City Of Livingston, Texas: Fill & Download for Free

It’s a very nice city overall.It’s not super hot “7 months” out of the year. That’s just 4 months! And most people are inside in air conditioning all day anyway…so it really doesn’t matter.Winters are very mild. Usually highs in the 60’s. Rarely freezes at all (I think weather.com says average of 4 days below freezing per year). Humidity doesn’t make it feel colder. It makes it feel warmer. Houston, TX Monthly Weather Forecast - weather.comLots of sunshine.Pollution is not bad. Pollen is. It’s a very green city (go up in a highrise and look over the city and all you see is a vast canopy of treetops occasionally interrupted by freeway or a large building).People don’t get sick all the time. Yes, we have the world’s largest petrochemical complex SE of town (Pasadena, Texas City). You don’t even know it’s there since the city grew N and W and S of downtown. The eastside is like another city. Literally, the “population center” of the area is about 15 miles West of downtown.Traffic is okay. Not nearly as bad as NYC or DC or LA or SF or Chicago. Everything is relative to where you live and work.While we are green and sunshiney, we are not blessed topographically. No hills or mountains. Rivers are slow and brown. The beach is brown sand and brown water and almost no surf. Welcome to the Texas coastal plain. Very plain. On the plus side, you can be out and active pretty much every month…and everything grows here (unless it is sensitive to heat). No blizzards or ice storms ever. No wildfires or mudslides. We do have many very large lakes in the area: Lake Conroe, Lake Houston, Clear Lake, and Lake Livingston. Check out Google maps.We are the most diverse city in the US….with more languages spoken here than anywhere else. Yes, including NYC. We are an immigrant magnet…a city of opportunity. The city itself is about evenly split in thirds between white/brown/black…but the suburbs are much more white. Check out the Houston wikipedia page. Houston - WikipediaTons of restaurants and bars. Unfortunately, pretty much zero walkability. But the city is increasing bike paths and parks and lightrail.Native Houstonians tend to be very friendly and easy-going and honest and hard-working.Cost of living is way low. I was looking at a job in San Diego…cost of living was +60% there…PLUS 10% California state income tax. I would have to make almost double my Houston salary to “make the same” in San Diego. Still don’t think I could afford their 720k average home. The average home in Houston is 240k.Not true that we have a “small number of Catholic churches”. There are 150 in the Archdiocese and Catholics make up about 22% of the population…the exact same as nationwide.Other pluses:Energy Capital of the World (esp. oil and gas)The Texas Medical Center (TMC) is the largest med center in the world…tons of cutting edge medicine and the best cancer hospital in the world (MD Anderson)Diverse, restaurants, nightlife, friendlyLots of jobs, low cost of livingVery family friendlyMild weather. You can be outside every day of the year.Low taxes and business-friendly.Negatives:Huge sprawl, car-dependent, not walkable.Pretty much built since 1960…so lots of ugly architecture.Flat boring landscape (but hey, only a few hours drive to the Hill Country, Padre Island, southern Louisiana, and the Piney Woods).

Interesting question. I don't recall much really standing out while I was sleeping. Some nights a hooker might knock on the door wanting to know if there was any interest in that area. A few times the wind was blowing hard enough to rock the sleeper. There was one company that had an alarm systen that they could set off from the dispatcher's computer that started a few intense arguements in the middle of the break.There's really nothing interesting that ever happened while I was asleep. If there was, I slept through it.One time, however, I was getting ready for sleep when another truck turned a corner a little too tightly and literally ripped the front bumper and fenders right off my tractor. That was a rush - and not the good kind. I was sitting at the wheel finishing some paperwork. My rig was legally parked, engine off, in a lined truckstop parking spot at the end of a row. This guy came around the corner and the next thing I knew I was staring at the front end of my new (6 month old) truck sitting on the ground in front of it. I yelled at the guy over the CB radio, but he apparently had his turned off. I got out and started running after him which seemed like a silly thing to do, running after a moving truck, but he kept having to slow down for other vehicles and eventually I was able to jump on his running board and hammer on his door.That startled the hell out of him and he stopped the truck. I asked him where the hell he thought he was going and it turned out he was completely oblivious to the damage he'd done. I knew this was possible because I once had a sports car run a red light in front of me and the only reason I knew I'd hit him was the perception of his speed and trajectory made it impossible not to have happened. When I got out and sawthe car, the tires were flat on the ground and the front end was completely crushed. My load was so heavy that it barely felt like running over a piece of plywood.Anyway, the rest was reports and waiting for repairs. But as for while I was asleep - nope, nothing. Not even in the worst parts of New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, Detroit, Miami, or any Texas border town.

What is the importance of local taxes in the localities? I am only familiar with Texas but this should generalize out to the rest of the US. So in Texas, the Comptroller of Public Accounts collects around 60 separate taxes, fees and assessments, including local taxes, for and on behalf of more than 1,400 cities, counties and other local governments around the state.For local taxes, the Comptroller makes Allocation Payments to the local jurisdictions (cities, counties, special purpose districts, metropolitan transit authorities and city transit departments) about a month after they were due. They retain 2% of the net total each month which will be paid out the following month to balance out any adjustments that might be made due to audits/refunds/returns/etc.So I will pull some data from the state’s public sales and use tax statistical data for a small town that I have a small familiarity with: Onalaska, TX. Onalaska is a city in Polk County, Texas, on a peninsula between the main channel and one arm of Lake Livingston. Its population was 1,764 at the 2010 census.This is their Allocation Historical Summary (from the public transparency pages):City of Onalaska 2016January 33,423.02February 59,061.83March 32,625.62April 36,577.23May 63,482.65June 41,104.48July 43,040.34August 68,448.81September 47,749.30October 43,785.84November 61,126.73December 32,827.65TOTAL $563,253.50This is their budget from 2016 (from the city website):Income & Revenue11-300 TAXES11-3020 FRANCHISE TAXES11-3021 EASTEX ELEPHONE 3,400.0011-3023 SAM HOUSTON ELECTRIC 157,000.0011-3024 SUDENLINK 16,000.0011-3027 PINEY WOOD SANITATION 14,000.0011-3026 OTHERS - 0.0011-3060 SALES TAX 567,000.0011-3060 BEVERAGE TAX 10,000.0011-3060 HOTEL/MOTEL 20,000.00TOTAL 11-3000 TAXES $787,400.0011-3500 INCOME COURT TRANSFER 170,000.0011-3200 PERMITS- BLDG, VENTOR, SIGN, LIQUOR 9,000.0011-3400 EARNED INTREST 1,200.0011-3901 LED SIGN SPONSORSHIPS 2,500.0011-3921 CITY PARK FUND11-3926 MARKET DAYS INCOME - 0.00TOTAL 11-3921 CITY PARK FUND - 0.0011-XXXX SPECIAL EVENTS11-3915 JULY 4TH FIREWORKS 12,000.0011-39XX CHRISTMAS EVENTS - 0.00TOTAL 11-XXXX SPECIAL EVENTS $12,000.00TOTAL POA ESCROW- STREET REPAIRS -TOTAL_INCOME $982,100.00BUDGETED SALES TAX AS A PERCENTAGE 57.73%OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT FUNDINGSo you can see they budgeted $567K in sales tax and received $563K - a difference of $4K. For a small municipality this amount can be felt. When I have to make a local tax reallocation and the small municipalities are going to feel the brunt of it, I have to write an email to Austin and do some explaining why this money needs to be taken away from these small jurisdictions. It matters.Just for comparison, the City of Houston’s sales tax collection just for November 2017 was $57,901,609.53