Yesterday Bastrop voted down a proposition to be annexed by Austin Community College’s (ACC) taxing district 5,847 (55.2%) to 4754 (44.8%). My question is why would you vote against such a proposition. Voting no is literally like slapping a child in the face and telling him or her that “book learning” is not for them while also slapping the Bastrop economy and saying, “Commerce is bad!” in the same fell swoop.
I’ve had people tell me reasons that having ACC in Bastrop is bad, but none of them made any sense. The main reason I’ve heard that it’s keeping Austin out of Bastrop, allowing us to maintain our “small town heritage.” I hate to tell people this, if they haven’t already figured it out for themselves, regardless of whether or not ACC puts a campus here, Austin and Bastrop will continue to grow towards each other and nothing can stop that. I don’t understand what people’s trepidation is about this. The more people live here, the more businesses will be here and each of those businesses will bring a job. That job will supply a family money with which to spend at other business who have paid employees and so the cycle continues. I see nothing bad about our city growing. I personally was laid off in January of this year and there was literally no one in Bastrop who would hire someone in my field. It took me over six months to find a new job in Austin. So now that I’m in Austin more than I am in Bastrop, I regularly eat out and shop there. This is money that could be going towards business in Bastrop, but now it’s just easier for me to stop at a restaurant, a gas station and even sometimes the grocery store in Austin. I highly doubt I’m the only one in this position, so I highly doubt that I’m the only one spending money elsewhere.
The other reason I’ve been told is that people do not want their taxes to go up. Taxes would have only gone up around ninety-five dollars per hundred thousand that your house is worth. That seems like petty change for what we would be receiving. Right now it is one-hundred and fifty dollars per semester hour for a someone who is a legal resident of Texas living outside of ACC’s taxing district, where it is forty-two dollars when living inside of the district. Right now between 50 and 55% of Bastrop graduates attend college after graduating, but think of how that number could improve if there were a local college campus. Graduates who couldn’t afford to move away and attend college suddenly have the opportunity to go for an affordable price, while living at home. There is also the scenario of people who have previously graduated and entered the work force and who wish to better themselves. Out of district rates as well as the distance to a campus might have put continuing their education on hold, but if there were a local campus, this would no longer be the case.
People who voted against the ACC prop are just delaying the inevitable, while hurting the community they claim to hold so dear in the process. If you care about something, you’re willing to make sacrifices for it, and for me, ninety-five dollars per hundred thousand that my house is worth is an acceptable sacrifice to bring an institution of higher learning to this city and for the ways that it would enrich our community.
