Hello again, and welcome back to ZacCast, the official podcast for local government nerds. I am Chad, that's Pat, and, uh, we're back and better than ever with a couple of interesting things to talk about. Uh, after a brief hiatus, because Patrick is, uh, doing two things: one, nursing some apparently terrible allergies, and two, nursing some butt hurt over last night's Game Six. Uh, how are you doing, Patrick?

Um, I'm doing okay. My Astros, you know, I'm- I'm not a fair weather fan, I'm always there. I was there when they lost 100 games, I'll be there when they win 100 games. It is what it is. So, thanks, Chad, for getting the jab in. I'm not sure how the Rangers will ever make a playoff game, ever. They're so terrible.

Did you see the Rangers last night? Uh, they did- they were not poking fun so much at the Astros, 'cause they don't really have room to, but, uh, but they did post, uh, congratulations to Ron Washington, former- former manager, now third base coach for the Atlanta Braves.

Correct, yes.

That was-

Yeah, but, I don't know-

That's classic

... that was nice. You know, Ron had the... You know, he managed the team that famously lost in Game Six, right?

Oh, man, that was brutal.

Yeah. So-

I can't look at Nelson Cruz the same way anymore.

Yeah, to be honest, the hiatus is, is not because of my allergies. The hiatus is because October and November are traditionally our busiest months of the year, right?

Yeah.

I mean, the-

And sometimes life just comes at you fast.

Correct. And we, uh, we had Texas Municipal League this, uh, this go around, this year. Got back to that, which was nice. Really good conference. Uh, able to hang out with a lot of our clients and do a lot of fun things, and, uh, we got to go to an Astros game while we were there, 'cause it was in Houston. Um, but, but yeah, we're, we're kind of back at it. Uh, things are, uh, still not slowing down. We've been incredibly busy, uh, for the last couple of weeks, and seems like cities are, are really in an upswing right now, and things are going pretty crazy. Speaking of-

Speaking of upswings.

Upswings, yes. There we go. Chad, talk to us a little bit about the Comptroller's press release on what we expect to see in the sales tax numbers next week.

It's the ever-elusive, high-quality segue. Okay, so yesterday the Comptroller released statewide sales tax numbers for October sales, 25.2% increase. Actually, I, uh... This is actually, I'm sorry, September sales. Uh, this is October state revenue, which then gets allocated to loca- localities in November, right? So very confusing. September sales, 25.2% growth. Now, these numbers, Patrick, are nuts.

Yes.

Like, so March sales, April sales, right, those are coming off the year-over-year base rate issues with the closers from last year. We've talked about those when they came out. You could expect big numbers, right? Um, double-digit declines in 2020 because everything was shut down, you're obviously gonna have that rebound in 2021. But this has persisted every single month since then. I'm pretty sure that the statewide data has been 20% or more every single month since March sales, uh, were released. And while this doesn't track 100% with local governments, uh, because the tax base is different and things like that, um, it's usually pretty close to the statewide totals for all local governments. So we're probably looking at 18 to 20% growth when the numbers come out next week, and, uh, I don't know. What are your first thoughts here, Pat?

I'm scared. I mean, it's ul- ultimately, it's-

It feels like a bubble, right?

It-

Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it- the numbers don't make sense either.

The numbers don't make a lot of sense. It's not like 2006, '7, and '8, when we had, you know, pretty normal growth, and then we had pretty normal pullback. Um, you know, when we, we saw, you know, most cities were seeing 11 to 15% losses in sales tax when we went into that recession, um, back in '08, '09. Uh, man, it just, it, it worries me. You know, and, and, and to be fair, uh, it worried you really early on. I mean, you added the inflation measure to the collections page on Zack when? I mean, it's been six months, five or six months ago?

Uh, probably just about three months ago.

Three months ago.

Yeah, once, once inflation started consistently being above what we have seen over the past decade, uh, we added that back in. So we don't use the, the economy-wide CPI-U, we use a, one of the modified schedules that is more closely tailored towards things that are sales taxable.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, so, you know, it doesn't include vehicles, it doesn't include a lot of other things that are not taxable. Uh, it's mostly retail goods and electricity. Last month, that number was 7%, right? So if you have, like, a 10% growth number-

It was... Check that, it, I, it was, like, 7.7%, I think.

Okay, so almost 8%.

Yeah, it was almost 8%, yeah.

But if your numbers are at 10% growth, but the things that people are buying, the inflation on those items is about 8%, then that spread is not quite what it seems. So I think it's fair to say that inflation is a, is a component in these ridiculous growth numbers. Population growth surely is part of it, 'cause Texas is growing like a weed, but even when you put those things together, it doesn't explain all of it. And so, you know, when data comes out next month, uh, we'll kind of deep dive into it and see where those changes are coming from at the local level, at least, uh, on a s- somewhat statewide, uh, not fully representative, but pretty close sample. We, we do have about 20% of local revenue, uh, to kind of dig through. But just looking at these top-line numbers, yeah, it's, it's hard, it's hard to see what the delta is once you get past inflation, once you get past population growth.

Well, I, I... Look, I mean, I, I, I think a lot of this is inflation. Uh, I'm, I'm just not... I won't get off of that one. I, I think we're seeing a lot of inflationary measures that aren't necessarily measured by CPI, right?... um, what you see right now in the supply chain issues that are occurring, and the price increases that you're seeing across the board, um, is, is, is being affected in sales tax. And it's just every item is going up, fuel is going up. Um, the, the cost of all goods that are put into other goods are, are going up, and it- it's, it's an across-the-board impact, and I just don't know if the CPI measures that we use right now are correctly showing that. Is there something else, like population growth and just the ability, the spending power that's out there? You know, the thing is, is, like, there's not a huge increase in consumer debt at this point. Like, there's, uh, there are things that we're, we're looking at and we're seeing that don't reflect a lot of the tracking that we do. And so when you say, "Is it a bubble?" I'm not really scared because it's a bubble, 'cause I, I, I think Texas is in a really good position as a state. I think Texas reopened quickly. I think our businesses have been able to kinda sustain better. Um, and, and, and I think we're gonna be in better shape there. I think people are still employed, and our employment sector in Texas is still pretty healthy. But man, I am, I am worried that I can't justify... My concern is not that it's happening. My concern is, is that I can't find exactly why it's happening. Um, and, and that's, that's where I'm at.

Yeah.

I just-

I mean, you can look at the individual taxpayer-level data across the state or in your, in your city and see which taxpayers were up, right? But that doesn't give you the full explanation of why it's up this much for, for this long after, you know, that, that base rate recovery from, from last year.

Correct. And, and, and to be fair, and, and not to be political, but there is a lot of government money out there right now, right? There are a... There is a lot of American recovery funds, and, um, you know, a lot of people with kids are getting checks in their bank accounts that just hit. They get an extra 600 or 1,200 bucks a month, depending on how many kids they have. Um, so there, there is a lot of money that's kinda hit at the same time as we have shortages of things, which has made things pretty interesting.

Yeah, household savings during the pandemic increased significantly-

Yes

... did they not? Right.

They did.

So you come out of the pandemic, people actually have more money that they have to spend, right? So it's a contributor. The supply chain issues are a contributor, um, to that. So the Fed met, was it- they, they started their two-day meeting today, and they're expected to-

Correct

... start tapering some of the bond buying.

Yeah, which, which could have some economic consequences on its own, because people are afraid if the bond buying stops, that there's some debt out there that won't get purchased, right? So, um, concerns there. Uh, but, but I think you're right. You know, there was a huge savings that occurred during the pandemic. Cities weren't really affected by the pandemic, because the adjustment from spending, um, that occurred moved into taxable goods, like Amazon deliveries to the house, and-

Right

... you know?

It went from services and amusement to home improvement projects, and, and there was still retail spending, right? So, so-

Right

... certain sectors of the economy were harmed, but when you look at the sales tax generation across the whole tax base, cities were able to pretty well sustain.

But if you look at your budget and my budget, we were still, even though we shifted our spending, we were still saving 10 or 15% of our monthly budget that we usually would be at a restaurant with, right? Chad is probably more like 40 to 50% of his budget.

Not me, 'cause we just DoorDashed.

Yeah.

You gotta remember when, when that stuff happened, we had a, uh, we had a brand-new infant-

Uh-huh. Yep

... and so we couldn't take him anywhere. So yeah, it was, it was tough to, uh, with the other two kids and the newborn, you know, cooking was a little bit harder, so we were just so occupied. So the convenience of U- Uber Eats and DoorDash just ate up all the restaurant budget that we would normally have spent.

True. But I, I mean, the reality is, is that we... There was, you know, consumer savings. We are seeing some of that stuff come back. I mean, just look at the stock market. Look at, look at what's happening with, like, Royal Caribbean and, and what's happening with Hertz, and all-

Avis

... er, Avis and, you know, all these other different types of users that are out there, uh, that are, you know, travel-based. I mean, we're starting to see that, uh, Wall Street is seeing money return to those areas. So spending is, is starting to happen again in tourism, uh, which i- you know, is, is interesting. But I, I, I really just feel like there's a large- uh, the thing that scares me the most is, is that it's very difficult for cities to understand what is real new money and what is inflationary money, right? Not only that, I got a text by somebody that I really respect in city government the other day, who said, "How do I figure out my wages for next year? I mean, should I be doing mid-year adjustments on wages? I, I can't give a, you know, a, a 12% wage increase to a city employee." That was kinda the text that was sent to me, and I said, "Look, if CPI is 12%, they're losing money unless you give them a 12% raise. Like, it just is what it is. That's the math." Um, but should cities be looking at, "I'm getting 20% more in sales tax"? Property values really aren't going up as much as, as that. They, they are going up, but they're not at the same rate as sales tax.

That's only 'cause they're capped.

And it's, uh, correct. I mean, they're, they're capped, so that cap is not gonna keep up with inflation in this next year. I think the 7.7% number that we showed last month is too generous, too friendly. I, I don't think it's high enough. Um-

Well, if you think about, if you think about the actual costs for wages, you know, in the market, even if, say, there's 5% and your primary revenue source is capped at 2.5%, yeah, you're relying on this sales tax growth, and the question is, is it sustaining? Is it going to be sustainable over the next 12, 18, 24 months? 'Cause if you're dedicating, I mean-... salaries are 60 to 75% of your budget, right? Staffing costs-

Correct

... at least.

Yeah.

Maybe not all salaries-

Yeah

... but if you're jumping that by 10% and relying on these 20% sales tax growth numbers to cover that indefinitely, that's kind of- that's a tricky situation to be in.

It's, it's a really tough situation to be in. I did an in-person demo, uh, yesterday, uh, with Allison. We went and traveled to a city and did a demo, and it was, you know, a, a, a city that historically has had, you know, nominal growth, but just, you know, not anything crazy. Uh, and they're seeing 9 to 10% growth, and at the same time that we're showing them 9 to 10% growth, I'm saying, "But our inflationary measure inside of ZAC is 7.7%. So you're really just seeing normal nominal growth that you always saw," right? Um, I, I, I think at the end of the day, my concern is cities getting behind in the providing cost or, or providing services because the revenue is not gonna keep up with the inflationary cost. That's, that's where I'm concerned. Sales tax are gonna be fine, but that's only 30, 40, 50% of their budget in most communities. Some crazy communities out there have 100%, they'll be fine, right? But the, the reality is, is that it's not... They still have the property tax segment. Property tax is capped. That inflationary measure is gonna be capped, and so you're gonna, you're gonna have, like, almost a deflationary measure on property values if this true inflation stays intact. Now, will we have a little bit of a collapse in real estate because it won't sustain that inflationary cost when materials or if materials come back down in cost? We've seen it in lumber. Have not seen it in steel, but we have seen it in lumber. Haven't seen it in concrete or, um, any other building materials, like, windows are outrageous right now. I have a buddy-

You can't even get windows. You can't get garage doors.

Yeah.

You can't get, uh, you can't get anything, hardly.

Correct. I mean, I, I, I don't know if I said this on our last podcast or another one, but, uh, I- we- uh, I have a buddy of mine who's building a house, and they are drying in the house with plastic in the window spots, because if not, they'll be six months behind on delivery of the house. The windows will be the last thing, and the brick right around the windows, that will be the last thing they do on the house. Uh, which is really interesting, but that's, that's the world we live in right now, and it's, it's wild. Uh, so how long does that actually last? Do we continue to see it, uh, at this rate? I don't know.

Yeah.

Um-

Now, I didn't expect to get into the wage question, but this does present a kind of an interesting topic because the labor market is so strange right now, right? There's, like, all... There's all these vacancies in terms of, you know, job openings that people are having a hard time filling. Some of that is sector-specific, but in a normal world, you could, you could kind of gamble a little bit and say, "Let the market dictate what we have to do." Like, if you start losing a lot of people, that's, that's your nudge that you do need to increase your wages by more than just your typical 2 or 3%, whatever you normally do a year, right? But the labor market's not quite working that way, so that may not be the best way to make that decision.

Mm-hmm.

You might get caught really far behind just unable to, uh, to catch up. But again, if you're relying on these large, large sales tax increases that you don't think are sustainable to fill that gap, what happens if we go back to a normal 4 to 5% growth rate, uh, and then all of a sudden you're sort of caught off guard, unable to actually fulfill those costs?

Well, I mean, let's look at what has happened to Chili's, right? Just in the service and food industry. Chili's has been unable to keep employees, and so they have merged managers and individual waitstaff in the higher volume stores and closed or reduced hours in lower volume stores. We've seen that all over the map, all over the state of Texas, right? You have a Chili's that is only open at night. They're not open for lunch or, uh, but a higher volume Chili's is open all day, right? They're, they're basically... Because of their staffing issues, they are having to adjust their service levels. When does that happen to cities? You know, uh, when you lose road folks or park staffing or, uh, water staffing or whatever else that may be within your utility funds, especially in your labor side of things, um, where it's a little harder to figure out how competitive you need to be in wage. Uh, ooh, man, that, that could be extremely dangerous for cities because they have to hold on to those folks, and so, um, you, you really need to be focused on that if you're not focused on it right now. I mean, if, if CPI is increasing truly by 6 or 7%, um, and there's a city out there that can be more aggressive in pay, uh, because of the way their revenue mix is, are they gonna be sucking people away, or are other industries going to be sucking people away? Which is what we're really seeing is, is people that are using this opportunity to flip to an industry that they may have better opportunities in, right? Um, and, and I, I think we need to be cognizant of that as, as we move forward with this. I, I think some cities could get caught with major staffing issues, um, and, and, and that's gonna impact them, just like it's impacted cities with the policing issues and staffing issues within their police departments that we've seen over the past couple of years. So speaking of policing and staffing, um, that's a, that's another good segue to, uh, talk about what just happened in Austin last night. Chad, we talked about this earlier last week, I think. Uh, early last week, we got into a conversation about the proposition that was on Austin's ballot to require Austin, within their police department, to have a staffing level, uh, that of the FBI national average, I think, right? Which is, like... or the expected-

No, it was, it was only two per thousand.

Okay, so two per thousand. So they wanted to make sure that Austin PD... It was a proposition that would have required them to have two per thousand, uh, from a staffing perspective of officers. Interestingly enough, it failed miserably, right?

Yeah.

The final vote... Yeah, I mean, it was- and, and, and we- so when we started talking about this, we were talking about it from a standpoint of public safety, because every-... every police department or every police chief, um, that, uh, is worth their salt always pushes for staffing, right? It just is what it is. Every city manager on the other side is always pushing back on staffing. But in this case, almost everybody uniformly involved in that normal process, from the officers to the chief-

I think even the police union.

The police union, the management, the council, everybody was against this proposition.

And it's not just because Austin's defunding things, like, everyone-

Ev-

... even people who are on opposite sides of the budget question-

Yeah

... were on the same side on this one.

And, and this is a really interesting topic because I, I, I think these propositions that come up that then restrict the ability of management to properly manage the city in real time, to see this fail was, was encouraging. I think from a city management perspective, it was extremely encouraging to allow the professional process of Austin, uh, as crazy as the people's Republic of Travis County may be, right? To allow them to do what they needed to do from a staffing perspective, and that all sides kind of coalesced on this issue after only a year and a half ago or so, we had this huge argument over defunding the police department in Austin. Uh, that happened politically. Everybody kind of came together and said, "But wait, we shouldn't be forced to fund a specific level of service in the police department if it's not necessary," right?

Yeah, that's the question, because the problem with this particular item is that it would've required so much extra money, not even accounting for the fact... And this is one of the biggest problems with staffing in police departments, is there are always, especially in large cities, always vacancies that cannot be filled.

Yep.

And despite that, cities will typically still add authorized positions, 'cause that AP count is really, really important. So you're just putting this money aside that's not gonna be spent, and unless you're doing some kind of salary savings, you know, jujitsu with your budget, then that money is just sitting there. It's either gonna be reallocated at some point during the year when some emergency pops up or it's just not gonna get spent. And so one of the arguments on this was, you know, not only is this gonna- not only do we have all these positions that we can't fill right now, they're already vacant, uh, you know, we don't have enough training courses throughout the year to fill these spots. Then we're gonna add an extra, what was it? Like, $400 billion dollar- or million dollars-

Yeah, 400 million

... to the budget, and there's no way-

Yeah

... to raise that revenue, right? I mean-

Right

... it, this, this wasn't like we want to add some kind of tax or we wanna add some kind of fee in order to pay for this. This was just, this needs to be reallocated from other parts of the budget. And yeah, what you said, I think, is the most important thing from a management perspective is things change fast, and hamstringing the operations of the city to some arbitrary number, when it may or may not be in the best interest of public safety, is a really, really tough thing to put, just to do. And, and that's why I think why, in large part, you had such agreement from the actual, uh, you know, city side on, on whether this was a good idea.

Well, you've seen a number of those in, in this election cycle that just ended yesterday. You, you saw that happen in a couple of different places. This is not the only area that that has occurred at. You, you also saw that management perspective come out of Minneapolis, which obviously has its own level of turmoil when it comes to the police department. But you saw the voters overwhelmingly there deny the removal of the police department in, in favor of, like, a public safety commission.

Yeah.

The news doesn't-

Yeah. It-

The news doesn't really report it correctly. They kind of say that, you know, they, they wanted to get rid of their police department.

Yeah.

They wanted to transition to a public safety commission, which would-

I mean, they would have still had a police department.

But it would have been an independent third party from the, from the city manager/mayor side, right?

Yeah.

They would have no impact on the policy.

It would have been underneath a public safety department. That would have included other things, right? But-

Yes

... like, you're still gonna have police. But yeah, so that got roundly rejected. The, the strong mayor proposition was approved, though. That kept more power in that mayor's role-

Correct

... as opposed to diffusing it to the city council, which is- I'm not sure if that fits any sort of narrative on this particular discussion, but also interesting.

Since we're there, shout out to the city of Aledo, who now officially is a city manager form of government after their charter election last night. Uh, pretty exciting for all the city manager nerds out there. But, uh, yeah, I mean, y- you know, we... Uh, I have a friend of mine who's the manager of, uh, Canfield, Ohio. Uh, as you recall, uh, Wade Calhoun used to work for us years ago. Uh, they had put on the ballot there that, um, a proposition to recall, for the ability for residents to recall the city manager instead of the city manager being accountable to the city council. That failed fairly overwhelmingly as well. Uh, so I, I, I just- I think it's, it's always hard as a city management professional to explain to the world what we do and why we do it. Uh, and so when we have the opportunities like this Austin proposition, or like a small town who's going for a charter that includes a city manager form of government, it's exciting to see people have the conversation about why you need good professionals in the, in the business.

Okay, so talking about, uh, being able to move fast, I sent you an article yesterday from Strong Towns, which we will not talk about today, but it kind of touches on the one topic that we both agreed to talk about, and also one more-

Mm

... that I will just throw out there, uh, just, just for fun, uh, because it's relevant. So the article was about simple rules for complex systems, right? We have built a system where planning professionals have to do so much planning that they can't actually keep up with it-

Mm-hmm

... and also do their day job. So you end up with cities that have these really, really old plans that are restricting growth and redevelopment and change, uh, because that's just how they set it up a long time ago, and they just haven't been able to get back to it. Um-... So I wanna talk about that in a future episode, 'cause I think it's an interesting discussion, but it does tie back into this idea of hamstringing decision-making on the fly, right? Um, we talked about the logistics issues and supply chain issues, and one of the big issues with that is that our ports are just overloaded, and they can't bring anything else in, and no one can bring anything else back out. And there was a, a, one of those sort of heroic Twitter feeds a f- couple weeks ago, where the CEO of Flexport took a tour of one of the ports in Los Angeles County and just threw out a handful of suggestions, one of which was to relax the zoning rules and allow these container storage yards to stack more than two containers. That was basically the limit, and so-

Mm-hmm

... because of that, they couldn't get enough out of the, the actual ports. So this b- went viral, and, uh, they temporarily changed the zoning rules to allow, I think, up to five to be stacked. And one of the complaints I saw was that, "Well, what about a, a huge breeze comes through and knocks these over?" It's like, we live in the middle of Tornado Alley, and if you go-

Yeah

... about two miles down the road, they're stacked, like, six or seven high-

Correct, yeah

... just off the highway. Like, I think it's gonna be okay for a little while, but, um, but yeah, we-

'Cause you... And just to be clear, you live by the, basically the Alliance Land Port-

Yes

... which is where all those containers come in by train. They get stacked, and they get taken throughout Texas.

Right.

Yeah.

So, uh, so there's that issue, which I, I think is interesting. First of all, just considering how zoning could actually play a pretty big part in the supply chain issues that we have today. But the other is, uh, another Twitter feed that I sent to you, or a tweet storm, as it were, uh, about a guy named Zach Klein. Who is Zach Klein? The CEO of Dwell and the co-founder of Vimeo.

Mm-hmm.

So this guy, he's one of those guys who's gonna do it himself on-

Lives in, lives in San Francisco.

Lives in San Francisco.

Yes.

But what I'm saying is, this is a doer, right? He's, he's a go-getter.

Of wrong, of wrong things.

So

Let's be very clear before we say this, of wrong things.

I think I, I, I-

If you have speed issues, I'm not building. Design, it has nothing to do with speed bumps. Sorry, I just ruined the story for you-

Yes

... but go ahead.

Spoiler alert. Okay, so-

Spoiler alert

... so Zach Klein lives on a road where people speed, and he requested speed bumps be installed on his road. And the SFTMA, which I assume is the transportation authority-

San Francisco Transit Management Authority.

Okay. They told him it's gonna take 30 months to get them installed if his application's even approved.

Okay, so, so before we get into this story, though, if somebody calls your city hall, Chad, and they say, "I want a speed bump installed," what should be the immediate answer?

No.

No. No.

And they-

We, we don't, we don't even review speed bump applications.

Speed bumps are the worst. Um-

They're terrible.

Yeah. So I had an idea once for a speed bump that-

They break the fire truck. That's supposed to be the answer you give them.

There you go. Um-

I heard somebody in the city hall say that once, and I'm like, "I don't think that's true, but it's such a good response."

These cost a million dollars. Uh, they should be able to-

A million dollars!

... survive a speed bump. But I had this idea for a speed bump that is, uh, speed sensitive, so as long as you're driving below the speed limit, it would give as you drove over it.

Oh, mm-hmm.

But as soon as you were driving above the speed limit, it would harden.

So it's like an airbag.

Some kind of, like, super fancy material that was able to adjust based on how fast you were actually driving.

Somebody's invented this at this point, though, right?

I hope so. I, I, I don't, I don't know if it's a good idea or not. But at least-

You gotta check, like, the... You gotta check, like, the Finlanders, Sweden.

Yeah, that's probably...

That's probably where

It would definitely be Scandinavian.

Scandinavian.

Um, okay, so anyway, Zach Klein goes to Amazon. He buys a, a, uh, speed bump for $140, and he sets it out on the road. And he says, "Guess what? It works."

And he hil- and he Hilti bolts it to the road.

No, he did not.

Oh, he didn't. He just laid it out there.

He didn't. He just set it out there.

Okay.

Uh, so he says he watched 20 cars go by, and 50% of them slowed down. A decent number of SUVs slowed down. Uh, the only self-driving car that he saw did not slow down, and he's got several videos here. I'm not sure... There's no update since the 24th, so there's no update about whether the city came in and took it away, which I suspect that they did.

Yes.

It's an interesting question here, not just about whether speed bumps are the best option for traffic calming, but this sort of guerrilla tactics, just sort of-

Incremental, incremental guerrilla tactics.

Well, I mean, theoretically, this is a Strong Towns type solution, right? We're gonna do the smallest thing that we can do and see how it works.

Right.

$140 for a speed bump is pretty small versus taking-

A speed bump that you could pick up and take somewhere else at any point-

Yeah

... as well, so, you know, you could test it.

But versus taking a 30-month process to get through your backlog and then finally review whether it's warranted, probably go through-

Mm-hmm

... some traffic study. I mean, how much is that gonna cost?

Correct.

A lot of time and money. To just throw a speed bump out there and see if it works.

And to be clear-

So I, I sympathize with the intent, even if I don't agree with the solution.

To be clear, I just like speed bumps because I miss them 99% of the time, right? And I hit them hard. And two, when we worked in Hudson Oaks, we didn't have curbs. Everything was bardages, right? And so our residents would come in, and they would say, "We want a speed bump." And, and, and we'd say, "We don't do speed bumps." And they'd say, "Why?" And we would tell them, "Because they'll just drive in your yard. They, they'll literally just move to the right of the speed bump and put one tire in the yard so that they can hit the bump faster and harder, and you'll just have this big dirt trail in your yard that will occur." And so that, that was really the reason why we were against it. But this guy, Zach Klein, going out on his own, is this responsible? What if somebody got hurt?

Yeah, so that's an interesting question.... there's always the possibility of that happening. Now, this, I think that he put this up literally right in front of a stop sign, so the odds of that happening are probably lower than if it were just in the middle of the road.

Well, it's not even a, it's not even a true test. I mean, but nobody in the Twitter sphere said anything about, "This could be unsafe."

Uh, there was one person here who drove around it into oncoming traffic.

Okay.

So yeah, that's, that's not safe.

That's not safe. Yeah. So, um-

But I guess this is a, this is an important thing to ask, though, right? Because if you are not responsive as a city, and you, I won't say force, but strongly encourage your residents to just take matters into their own hands, then yeah, you could end up with a situation where people get hurt because you are not able to actually respond to questions and scenarios and try to improve things. I mean, a 30-month backlog, that's almost three years just to consider a speed bump. Even if that's not the best solution, there, there probably needs to be a redesign of the road or some other kind of longer-term solution, which would require some creativity to do incrementally.

Mm-hmm.

But if y- if your best answer to them is, "Oh, I'll talk to you in three years," they're gonna take matters into their own hands.

Do you think you can legitimately tell the speed of a vehicle with your eyes?

No.

Okay, that's my problem with speed bumps. Most people believe cars are driving much faster than they actually are, right? Every time we would get a complaint from a resident, no matter what city we were in, we'd go do a tra- traffic speed study, right? Where you put a cop out there for a four- or five-day period, and they check speeds, and they write those speeds down. They don't write any tickets.

Which of course, there's, there's no feedback loop there, is there?

There's no... No. And so they, they-

That was sarcasm, by the way.

I know. But they, they come out there, and they check speeds, and they do the analysis, and we run, you know, some statistical analysis on that, and we figure out what the average speed is. Almost every time we had a speed complaint, the average speed was not five miles an hour faster than the actual posted speed. And, and so I just... I had a really hard time with that because people would come in and say, "Well, I think it's fast." Well, I was driving down my residential street the other day, taking my kids to, to church. We were a- headed to church, and there's a guy walking, and I pull to the far left-hand side of the road to avoid the side of the road he's walking on. He's got his back to me. He turns around, sees me for a split second, and screams at me to slow down. I'm driving 25 miles an hour in a 30-mile zone. It's just people believe things with their eyes that is not going to be true if they had a radar gun. Now, I'm not telling Karen to get out there with a radar gun and start checking speeds, but the reality is, is I just- I, I think a lot of it is perception and not reality.

Yeah, but, and this is-

And design.

And this is-

Some of it's design, right?

But the-

You build a road wider, people go faster.

But the perception does matter, right?

It does.

Part of the, part of the... So we just, we just had Chuck Marohn in to, uh, the Fort Worth area to talk about his new book, uh, Confessions of a Recovering Engineer.

Mm.

Um, it's a really good book if you have not read it yet, and but one of the things it talks about is that the, the design of the road is what dictates the speed.

Yep.

Right? If you feel comfortable driving fast, then you will drive fast. Like, you'll- you basically, the normal h- human will drive as fast as they feel comfortable. If you make the road feel less comfortable to drive fast, people will drive slower on average. And so it, it kind of does matter, though, the perception that if you are a pedestrian and it feels unsafe, then it very well actually could be unsafe, even if they're not driving as fast as you think they are. Is that not a reasonable retort?

Uh, a posted speed is a posted speed, right? I mean-

Yeah, but that doesn't mean the posted speed is... The, the road down the street that, like, come to my neighborhood, is a just straight-up residential road.

Mm-hmm.

They increased the speed from 30 to 40 because the 85th percentile speed was 40 miles an hour.

Yeah.

It's still a residential road.

So I, so I, I do, I do agree that the, the engineering behind how speeds are posted is ridiculous, right? Like, the... If, if you have- if you feel like people are driving too fast and you do a speed study on that roadway and you ask Texas Tech to come out and do a speed study, they're gonna raise the speed limit, most likely, because of the 85th percentile rule that's in the engineering design guidelines, right? Because it says if people are driving that fast, then it must be safe to drive that fast, and you must just raise it to that percentile in order for people to continue to drive that sp- safe posted speed, which, which is a foolish concept. It's just illogical, as Spock would say. But the, the reality is, is that when, when you look at roads, if you want to slow it down, a lot of it has to do with the design, not, not the posted speed limit. A lot of it has to do with how the road is built itself. Is it super straight? Are there intersections? Is it wide? Which that has a lot to do with it. And, you know, I mean, we did that on a couple projects in, in our history, and it works really well. I mean, road dieting is extremely beneficial. So if you've got a 30-foot-wide road and people are driving fast, turn it into a 22-foot road and put curbs on it, and guess what? People will drive slower.

Yeah, and trees.

And trees, and it's a smaller road, and it's prettier, and you can dedicate some of that right away back to those residents, and they'll be even happier. Or put a trail next to it or something like that, you know, some incremental change. But the reality is, is speed bumps are, like, the worst. I mean, it's, it's the laziest of the lazy when it comes to trying to fix a problem. It, it just is, and people find ways to avoid them, to the point of I've seen people try to go out and actually cut asphalt off the road- ... speed bump asphalt, speed bumps that are made of asphalt off the road. So-

Well, yeah, when I said that to you, I did not expect to get into a discussion about why speed bumps are terrible.... but I guess it makes sense now, thinking about it.

I mean, it, y- you, you know how often-- I mean, you get asked that question whatever city you work in. It is constant. People call and say, "I want speed bumps," right?

Well, again, it gets back to planning, 'cause we have these traffic calming measures. We have a traffic calming plan, and if this warrant is met, then these measures are taken, right? There's no, there's no individual judgment in a scenario. If this is what's happening, this is what we do. But we have to make sure it's happening, and we have to get to the backlog of everything else that we have to evaluate. 'Cause we can't just go out and look at it and then make a judgment about what could we try to do to solve this? We have to do this sort of grand, this is gonna solve this problem forever, uh, solution.

Correct. I do like the story, it's usually the first people to complain about speed bumps are the people that ask for the speed bumps. It's the things that happen after you install the speed bumps. It's driving in people's yard. It's the sound of a speed bump or a rumble strip that people don't ever think of that. Like, the house that's there, they're like: "Well, I want my kid to feel safe, and I want them to slow down, and I want them to hit, you know, hit the speed bump to slow down." And then you're sitting in your living room at nine o'clock at night, and you hear ba-bump on the speed bump.

Yeah.

And it gets annoying really quick.

If you want to pe- slow people down, take your 28-foot road and make it 20 foot.

That's the easiest way to do it.

Make it 22 foot.

Get rid of pavement, save yourself a ton of money in the 20-year horizon.

Yeah, if you think about that... So take a-- I'm gonna do some quick math here. Take a 30-foot road and cut it, uh, to 22 foot.

Mm-hmm.

That's 26, 27% decrease in the actual amount of concrete or asphalt you have to maintain.

Correct. Pays for itself.

Oh, big time.

You could easily pay for that concrete ribbon curb that you gotta put in to make that road short, uh, smaller. And then you can leave some of that old asphalt as, um, you know, some type of, like, walking trail or biking area if you wanted to. You could really get crazy.

What, just shift the road over?

Yeah, you just... You basically just take an edger, you cut out a portion of the road-

Yeah, the problem with there-

... a portion of the concrete curbing

... you have to deal with the curb cuts into the driveways.

You gotta do the curb cuts into the driveways. You also gotta do curb cuts for drainage to go across that side of the road. Some other things you have to engineer. We're not trying to take engineers out of the equation altogether. They gotta make money somewhere. But the reality is, is that there are better solutions than speed bumps. We can be more thought-provoking than putting in a speed bump.

So what you're saying is that Zach Klein should have just gone out to the road and cut up about five feet of asphalt?

I'm, I'm saying that, uh-

Haul it out.

Haul, haul it out.

That's what he should have done.

Yeah, made the road a little smaller, and, and he would've been good to go, right? Uh, w- really, what we're saying is, is that there are... If you could think of it ahead of time from a design solution standpoint, you're gonna be in better shape. And if you, uh... You could also add medians to the middle of the road, right? You can make, you can make the driving, uh, skinnier in the lane and put, you know, landscape median or, or sidewalk in the middle of the road. Uh, my favorite development of all time when it comes to walking trails is, uh, Lakeway, Texas. And I don't know if anybody's ever driven there, but if you drive down some of Lakeway's main boulevards through their residential communities, they have a 20-mile-an-hour speed limit on really thin road, and they have huge middle medians that are parks, that literally it is just, it's sidewalks and gravel, um, like, uh, granite and gravel, uh, running lanes that are in the middle of the roads. And it's just, you have to drive slow. From a safety perspective, you have to. So let alone, if you drive fast, you're gonna hit a deer because they're everywhere.

Speaking of deer-

Mm-hmm

... 'cause we have to have one bad segue here.

A deer and deer is the same word, one plural, one singular.

The English language-

It's hard

... never ceases to amaze.

Yep.

I was down in Austin, downtown Austin, a couple of weeks ago.

Do tell.

Uh, my wife was, my wife was speaking at a, a conference, and-

Okay

... we were coming back from a little trip. So, uh, I dropped her off at the hotel, drove up to the Drag, gotta stop at the Co-op and get some, uh, you know, some Texas gear. Uh, this is before we started our three-game losing streak, but that's okay. No fair weather fans here.

Can we tell everybody what your text message to our team was last weekend?

Uh, "I can barely watch this team anymore."

"I can barely watch this team anymore." And when I say our team, the Zach team.

Yes.

Um, but yeah, I, I knew... I had not seen the game yet, but I knew Texas was in a disastrous loss position because of that text, so.

So I get over to the San Jacinto parking garage. I get up to the fourth floor. I turn the, uh, the car off. It's my wife's car, 'cause, you know, we went on a trip together. So, uh, and then I try to lock the door, but I realize that the key is still in her purse. So now I'm about three miles away from her in downtown Austin. I'm on, like, I'm on north... I'm at, I'm on campus, basically, and she's over by the, by the river. So I gotta get down to her, get this key before she starts speaking, A, so I can lock my car, 'cause all of our stuff's in it, but B, also so I can get the car back to her when she's done. So I'm thinking, "What can I do? Like, could I call an Uber? Do I... Like, what do I do?" And then the most amazing thing happened. Littered throughout the whole sidewalk- ... just hordes-

Scooters!

... of scooters. And I'm gonna tell you, that was some of the most fun that I had in a very long time in the city of Austin, was driving a scooter from the Drag downtown to pick up her keys and then back up to campus.

You did this without a helmet?

Yeah.

I'm not sure our founder's insurance covers you on a scooter without a helmet.

Uh, well, we just won't let the carrier listen to this episode. It was a lot of fun, though.

Yeah, that's, uh, that's pretty awesome, actually.

So-

So for three miles, how long did it take you to get there?

Uh, I don't know. 12 minutes.

That's not, but it's not bad.

Fifteen minutes. It wasn't too bad. I'm, I'm not sure that it was three miles.

Were you freaked out when you didn't have the key? Were you, like, calling her freaked out, like, "I don't have the key!"

No, I mean, I just-

And why does it surprise you, you don't have the key? It doesn't give you, like, a ba, da, da, da, da, "The key's missing."

Well, so she just got out at the hotel. We switched spaces, so it's still on, right? So, like, if it was-... not on already, like if you just turn it on remotely, you still have to have the key to do a full turn on.

Mm-hmm.

But if it's already on, it will still go. You just can't do anything once you get where you're going.

But it doesn't beep at you like crazy that the key's in the car?

It didn't tell me. Uh-uh.

Oh, man.

So-

Man. Yeah, but your truck does that, right? My F-150 does.

I don't know.

It honks at you.

I never-

The key leaves- if the key leaves the car, it honks. It's like, "Boop, boop."

Yes, if the key leaves, it honks, but for whatever reason, hers didn't, so-

Okay

... there I was, stranded.

Man.

But primed for an opportunity to have a lot of fun driving through downtown. I got to go over by the Capitol.

Mm-hmm.

I got to, like, whiz in and out of traffic. Crossing MLK was the scariest one, 'cause that's a weird intersection at Guadalupe.

Yeah, it's weird. Uh-huh.

But I took some back roads, so, like, there wasn't as much traffic. Stay on the road.

Did you stop by Sixth Street on your way? Like-

I bet you... I went past Sixth Street, 'cause I think it was-

Okay

... right off Cesar Chavez.

Okay.

But it was fun.

Yeah.

I would recommend it. It was a little bit scary at first, but once I kind of-

Scooters

... got the hang of it.

I mean, y- you, I mean, if anybody's ever seen you in person, Chad, you're kind of the scooter type. Like-

It's probably fair.

They kind of look at you and they're like, "Yeah."

That guy, yeah, that guy would take a scooter.

"This guy rides a scooter. Yeah, he'd take a scooter." I don't think people look at me and they think- ... scooter type.

You might be surprised. There are, there are a lot of people in, like, groups-

What, what you're saying is, is there's a lot of offensive lineman-looking guys that get on scooters.

Well, there's a lot of backup offensive lineman l-looking guys. I'm not seeing, like, Tyron Smith or, you know, on a scooter.

Oh, that was outstanding. That was outstanding. So all right, what else we gotta talk about?

I think that's it, man.

Is it? Man.

We've been going for a while.

That's kind of sad, though, 'cause I, I was really getting into it. Maybe... Well, we're gonna have to do another one next week, 'cause we're actually gonna start to see sales tax data at some point, right?

Yeah.

So-

Just have to keep all of your, uh, side stories to make fun of me. Like, just put them in a sack, and then-

Yeah

... open them back up next week.

It's been a rough year for you when it comes to just, like, Chad things, like Texas football.

Uh, Cowboys, Cowboys are doing well.

Man, that comeback, I don't even think we've talked about this, but OU's comeback against y'all, that was brutal.

So-

I mean-

The only reason-

... that, that was brutal

... the only reason-

I, like, I did not... To be clear, I have not poked fun at you about this. I have not-

Oh, you're more than welcome to.

I, I know, but I haven't texted you about it, because, man, I just... No man should have to live through what happened.

So the only- the worst part about that, we went through the exact same thing, like, three years ago. We blew a 21-point lead in the fourth quarter, but we ended up kicking the game-winning field goal as time expired, or very close to there, too. So this time, obviously, that didn't happen. We did end up losing that game. But I've been in that situation enough over the past 10 years where, like, no lead is really safe. We were beating Tech by 35 earlier this season, and I still didn't feel easy in that game. Of course, they subsequently fired their coach. Basically, everyone that we beat this year has fired their coach: TCU, Tech. It's just ridiculous. So-

They are like the homecoming game that you should win, but don't win.

Yeah, if, if you are a coach and we beat you, you should check your contract.

Yeah, it's tough. TC- it happened at TCU, too, right?

Yeah.

'Cause Gary Patterson's gone, too.

He's gone.

Yeah.

Um-

He's gonna get hired by somebody, though. He's a good coach.

But the worst part of it was the fact that later on that night, y'all played Alabama-

Yeah

... and somehow managed to squeak out a win in that game.

Well, because like I've said, A&M is a good football team. Uh, it just... You know, we, we're Aggies, and we find a way to screw it up. Just is what it is. Um, I'm a big believer, I know you make fun of me for this, but I'm the big believer in the long-term contract. I just think it makes a difference in college football. I think if you give a college coach some stability, and they're a good coach, that they'll make things better, and, and I think Jimbo's done a pretty good job with the program. Um, it's hard to be a national contender in the SEC. Y'all will learn that the hard way, maybe next year, maybe in 2025.

Sh- it's hard for us to be a national contender in the Big 12.

Well, you're not gonna be a national contender in the SEC either. You gotta play real football, and, uh, losing to Baylor is not real football. So there's not many SEC-

They have a... Baylor has a decent team this year.

There is not many SEC teams that get beat by Baylor, period. It just, it doesn't... Maybe-

To be fair, there aren't that many SEC teams who get beat by A&M typically.

Wow! We're gonna beat Auburn this weekend, don't worry, right? Uh, we'll, we'll be fine there, and then Auburn's gonna beat Alabama, which is gonna give us a shot at the national championship.

No, it may give you a shot to get destroyed by Georgia.

If we get to the SEC championship game, though, right, and let's, let's say Alabama loses to Auburn, Alabama has to lose to, like, LSU, too, right? I, I have to... No, 'cause we would have beat Alabama, so that would have put us in, so, 'cause Alabama would have two losses. So the, the reality is, is that it... That's probably not gonna happen. I mean, but if A&M beats Georgia, we deserve to go to the national championship or the playoff. There's no doubt.

Yeah.

Georgia's a great football team.

No, what I'm saying is you'll get the right to go get destroyed by Georgia.

Oh, I get you. I mean, I think we... I think we can beat anybody on any given day, 'cause we have a very talented team. So that's the problem with the SEC, everybody's very talented-

Yeah

... so anybody can win.

I'm just gonna-

Except if you're LSU, 'cause you're terrible right now.

I'm just gonna leave that one out there and let our listeners decide.

Chime in on that one? So anyways, well, hey, uh, it was great to see you face to face again, uh, over the podcast, and we appreciate everybody tuning in, and we'll talk to you next time.

You bet.

See you.