Couriouser and curiouser

I am never ceased to be amazed at the Austin City government.

A perfect example of my mazement is featured on todays (Sunday) edition of the Statesman's Front page, Section B, headlined "Fee for repaving may grow".

Now at first glance, that, within itself, is nothing to get the populace's shorts in a bind, but reading the accompying article should give them pause to wonder.

The Austin City Council is planning to raise the monthly flat fee that appears on utility bill from $3.67 up to $4.14 for most residential customers to help raise a part of the $2.5 billion, thats with a 'B', total budget up for approval next month.

Again this seems like a small individual amount to ask the citizens to come up with. However the first inkling is that it will be the "residential customers" hit with this increase and no mention of commercial accounts.

Now reading this gave me cause to suspect a fox in the henhouse, so even though we live in one of the "urban sprawl" communities and work in Austin I am intrigued by slippery political stuff on all fronts.

This higher fee will bring in an additional $2.6 million to cover the $18 million yearly tab for additional preventative paving maintenance such as asphalt overlays and seal coating of the failing 1/4 of the city's 7,230 miles of street lanes in failing condition.

Now the fox in the henhouse is that street maintenance is losing $2.3 it should receive from Cap Metro which produces some $0.3 million differential.

Public Works Director Sondra Creighton said the city cannot reach their desired funding because of this loss because Cap Metro arbitrarily stopped contributing money to street maintainance last year to focus its resources on "transit". (Read, Cap Metro's entrance into the rail business.)

My simple question is, "Does this mean that Cap Metro will cease operating busses on Austin's public streets, with a positive note that these overweight, fuel inefficient behemoths will offset this by contributing to less wear and tear and potholed streets?"

I think not.