Marc Duchen

speaker

514 appearances 8 recordings 1 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 10 Sep

Marc Duchen’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 2.

Appearances

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Austin City Council · City Council Budget Work Session · 16 Jul 2026 meeting

I was hoping that we could demonstrate some compromise with taxpayers in Austin who have, from my perspective, delivered a very strong message to us last year. podcast-host

They're struggling right now, not with the fees and taxes and debt and utility from the city and county and so on, but also with things that we don't always talk about, right? podcast-host

Home and auto insurance and gas and food and the many other ways that they're getting squeezed. podcast-host

And in many cases, squeezed straight out of the city. podcast-host

And as I've spoken about before, sometimes it feels like we're cultivating two Austins here, one that can just shrug off the tax increase, it's a rounding error for them, and one that's going to be disproportionately impacted by them. podcast-host

And this is where it feels like the response is really puzzling, because we talk about the 3.5% state imposed spending limit, but when I look back for the last four years at podcast-host

three and a half percent that we approved it sure looks like the state gave us a ceiling and we treat it as a floor and that three and a half percent is important we talk about having to keep up with inflation and i agree with that and how the state cap consumes the inflation right out of the gate but i'm also not sure that's entirely true podcast-host

When I look at core inflation, so that's inflation, less energy, less fuel, less gas, and less food, that's been at about 2.5% for the last two or three years. podcast-host

Yet, when I look at the budget, I'm looking at many city departments that have an increase of 3% to 5%. podcast-host

And so it feels like my job in the coming days and weeks is going to be to better understand where our year-on-year cost increases are actually being consumed by podcast-host

inflation and those drivers and where we are actually adding new programs and personnel and services and why. podcast-host

So I want to continue to work with the manager and staff and collect information about our department priorities to ensure that when we do need to spend beyond whatever our year-on-year increases are, that it's the must-haves, not the nice-to-haves. podcast-host

It's in line with our KPIs and our goals, our strategic vision. podcast-host

So with that said, dipping into our presentation from earlier, if we can look at slide 26, which is the property tax supported debt. podcast-host

And I heard that Mr. Nelson said that the taxpayer debt service obligation will increase by 17%. podcast-host

So my question is, where do we project that this type of increase podcast-host

is going to taper off before it begins to crowd out our other priorities, or has it already? podcast-host

Is there a point that, I mean, do we feel like we're over the hump with the major projects that we've undertaken at this point? podcast-host

Because I'm seeing pretty rapid increase last year, 44. podcast-host

Then this year, it's 54. podcast-host

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