In an expensive city like Austin, it’s a tough time to raise property taxes — especially on top of rising gas bills and a county tax hike to fund disaster relief for the July floods. Yet that is what the City is asking the voters to approve this November in order to help make up for the state’s inaction in the face of the federal government’s millions in cuts to grants that fund city services.
Should it pass in November, Proposition Q would increase taxes for the average home valued at $500,000 by about $300 per year. With or without the tax rate increase, that bill will still increase by around $100, in order to pay for city services like trash and water.
In 2019, the Texas State Legislature passed a law prohibiting cities from raising taxes by more than 3.5 percent per year without voter approval. That law, along with the federal cuts and lower than expected sales tax revenue, has led to the current election.
But not everyone thinks a tax rate election, or TRE, is necessary. Shortly after City Council’s vote to set an election, former Austin mayoral candidate Jeff Bowen filed a lawsuit contesting the ballot language. Bill Aleshire, his attorney, argued that the ballot language doesn’t cover the full scope of how the tax increase will affect bills even after the 2025-26 fiscal year, and that it doesn’t specify exactly how much funding the city will allocate to each project. In mid-September his suit was dismissed by Texas’ Third Court of Appeals and the Texas Supreme Court, but detractors of Prop Q like Susana Almanza of PODER and Robin Rather of the Zilker Neighborhood Association have echoed its concerns.
However, a broad coalition has also sprung up to support the proposition under the name “Care Not Cuts.” It’s made up of over 30 organizations, many of which rely on the support the TRE would generate, including first responders like the Austin EMS Association and Austin Public Health, and homeless advocates VOCAL-TX, Foundation Communities and the Austin Area Urban League. In a press release announcing its support for the measure, Foundation Communities said that Prop Q “will ensure that the City continues to fund programs and services that we believe will help more of our neighbors find safe, stable housing they can afford, and services designed to help them find more success.”
The extra $110 million generated by a TRE would go toward EMS and mental-health crisis response teams, domestic violence and trauma-recovery programs, parks, libraries, pools and other essential city services. But almost half — $51.5 million — would go toward a sweeping investment in homelessness prevention and housing. Homelessness was a cornerstone of budget discussions about the TRE, and Mayor Kirk Watson’s main priority. Indeed, Watson told the Austin Chronicle in September that “There’s no question that fully funding our homeless strategy plan will result in fewer homeless living on the street.”
At a Care Not Cuts rally on September 30, Waltermae Grady, a member of VOCAL-TX who has been on the rapid rehousing waitlist for six years, spoke from experience.
“We already don’t have enough money for that program. If we lose it I don’t even know how many more years I would have to wait,” she said.
The new budget would not only allocate more funding to that program, emergency shelters and permanent supportive housing, but would also add more preventative interventions, like the Wayfinder program, run by the Sunrise Homeless Navigation Center. That program would help plug the marginal financial gaps keeping someone living from paycheck to paycheck from falling into homelessness due to factors like unexpected car payments or security deposits. It has wide support from homeless service providers and advocates and is much cheaper than other interventions but has already drawn pushback from the neighborhood where it is proposed to be built.
And some groups that are pro-Prop Q only express qualified support to what they view as a flawed proposal. Austin Justice Coalition (AJC) issued what it called a “disgruntled yes” last week, calling it “necessary but not sufficient” and advocating for more accountability on measurable outcomes.
“How many people are housed, how quickly, and with what long-term stability?” AJC’s Chas Moore asked. “Austin has broken plenty of promises before, and City Hall has failed to deliver at the scale people deserve. But a ‘no’ vote isn’t a principled stand — it’s a vote for austerity, for cuts that will fall hardest on people already struggling.”
One such no-voter, former Council Member for District 1 Ora Houston, echoed Moore’s call for more accountability, referencing on her website Aleshire and Bowen’s claim about the “misleading” ballot language.
“The city implies Prop Q is a one-time tax to pay for specific programs, as if Prop Q were a bond proposal,” she said. “In truth, Prop Q is a ‘forever tax’ and the tax revenue is not committed to any specific programs.”
Progressive policy wonk Julio Gonzalez Altamirano had a different, but related, concern with where the funding will eventually end up, expressing concern that it will eventually be reshuffled into the general fund, of which the police department has an ever-increasing slice.
“Objectively, Prop Q will reduce cuts to liberal priorities the next couple of years,” he wrote on X. “But the fiscal tradeoff is creating conditions for further entrenching the current public safety cost disease we are experiencing (which leads to fewer total public safety service hours).”
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