Action Items
Major Water Rate Hikes: Sign the Petition Now!
Dear TAGsters,
Austin City Council members, Leffingwell, Martinez, Cole and Shade have the set the stage for major rate hikes on our monthly water bills to pay for a water treatment plant that Austin may never need! Our friends at ChangeAustin.org are circulating a petition to send a message to the Austin City Council: Don’t waste our tax dollars and don’t waste our water!
You can send it to all your friends in Austin by going here:
We encourage you to show up at Austin City Hall on Thursday, August 26th @4 PM for the public hearing! If you’d like additional information on Water Treatment Plant #4 go HERE and HERE
And if you’d like more information on Austin’s Cost of Growth vist CostofGrowth.com
TAG Secures Victory in Reforming Grant Process!
On August 11th Austin Police Department Planning Supervisor Yuki
Miyamoto announced during the Public Safety Commission meeting, that the Austin
Police Department will now be placing the grants they are currently seeking and
retaining on the City of Austin website.
http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/cityclerk/boards_commissions/boards/bid41.htm
This will allow citizens to review grants that APD seeks to obtain, including
details about the grant, and when the next action is to be taken. This comes
after continual pressure from TAG activists calling on the City to provide more
transparency and accountability in the grant receiving process. The
change will make it possible for TAG to better understand, and combat the
federalization of our local police.
Thank you to all the TAG activists who continue to work hard to bring about a
more accountable government. Our persistence is paying off, so keep up the good
work!
Interested in getting involved?
Next Event: Public Safety Commission Meeting
Location: City Hall
Time: Monday, September 6th @ 4pm
TAG Pushes City to Keep Fusion Center Tamed
The Austin Regional Intelligence Center (our “fusion center”), is due to go online very soon – the City Council vote is currently scheduled for 5/27. We’ve been very busy working through the various documents put forward by Federal (DoJ) contractors that will supposedly keep these things in line. We’ve also been lobbying select members of the Council as well as the Public Safety Commission, in addition to working with other allied activist groups.
Would it surprise you that as currently constituted, there are NO controls on the gathering of private, personally identifiable information by this Orwellian monstrosity? In fact, criminals are more protected than the general public! And this despite repeated meetings with APD.
Videos of past meetings:
TAG Executive Director – John Bush
TAG Founder and Treasurer – Chuck Young
Please come out to the next Public Safety Commission meeting – we expect the media to be there in some force. We aren’t at liberty to disclose everything that’s being planned, but it should be quite a “show”.
What: Public Safety Commission
Where: Austin City Hall
When: 5/3/2010, 4 pm
Public Safety Commission Meeting @ Austin City Hall
The Public Safety Commission is set to have their next meeting this coming Monday. APD Chief of Staff David Carter will be giving an update on the Fusion Center @ 4:45PM. This is an excellent opportunity to ask questions and get the facts about the Fusion Center.
When: Monday, February 1, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Where: City Hall, Boards and Commissions Room 1101 (301 West 2nd St)
Fusion Center Q&A – Jan 26th @ 7PM
Texas Impact (texasimpact.org) is hosting a public forum with an APD representative who will be speaking about the Austin Regional Intelligence Center. This is an important opportunity to ask questions. We encourage people who are concerned with the Fusion Center apparatus to attend and ask hard questions. We want APD to explain how they’re planning to ensure that this Fusion Center will not violate our privacy or civil liberties. More importantly, we want APD to defend why they should have a Fusion Center at all.
When: Tuesday, January 26th @ 7PM
Where: St. John’s United Methodist Church (2140 Allandale Road)
Transportation Hearing @ The State Capitol – Feb 1st
If you want to end tolling as the primary means to fund new roads and for the MOST AFFORDABLE method of funding roads to prevail, you MUST come to the State Capitol Feb 1st to be heard!
That means telling lawmakers NO to selling our roads to private, foreign corporations (in these CDA contracts), NO to raiding teacher retirement funds and public employee retirement funds to finance them, NO to ANY tax increases until they CLEAN HOUSE at TxDOT and STOP raiding the gas tax for things that don’t relate to roads, and YES to the MOST AFFORDABLE way to fund roads (which is the statewide gas tax, hasn’t been raised since 1991).
What: Hearing on Transportation Funding
When: February 1 @ 8:00 AM
Where: Capitol Extension Auditorium – State Capitol – Austin, TX
More details to follow.
Contact Sudie Sartor at (210) 496-2997 or at sudie@texasturf.org if you’re interested in carpooling from your area to the Capitol on Feb 1st.
TAG Texas
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