“I used to be a big supporter of the streetcar until I started riding it every day,” said Steve Tartaglia, who regularly rides the streetcar from Liberty Village to King and Adelaide. He called his commute an “absolute circus.”
THC realized the phenomenon of supporters of various government initiatives finding that reality is coming back to bit them has been a theme for awhile on this blog so we're creating a new Reality Bites tag so you can quickly access such classics as these:
From a June 7 post:
“I’m at the breaking point,” said Gretchen Gardner, an Austin artist who bought a 1930s bungalow in the Bouldin neighborhood just south of downtown in 1991 and has watched her property tax bill soar to $8,500 this year.
“It’s not because I don’t like paying taxes,” said Gardner, who attended both meetings. “I have voted for every park, every library, all the school improvements, for light rail, for anything that will make this city better. But now I can’t afford to live here anymore. I’ll protest my appraisal notice, but that’s not enough. Someone needs to step in and address the big picture.”
And this from Oct 13 of last year:
But people with no pre-existing conditions like Vinson, a 60-year-old retired teacher, and Waschura, a 52-year-old self-employed engineer, are making up the difference.
Both Vinson and Waschura have adjusted gross incomes greater than four times the federal poverty level -- the cutoff for a tax credit. And while both said they anticipated their rates would go up, they didn't realize they would rise so much.
"Of course, I want people to have health care," Vinson said. "I just didn't realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally."
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