The Austin City Council just approved the $2.9 billion fiscal year 2009 budget.

When the property tax appraisal rolls were certified, $300,000 of additional property tax revenue that -- as the Statesman article describes it -- "materialized" during the certification process.

And being the good Liberal City Council that they are, what do you think the Austin City Council decided to do with that extra $300K in property tax revenue? Do you think for one minute they considered giving it back to the tax payers?

Of course not -- remember this is an exceptionally Liberal city council. So they did with it what you would expect Liberals to do with other people's money: they earmarked it to be redistributed to various social services programs.

Even though the proposed budget already included a 3.5% increase in funding for those social service contracts.