Alamo Drafthouse Slaughter Lane
What We Have Learned
RECEIVED Tue., Dec. 30, 2014
Dear Editor,
I am confounded and appalled that Michael King, Nick Barbaro, and the Chronicle would paint the results of the election in red vs. blue partisan terms [“Point Austin: Learning From the Election,” and “Public Notice: From the West: the GOP,” News, Dec. 19]. For everyone I know – and I suspect a great many others – the election was not about left/right issues, but about the large, steady increases in property taxes, the horrific traffic, and the very livability of this town. As for the idea that voters staying home means an endorsement of current city policies, I suspect it’s more a combination of voter fatigue, an expectation a lone vote won’t swing an election, and a feeling of powerlessness, perhaps even cynicism, about how this city is being run. Democrats and Republicans both can agree that the residents of Austin have been poorly served by their city government for years and don’t want to keep in office those who have enabled things to get to where they are today.
The defeat of Mike Martinez and others on the City Council stands as a robust condemnation of their own policies: pursuing growth at all costs, making Austin as glitzy as possible, and offering tax breaks and other handouts to hotels, retail chains, developers, and others at the expense of small, local businesses and the average resident. It was the incumbents who did much to make Austin the evermore crowded and unaffordable city it is – crowded and unaffordable for practically everyone, no matter how they vote in other elections, no matter where they live, and no matter how much they earn.
Injecting partisanship into the Chronicle's analysis is not only needlessly (and destructively) polarizing, it takes the focus away from the causes and consequences of its policies that have led us to where we are. And it risks making the Chronicle seem irrelevant to helping its readers be informed about the array of real problems Austin faces.
I am confounded and appalled that Michael King, Nick Barbaro, and the Chronicle would paint the results of the election in red vs. blue partisan terms [“Point Austin: Learning From the Election,” and “Public Notice: From the West: the GOP,” News, Dec. 19]. For everyone I know – and I suspect a great many others – the election was not about left/right issues, but about the large, steady increases in property taxes, the horrific traffic, and the very livability of this town. As for the idea that voters staying home means an endorsement of current city policies, I suspect it’s more a combination of voter fatigue, an expectation a lone vote won’t swing an election, and a feeling of powerlessness, perhaps even cynicism, about how this city is being run. Democrats and Republicans both can agree that the residents of Austin have been poorly served by their city government for years and don’t want to keep in office those who have enabled things to get to where they are today.
The defeat of Mike Martinez and others on the City Council stands as a robust condemnation of their own policies: pursuing growth at all costs, making Austin as glitzy as possible, and offering tax breaks and other handouts to hotels, retail chains, developers, and others at the expense of small, local businesses and the average resident. It was the incumbents who did much to make Austin the evermore crowded and unaffordable city it is – crowded and unaffordable for practically everyone, no matter how they vote in other elections, no matter where they live, and no matter how much they earn.
Injecting partisanship into the Chronicle's analysis is not only needlessly (and destructively) polarizing, it takes the focus away from the causes and consequences of its policies that have led us to where we are. And it risks making the Chronicle seem irrelevant to helping its readers be informed about the array of real problems Austin faces.
Bartholomew Sparrow
