Austin United PAC is supporting a citizen-initiated petition drive to give Austin
voters the right to set culture, arts, and parks funding as the top City priority for our hotel
tourism (HOT) tax dollars rather than wasting $3-4 billion on an unneeded Convention Center.

The petition requires the signatures of at least 20,000 registered City of Austin voters to be placed on the November 2025 ballot. We need your help to make this happen!

The petitioned ordinance would be placed on a November 2025 ballot
and would put the demolition of our convention center and construction of a new $3 to $4 billion convention center on hold for seven years or until specifically approved by Austin
voters.  It would allow Austin to redirect over $100 million or more every year to the promotion and support of culture and nature-in-the-city tourism.

In short, this is a fight for the soul and survival of Austin as we know it.

City records show at best 100,000 visitors each year out of 10 million visitors attend events at the convention center. That’s one percent (1%).

Yet the convention project would lock up and capture more than 77% of all our hotel tax funds for 30
years of debt financing (till around 2055) if it goes forward.

In 2024 the City of Austin collected $170 million in hotel taxes. Less than 10% -- $16.8 million --went to the Cultural Arts fund. 

By giving these huge amounts of money to a convention center, our culture, history and parks continue to fight for pennies, leaving Austin as we know it to disappear and degrade.

No, the petition drive is not too late. The City says they want to initiate demolition of our perfectly good convention center built in 2002 and one we’re still paying off beginning in late May 2025.

The construction of a new center will not begin until many months later, and is scheduled to take 4 years.

While it would be great if we could roll back the clock, there is plenty of time to stop the waste of more than $4 billion over the next 30
years on a convention center that does nothing for Austin but takes the money that rightfully
belongs to the people and places that make Austin a place worth visiting and worth living here. 

In short, it’s late, but not too late to save the soul of Austin!

Also, no.  State law allows funding for arts, film, music, local businesses, and parks that bring visitors to Austin and benefit those of us lucky enough to live in Austin. It’s absurd to claim that our state hotel tourism tax prohibits funding what actually does promote tourism in Austin while restricting funding to a failing convention center that brings almost no visitors. 

The state law does set limits on direct funding of arts production and historic preservation. But it provides for unlimited funding for the following things:

•  Paying venues, artists, musicians, film makers, unique local businesses, and others for projects that promote their offerings to visitors and potential visitors.  

• “Visitor information centers.” Many live music venues, art galleries, museums, Barton Springs pool, and other places already serve as “visitor information centers,” with historic photos, educational displays, book selling, and other activities that inform their customers of what’s special about what they do, the neighborhood they are in, and the history of Austin.  The City can establish a  program for designating and funding “visitor information centers” across the entire City, not just one single “visitor information center” that no one ever visits.

• Public transit that connects areas where there are hotels with areas that tourists want to go. Austin has amazing local venues all over town – not just downtown -- and hotels and airbnbs also all across town. Using hotel tax funds to revive the old “Austin ‘Dillo” or other transit options that serve both tourists and residents on weekends, during special events, and in the evenings would free up transit tax dollars for other city needs.

No, surprisingly.  Austin voters have never been allowed to vote on whether to commit over $4 billion to demolish our current center and build a much larger one.  Some people confuse a similar 2019 citizen-initiated petition drive and vote that failed by 54% to 46% but it was not a vote on this extraordinarily expensive new Convention Center.