Ok, over at Examiner I had to play nice. Here, I say what I want.
The summary for the tl;dr types: Austin created a Live Music Task Force to provide recommendations to maintain and improve our reputation as the Live Music Capitol of the World. A key recommendation was to create a city office specifically for that purpose, the Austin Music Office. The creation of the office is estimated to cost $330k and there was to be a vote by the City Council on June 18th. The vote was delayed after the police union threatened to withdraw its offer to defer or forfeit their 2010 raises, which will save the city $5 million.
The commentary/rant/whine: The police union comes off as whiners wielding too much power. Yes, of course police protection is important. More important than having a music office. But we’re not talking about a direct relation. No one is talking about reducing policing so we can have a music office. The sticking point is that the office will cost $330k, which is a pittance for a necessary step in the right direction. Music brings in a billion dollars a year to Austin. A billion. Yet the city doesn’t do much to support the industry the town is known for. Case in point, music gets lumped in with fine arts in the city government.
Police union officials pulled a lame stunt, informing the City Council of their disapproval mere minutes before the vote, threatening to withdraw their offer. They think we shouldn’t be spending the money when the city is expecting a $30 million shortfall. First, the money to pay for the music office probably wouldn’t come out of the general fund. Second, sometimes you have to suck it up in a down economy. Third, when did the police union get to decide how the city gets to spend money? $330k to sustain and, hopefully, improve a $1 billion local industry. An industry the city counts on to help set it apart from the rest of Texas.
(Y’all are going to love this) There are what, a million people in the Austin area? Tax us the 33 cents one time and let’s move on. You know what? Tax me at 100x the rate; I’ll gladly pay $33. The police union can continue to whine about things and wield their raises as political capital, the city can have it’s music office, musicians benefit, and the taxpayers are out 1.5 gumballs.
Disclaimer: I am not in favor of putting the burden on the taxpayer often, so don’t go there. The price is small and one-time, the return is big, and it sidesteps political panty-bunching. Music is important enough to Austin that we should willingly offer up our 33 cents.
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Disagree completely. The optics of spending money on some brand new extension of gov’t on one hand, while asking our civil servants to defer their contractually agreed upon pay raises on the other is very poor. The police union may have made it look a bit like a stunt with their timing, but I can’t begrudge their opposition.
Also, the last thing Austin needs is MORE gov’t control of the local music scene. The noise ordinance is a complete disaster that is killing lots of venues. If we establish a music dept, that will lead to more politicians, more bureaucrats who need to justify their positions by making more policies, more codes, which leads to more enforcement, which leads to more nanny state “volunteers” running around with noise meters and calling 911 when the music exceeds some arbitrary level. Pretty soon the music dept will need to fund itself so they will come out with music/band permits and start charging bands to play in Austin, or some other crazy idea that does nothing but feed the machine.
I understand the concern about more government control; I had the same discussion about allowing guns in bars. The problem comes when the slippery slope argument is invoked. A music office will lead to this which will lead to that which means that this, etc. It’s tough to argue a point when you’re already to the point of establishing a volunteer noise police.
I think you give the local government too much credit while giving too little to the people of Austin. Read the recommendations about the Music Department from the Live Music Task Force and see if the future you laid out is hinted at. If so, let me know because I didn’t see a lot of talk about enforcement and policies.
http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/council/downloads/lmtfreport.pdf
Thanks for the link, that was a good read.
I do believe invoking the word “slippery slope” is a bit of a strawman. Gov’t programs usually start with great intentions and we look up in 10 years and say “I can’t believe this is what we got.” There a lots of examples, especially at the Federal level, but at the local level you’ve got examples like the noise ordinance that are already being used in ways and places other than they were sold to the public. Mike Dahmus (who I normally disagree with on many topics) has a good series of posts about how the ordinance is being used by the SoCo and McMansion crowd, not problematic downtown venues like we heard was the need for this. The McMansion ordinance is another good example, pushed by people who had already built their McMansions to prevent competition for their mega homes and preserve their property value. I digress…
Right on page 3 of that document you linked, they talk about code development and enforcement, and new policies. Later, it talks about venues needing city approved ($) and trained ($$$) sound engineers (page 11, section 2). They also want to move enforcement from APD to PACE (page 12 section 5). I’m not sure how I feel about that, my gut tells me we should consider it carefully; does it mean that PACE staff will be going out and shutting down venues? APD has a process for this – imagine hundreds of drunk, angry college kids who are just getting kicked out of their concert that they paid for…some PACE dude in a polo shirt and khaki’s is going to handle that? There are probably other issues…
Maybe on the balance a music dept is a good thing. There are certainly lots of issues surrounding music in Austin that have competing interests that need to be balanced: bands and fans vs. livability for a growing urban core, health insurance and cost of living for struggling bands, etc. I’ve got issues around growth of gov’t in general, the necessary result of which will be higher taxes and/or higher costs to go listen to bands as these venues pay their city-mandated sound engineers, and the growth in litigiousness of our society in which all of our interactions need to be spelled out in laws, code, policies, and so on. Whatever happened to just letting the band play, and if they’re bothering you, walking over to the venue and talking to the owner? Or better yet, researching your house BEFORE you buy or build and knowing that you back up to a music venue?
To be honest, I agree with almost all of your points (especially about the noise ordinance) and I don’t agree with all of the recommendations of the Live Music Task Force.
The recommendation to create the music office seems like a sane step to me, as you say it could be a good thing. It brings live music out of the realm of the cultural arts office, promotes and recruits live music in Austin, and is a much needed voice for live music in local government. I know the noise ordinance is a big sticking point, but the bulk of the recommendations around the music office (overarching recommendations part 1) go toward improving the infrastructure and representation for live music.
If PACE takes on enforcement, it might lighten the APD burden for noise ordinance violations. Admittedly, that’s a stretch, but it’s more a possibility than the PACE guy getting beat up. If the past is any precedent for what might happen, your scenario where a concert is shut down won’t happen. I’ve been at venues when noise ordinances get violated and it takes a lot to shut down a concert while it is happening, even at small dumpy bars they give you a few warnings. I imagine APD and/or PACE would have enough foresight to see that shutting a live concert down could have immediate consequences. You’re right though, the enforcement of the ordinance in general is poorly executed.
As for sound engineers, I say bring it on. The sound guy at our local venues is often a drunken joke. I’m not saying we regulate the crap out of it, just set some standards and make them prove they can meet those standards.
Thanks for your comments by the way; I’m always down to hear another point of view.
I’m all for asking (no, actually, insisting) that police “defer their contractually agreed upon pay raises”. If they refuse, the city should eliminate meet and confer contract when it expires in the coming year and set their salaries – much lower- in the city budget just like everybody else. Austin police are literally the highest paid police officers on the planet when their salaries are compared to the local cost of living. (See: http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2008/08/state-troopers-would-need-52-pay-raise.html)
The union thinks it can bully the city council precisely because they’ve successfully done so for years. But the economic crunch means they’re going to have to begin telling the union “no.” Meanwhile, the creative sector in Texas is a key source of job growth (see the study here: http://www.createtexas.org/econ_study_1.php), but the state does little to support it. If the music office will promote jobs in the creative sector, that’s exactly the type of investment Austin needs to be making during the downturn.