Displaying episodes 31 - 60 of 67 in total

Fighting the wrong fight on property tax reform

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 t...

The one Patrick expects a lot of feedback on

In this grab bag episode: parking violation snitching, poo in the river, endangered affordable housing, Texas' convoluted property tax system, the City of Denton sues ...

Happy Texas Independence (from masks) Day!

On Tuesday, March 2, Texas Governor Abbott has declared an end to state mask mandates and a near-complete reopening of Texas business. We discuss whether this makes se...

Back in the saddle

After a brief podcasting break, Patrick and Chad return for a semi-random discussion about whatever was on our mind. Topics include property tax analytics, the upcomin...

Sales Tax (Post) Gameday - February 2021

After a brief hiatus, we're back with a somewhat meandering sales tax gameday. Join us as we dig into February sales tax allocations across the state of Texas and a wh...

Greg Abbott: City Manager

Texas Governor Greg Abbott wants to take over policing of downtown Austin. We talk about Texas' continuing shift away from limited government/local control and what it...

Czech yourself before you wreck yourself

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 co...

The "Chad's Mannerisms" episode

Google announces a "No-Meetings Week", and CityLab discusses the downsides of open floor plans.

Sales Tax Gameday - November 2020

Often imitated, never duplicated. It's the one and only Sales Tax Gameday! We dive into the highs and lows of a bounce back month, announce the first ever Sales Tax Ga...

Covid resurgence, broken ice cream, street grids, and murder hornets

In what might be our nerdiest episode yet, we talk about the recent surges of Covid-19 and street grids, a software engineer who hacked McDonald's to find out which ic...

Sales Tax Gameday - October 2020

We recap our TeamZac projections and then dive right in to October 2020's sales tax collections across the state of Texas. Who won? Who lost? Let's find out!

Round Robin - From AirBNB to our national treasure, Mike Leach

We're scattershooting today! AirBNB is piloting a new City Portal; CityLab analyzes whether cities defunded the police in FY21; a San Antonio billionaire wants to pay ...

Sales Tax Gameday - September 2020

Temperatures drop, and so does sales tax. Patrick and Chad continue the new monthly feature of totally on-the-fly exploratory analysis of city sales tax collections. C...

The Last Dance

In which Patrick and Chad try to apply leadership lessons from the totally unrelated topic of championship-level basketball to city management based on the ESPN docume...

Dataviz tips and dad jokes

We'll all be building our adopted budget books and sending them off to GFOA soon, so here's a few quick tips to maximize the impact of your data visualizations.

Sales Tax Gameday - August 2020

It's sales tax day, and since college football is in doubt for 2020, we do our best to provide you with some kind of game day experience. Come along as we look at how ...

Kevin Shepherd on fiscal sustainability, infrastructure gaps, and the future of development

Kevin Shepherd, founder and CEO of Verdunity, joins us to talk about the sustainability gap most cities don't even know they have.

A city used these easy steps to have a productive council meeting and you won't believe what happened next!

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 ...

What's Proptech, and how has Covid affected sales tax?

In this episode, we talk about Proptech and how the Covid closures have impacted sales tax collections across Texas.

VC and ED

Why can't DoorDash, GrubHub, UberEats, etc, ever seem to make a profit? Or even play nicely with their restaurant partners and drivers? In this episode, we argue that ...

#OpenTexas

It's May 1st, and Texas is officially reopened. Pat and Chad discuss Governor Abbott's order to reopen the state, whether the general public will jump at the chance to...

Budgeting under the cloud of COVID-19 with Kyle Lester

We chat with Kyle Lester, finance director for the City of Colleyville, Texas, about budgeting in uncertain times. How is the COVID-19 response impacting budget plans?...

SCADA-as-a-service, appraisal mishaps, and time travel

We talk about the future of SCADA systems, a very unfortunate error in a Utah appraisal district, and differing movie-time-travel rules.

James Earp on the local response to COVID-19

James Earp, assistant city manager for the city of Kyle, Texas, joins us to talk emergency response, continuity of government, and keeping your staff healthy so they c...

Brittney Huff on things you don't learn in grad school (aka TYDLIGS)

Brittney Huff, director of operations for the City of Hudson Oaks, joins us to talk about some things you don't learn in grad school. Also introducing a new segment: I...

Lamentations on technology and Disney princesses

In this episode, Chad and Patrick talk about attending the Safe-D conference in Galveston, technological miscues at the Iowa Caucus, the end of Internet Explorer, and ...

The future of ZacTax, software spies, and zipper merges

In this episode of ZacCast, we talk about the future of ZacTax and our company, Eight20 Consulting. We also talk about software spying and why we wanted to remove thir...

Fresh Prince and Strong Towns

In this episode of ZacCast, from fresh prince to urban development patterns, it's things that make you reevaluate your entire existence. We dig in to some of the more ...

Single Local Taxes, Rule Changes, and Christmas Conspiracies

In this episode of ZacCast, Patrick and Chad discuss the impact of the Single Local Tax Rate on December's sales tax collections; wade into some controversy about alle...

Robert Hanna - Downtown Redevelopment in Abilene

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 diffic...

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