Pflugerville\u00a0residents will have a chance to join Austin Community College\u2019s district as soon as this November. Board members moved on Monday to advance a proposal brought forward by\u00a0city leaders\u00a0that would let residents access far cheaper tuition in exchange for joining the taxing district.<\/p>\n
Austin Community College board members unanimously accepted a petition from Pflugerville residents at a special meeting to begin the process of bringing annexation to voters. The question could be on the ballot as early as November, pending an additional board vote after a public hearing with residents.<\/p>\n
If\u00a0voters in\u00a0Pflugerville ISD\u2019s boundaries approve the annexation, residents will pay\u00a0ACC property taxes at\u00a0the current rate of $0.1034 per $100 of property value. In turn, residents will no longer pay the $201 out-of-district fee per credit hour\u00a0to take an ACC course. For a 60-hour associate\u00a0degree, that\u2019s a $12,000 difference, the college said<\/a>.<\/p>\n Joining the taxing district would also give residents access to in-district tuition and benefits, more dual credit and workforce opportunities and a potential brick-and-mortar campus in town. Pflugerville\u00a0City Council Member Rudy Metayer and Travis County Precinct 1 Commissioner Jeff Travillion brought the petition to ACC.<\/p>\n Metayer said he knows\u00a0ACC is \u201ccritical\u201d to Pflugerville\u2019s future, particularly at a time when artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping workforce needs.\u00a0ACC, he said, is prepared to meet those needs.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re at an inflection point in our society, and we are seeing not only the jobs being eliminated, but people truly concerned about what does it look like when the American dream of having a good job, home ownership and having discretionary income taken away,\u201d\u00a0Metayer said. \u201cWe need to be able to provide the workforce training\u2026 to have citizens who can go ahead and reach their own dreams and expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n For the college to approve the ballot measure, at least 5% of eligible\u00a0voters need to sign a petition advocating\u00a0for annexation. The Pflugerville petition exceeded that requirement by more than 1,000 signatures, with 5,483 total signatories verified by ACC.<\/p>\n Pflugerville voters\u00a0previously rejected<\/a> a proposal to join the college\u2019s taxing region\u00a0in 2018 with 56.5% of the vote, squashing a two-year effort by residents to secure an ACC campus. Since then, the college has passed a free-tuition pilot<\/a> for in-district high school graduates, set an ambitious goal to reach 70% of students completing a degree by 2030 and established a new campus in Lockhart.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n The college will host a public hearing on the matter in Pflugerville <\/a>on July 16 at 5 p.m. The hearing will also be livestreamed<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pflugerville\u00a0residents will have a chance to join Austin Community College\u2019s district as soon as this November. Board members…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342793,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-342792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}