Doesn't surprise me, sounds like something tea-sips would do.
Here's the background. The City Council, which staggers six at-large council seats, passed a term limits law that gave elected officials an out - if they could get a certain percentage of voters to sign petitions saying they still wanted the term-limited councilmember to stay in office, they could override the term-limit.
Lo and behold, all three councilmembers to be term-limited got petition drives started in mere weeks and amassed the necessary signatures. Probably all the same names too.
In Austin, there are three types of local politicians - liberal, uberliberal and total whacko (including cross-dressers, mafia hitmen, folks who had their homes condemned by the city and your more conventional nutjobs). They are as crooked as all getout.
The liberal powerbrokers divvy up the spots and control everything. If you don't have their blessing, you don't have a chance.
This was proven in court back in the 1980s where the local NAACP led a fight to force the city to adopt eight single-member-district councilmembers rather than the six at-large spots in existence. This was despite the fact that, since the early 1970's, one black and one Hispanic (roughly 16.6% voting strength each) has been on the council, even though their racial voting blocks make up roughly 10 and 13 percent of the city population (those percentages are surely higher now, especially Hispanics).
The eight new districts would gerrymander a "black" district and a "brown" district with a watered-down 12.5% voting stregth each in the disguise of "fairness".
So the NAACP was trying to persuade a federal judge to give them LESS voting strength because of perceived racial grievances. What grievances, you ask? That the powerbrokers (all liberals, mind you) had pre-determined which blacks and which Hispanics would win. This meant the NAACP was accusing Austin's liberal elites of being racist!
Well, even the federal bench couldn't endorse this lunacy and threw out the suit while practically every other Southern city with a fair amount of blacks was forced to switch from at-large councils to single-member district councils.
Today's city government is run by environazis and assorted theives. Your tax dollars pay for abortions. Your tax dollars pay to erect environmentally-sensitive impact zones and mandatory recycling. Your tax dollars pay to declare ozone action alerts and water conservation activities in the summer.
It's a nice place to live in spite of them, particularly as neighboring cities have sprung up so you can enjoy Austin without having to actually live in it. Neighboring Williamson County is one of the most conservative in the state. Wonder why? It's where all the sane people go to live.