Dear friend,

I’m writing to ask you to vote FOR Proposition 1, the healthcare initiative that’s now on the ballot. I’m also asking you to urge your friends, family, social media contacts, and everyone else to vote for it too.

Early voting starts today, and Election Day is Nov. 6. Your support will make a difference for our community and our future.

Prop 1 has been endorsed by a huge range of organizations, including nearly every Democratic group in Travis County, the Chronicle, the Statesman, Planned Parenthood, and dozens of business, labor, minority, and progressive groups.

It’ll help make Austin a center for treating cancer and other illnesses, ensuring you can get more cutting-edge treatments here without traveling to other cities.

It’ll create 15,000 permanent jobs and about $2 billion annually in economic prosperity, plus the pipeline of doctors our region needs.

It’ll allow for trauma services, longer neighborhood clinic hours, prevention and wellness programs, and better primary, behavioral and mental healthcare.

And Prop 1 will pay for more doctors to treat Austin’s poor and uninsured, in part by purchasing the services of a new UT med school’s students and faculty. These folks would work in our community clinics, new teaching hospital and neighborhoods to keep us and our families and neighbors healthy.

UT, which faces deteriorating support from the legislature, can’t afford to open a medical school on its own. But the University has identified 90% of the operating costs for one. If guaranteed a revenue stream (in exchange for the work of its students and faculty) to cover the last sliver of costs, UT can move forward.

Prop 1 means our community will get the doctors it needs; the poor and uninsured will better avoid taxpayer-funded ER visits; and our families and neighbors will have an easier time finding physicians, clinical trials and jobs.

To pull this off, Prop 1 includes a 5 cent property tax increase. That equates to about $9 a month for the average homeowner, or 2% of the total tax bill in most of Austin. Given Prop 1’s huge benefits, that’s a great deal for taxpayers.

But people need to know what Prop 1 does before they head to the polls.

So please forward and post this email wherever you can. Urge whoever you can to vote.

And please vote for Proposition 1.

Thanks.