ZacCast: Recent Episodes
TeamZac
The official podcast for local government nerds, from the folks behind ZacTax. We talk about everything from sales tax to city management to college sports, and bring you stories from the front lines of local government administration.
Come for the best natural segue Patrick has ever managed... stick around for a discussion about the Texas Legislature's current struggles with property tax reform and how it may impact cities.
3:00 - Local control and California's housing programs
- The Rise of the Single-Family Home (The Daily by the New York Times)
27:25 - Strong Towns podcast on customer service
- What Customer Service Should Mean for a City (Strong Towns Podcast)
46:20 - Quick return to California
4630 - reels clip
57:40 - Cities preparing for recession
- US Cities are Preparing for Recession (Bloomberg)
- US Cities Prepare for Recession (Fortune, paywall)
- All the (Unemployed) Young Dudes (The Fifth Column podcast)
- Creed's Thanksgiving Day performance, November 2001
- The Four Chords of Pop Music
- Why does the Four Chord Pop Song sound so good? (clean)
- Axis of Awesome - 4 Chord Song (explicit)
- NYT Daily - The Rise of the Single Family Home
- Strong Towns Podcast - What Customer Service Should Mean for a City
- RIP Queen Elizabeth II
- Tennis serves vs Baseball pitches
- www.humanbenchmark.com
- Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley's recent interview
- "How Dense is Too Dense" in Fort Worth's Crockett Row?
- Fifth Circuit strikes down restrictive short-term rental rules
- The Rise of the Worker Productivity Score (NYTimes article)
- The Rise of Workplace Surveillance (The Daily podcast by NYT about the article we discuss)
- American Consumers Are Starting to Hit Their Breaking Point
- Bachelor Tax
- Why Doesn’t California Solve Its Housing Crisis By Building Some New Cities?
- Grapevine council grills manager over ex-staff’s spending abuses: ‘We have to know more’
- Plano City Council Rap
- Why the 2020 census has 9 fake people in a single house (Full Stack Economics)
- Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 DNS Resolver
- What is a VPN? (Forbes)
- How Target figured out a teen girl was pregnant before her father did (Forbes)
- Comptroller's October sales tax announcement
- Austin's Prop A
- Ryan Peterson's port-related Tweetstorm
- Zach Klein's guerrilla speed bump installation Tweetstorm
In this episode, we assess the state of post-Covid sales tax recovery in Texas, talk about proposals to replace property taxes with a valuea added tax, and wrap up with a discussion about designing public spaces to delight.
- Chuck Marohn Tweet thread
- National Infrastructure Bank Coalition
- GFOA - Cash is King
- "We have no idea who the good guy is" - Y'allitics Podcast
- Beer? Money? States and cities offer incentives to get vaccinated (NYT)
- HB 4072 in-depth (ZacCast)
- HB 4072 Committee Version
- State sales tax revenue update for April 2021
- HB 4072 (and the totally worthless/misleading fiscal note)
- Is it worth the time? - XKCD
- The Bonnen Tapes episode - ZacCast
- Comparing apples and printers (March 2021 ZacTax Roundup)
- Signup for the ZacTax Roundup
Editor's note: I'm very sorry that Patrick has subjected you, our dear listener, to another forced attempt at ridiculing the University of Texas on what is otherwise an extremely valuable podcast for local public managers. While I did my best to keep the discussion geared toward local government issues, if you don't wish to hear our friendly bickering about Texas vs Texas A&M, you are welcome to skip from minute 37:30 until about the last 30 seconds of the episode. - Chad
Texas cities have been fighting the state legislature over property tax revenue caps for years, but what if they've just been a symptom of the underlying problem? In this episode, we dig further into the problem with the commercial appraisal mechanisms, how they've shifted the tax burden to residential homeowners, and how the legislative response to that phenomenon continues to make the situation worse.
- You could report illegal parking in NYC -- and get paid to do it, under new bill
- New lights, warning signs alert for sewage overflows into the Conestoga River
- Is Texas’s Affordable Housing Endangered?
- Denton Files Suit Against ERCOT Over ‘Illegal and Unconstitutional' Raid
- Texas governor lifts mask mandate and allows businesses to open at 100% capacity, despite health officials' warnings
- NYT Daily: Odessa, Part 1
Time Codes
01:47 Statewide overview
07:25 DFW area
08:45 Houston area
10:42 San Antonio area
12:22 Mcallen area
13:25 Midland/Odessa
17:30 Corpus Christi area
18:10 El Paso area
18:48 Amarillo area
19:47 Lubbock area
22:20 Brownsville
23:00 Kerrville/Fredericksburg
23:35 Austin/Round Rock
24:45 Killeen/Temple
25:25 Bryan/College Station
25:52 Abilene
26:49 San Angelo
26:52 Waco
27:18 Brenham
27:30 Wrap up
Valeri Williams freezes during weather forecast
- Gov. Greg Abbott tells supporters he's considering placing law enforcement for central Austin under state control
- August ZacTax Roundup
- A Christmas Tree Grows in Colorado
In a special, barely-related-to-city-government episode, Cody Janicek joins us from Prague to talk Covid, living in Europe as an American, growing up with Chad, and college rivalries.
- TeePublic
- Google's 3-Word Plan to Help Employees Avoid Burnout Is So Simple You Should Steal It
- Death to the open floor plan
Be sure to join us at www.salestaxgameday.com for your chance to play and possibly win some swag predicting sales tax collections for December 2020.
00:00 - Intro and Sales Tax Gameday winner
04:25 - DFW
09:15 - Houston area
14:10 - San Antonio area
16:00 - McAllen area
16:30 - Corpus Christi area
17:50 - El Paso area
19:45 - Midland/Odessa area
21:10 - Amarillo area
22:05 - Lubbock area
22:43 - Brownsville area
27:14 - Tyler/Jacksonville area
27:58 - Victoria/Port Lavaca area
28:30 - Kerrville/Fredericksburg area
29:57 - Austin area
33:15 - Killeen/Temple area
33:45 - Waco area
36:15 - Abilene area
36:40 - Bryan/College Station
37:55 - Quick hitters around the rest of the state
38:50 - Wrap up
41:45 - Star Baker Award Recipient
- Texas is on the cusp of another COVID-19 surge. Is the state better prepared to handle it?
- How Pandemics Spurred Cities to Make More Green Space for People
- This Site Knows if Your Local McDonald's Ice Cream Machine Is Broken
- In a Land of Cul-de-Sacs, the Street Grid Stages a Comeback
- The amazing route diversity of street grids
- The power of gridded streets (contains image of grocery store designed by a traffic engineer)
- Angry French beekeeper delivers more than 1000 'murder hornets' to local government building
- Alexander Hamilton: The father of American economic development incentives
00:25 - TeamZac Projections
07:42 - DFW Metroplex
12:42 - Midland/Odessa
13:55 - Corpus Christi
15:35 - Houston Area
19:20 - San Antonio
21:14 - Austin
25:56 - East Texas
27:08 - Amarillo
28:20 - El Paso
29:26 - McAllen/Edinburg
30:50 - Lubbock
31:32 - Victoria/Port Lavaca
32:12 - Brownsville
34:04 - Kerrville/Fredericksburg
34:45 - Bryan/College Station
36:55 - Waco
37:25 - San Angelo
38:00 - Sherman/Denison
38:22 - Nacogdoches
39:00 - Shining Star & Wrap Up
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0:43 - AirBNB pilots a new City Portal
- Airbnb’s Data ‘Portal’ Promises a Better Relationship With Cities
08:06 - Did cities defund the police in FY21?
- ‘We Have Not Defunded Anything’: Big Cities Boost Police Budgets
- August 2020 ZacTax Roundup
15:06 - Weekly Covid tests for San Antonio schools
- San Antonio billionaire wants to test every student in the city for COVID-19
23:18 - More gold from Mike Leach
- Video from the press conference
02:48 - DFW
06:54 - Houston
10:45 - San Antonio
13:26 - McAllen area
13:35 - Corpus Christi area
15:13 - Austin Area
18:06 - Bryan/College Station
20:52 - Waco
22:18 - Abilene
23:16 - San Angelo
23:25 - Midland/Odessa
25:52 - Lubbock
26:40 - Amarillo
27:35 - El Paso
28:11 - Brownsville
29:10 - East Texas
30:04 - Sherman/Denison
31:00 - Removal of internet sales tax
33:30 - Wrap up
- Internet Tax Freedom Act (of 2016)
- The Last Dance (Netflix)
- Drum Corps Endurance Study (YouTube)
- Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (Amazon)
- Nick Saban on team chemistry
- Show me the Numbers by Stephen Few
- Preattentive Visual Properties and How to Use Them in Information Visualization
- Quick wins for your data visualizations (ZacTax Blog)
- Design Concepts for Better Power BI Reports - Part 2: Preattentive Attributes (Data Savvy)
- Verdunity
- Go Cultivate! Blog
- Go Cultivate! Podcast (Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn)
OK, so maybe the title is a bit hyperbolic. But everyone's been there: stuck in council chambers, time ticking away, missing your favorite show or maybe even Thursday night football. Meanwhile, nothing productive is happening in your city council meeting. In this episode, Patrick and Chad offer a few tips for fostering productive city council meetings.
- Why do food delivery companies lose money?
- DoorDash and Pizza Arbitrage
- Even If You're Trying To Avoid Grubhub By Calling Your Favorite Restaurant Directly, Grubhub Could Still Be Charging It A Fee
- GoCultivate podcast
- Texas coronavirus deaths hit one-day high ahead of reopening (The Hill)
- Texas restaurants, retailers and other businesses can reopen Friday. Here's the rules they have to follow. (Texas Tribute)
- 'Trolls World Tour' made more for Universal in 3 weeks on demand than 'Trolls' (CNBC)
We talk about the future of SCADA systems, a very unfortunate error in a Utah appraisal district, and differing movie-time-travel rules.
- Bikeshedding (aka, the law of triviality)
- That's not how you use that: shooting video in portrait mode
- Safe-D
- How the Iowa Caucuses Became an Epic Fiasco for Democrats
- Meet the people behind Shadow, Inc
- The perils of using Internet Explorer as your default browser
- Parkinson's Law of Triviality
Strong Towns is an international movement that’s dedicated to making communities across the United States and Canada financially strong and resilient. You can learn more at their website: www.strongtowns.org.
Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity by Chuck Marohn
- ZacTax Blog
- Who are the single local rate taxpayers?
- Texas Comptroller provides insight into how the Single Local Tax rule will be reported
- Deep-Diving the Texas Comptroller's Single Local Tax Proposal
- Explaining the proposed Texas single local tax rule
- Elf on the Shelf
- Home Alone
- Uncle Frank set his brother up
- Peter McAllister is a Criminal
In this episode of ZacCast, Abilene, Texas, city manager Robert Hanna joins us to talk about his city's downtown hotel/convention center project. We discuss the difficulties inherent in complicated projects, steering large organizations toward a common goal, and gaining community buy-in for potentially controversial projects.
- GoVirtual CFO
- Texas Tax Responsibilities and Resources for Sellers After Wayfair (Texas Comptroller)
- ZacTax Blog
- Explaining the proposed Texas single local tax rule
- Deep-diving the Comptroller's single local tax proposal
- Texas Comptroller provides insight into how the Single Local Tax rule will be reported
- What Can Texas Cities Do When State Legislators Admit to Hating Them?
Errata
- College Station is ~107 miles from Austin
Show notes
- Texas Recreation and Parks Society
- ZacTax
- Blog: The benefits of using your own products
Everyone has a podcast now, so we figured we should, too. Join us as we embark on what we hope will be a fun and engaging show about city management, including stories from the front lines about interesting and innovative things happening in the field. In this trailer, we introduce the show and talk about our goals for it.