidates that are opposed to this plan who need our help. They are Jason Meeker, Cid Galindo, and Randi Shade. If Mayor Wynn has a City Council that agrees with him on this plan, there will be very little that can be done to stop the further increase of local government control in the housing market. Will Wynn does not desire a “livable” city but instead, a liberal city.
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4 comments:
If you are afraid of a liberal city why the hell would you support Cid Gallendo?
I think the story line is clear:
There is a bat-sh*t crazy idea coming down to FORCE you to spend thousands when you sell your home. Its an attack on our property rights. Will Wynn has gone bonkers for it and is dragged the council alone.
Leffingwell, Morrison, and Kim are for this attack on our rights, while Meeker, Shade and Galindo are not.
On the conservative side, we sometimes have to pick between sane more moderate liberal and bat-sh*t crazy moonbat liberal.
Sane is Meeker, Shade, Galindo.
Batsh*t crazy is Leffinwell, Kim, and Morrison.
Cid Galindo seems like a sane, reasonable and well-qualified guy. And not a moonbat. If he wins, he'll probably be the best member of the council.
It's not a matter of being afraid of a liberal Austin city council. Its already way liberal. its more - how do we minimize the damage these folks do? Stop this bad idea by defeating those who are in favor of it, thats how.
After having attended the LP City Council Forum I have to say Gallindo was by far the scariest guy I heard. He is obsessed with central planning. This guy make a Soviet Union bureaucrat look like a mom planning her son's brown bag lunch.
His constant references to how only things that fit in perfectly with his master plan places him as far away from a free market stance as possible. I agree that many of the other city council members are scary but this guy gets the crown.
The clear choice for Place 4 is Sam Osemene, an actual fiscal conservative.
An idea that the Texas Conservative Coalition proposed recently is to move the local elections to November so there is a uniform election date. While this might fly in the face of "local control," a uniform election date will guarantee a larger turnout.
Right now, the tax-and-spend school district employees and the environmentalist nuts have cornered the market on winning local elections. This will not change until turnout increases.
I appreciate Sam Osemene running and I hope he can get into a runoff with Cid Galindo. That will prove that there are Austinites that openly reject the big government environmentalist agenda of the current City Council.
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