Hi! I'm Tim Mahoney. I would like to be your Austin Community College Trustee for Place 1. Please join with us in this on-going effort to build a stronger ACC!

I'm a trained attorney, mediator, and counselor at law. My course training includes the 40-hours of classroom time authorized by the Texas Alternative Dispute Resolution Act by the Center for Public Policy Dispute Resolution at the University of Texas School of Law, and other courses at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, also at the University of Texas.  I have also years of experience in community organizing. I believe that I am prepared to work with you to move Austin Community College into it’s best possible future.

I have always viewed myself as a community lawyer. Cooperation and building consensus have been among my strengths. Sometimes promoting those interests involves exploring the downside of some particular position that might not be at first apparent, and may in fact result in unintended and negative consequences. But if we work together in a Community context, then getting an efficient and cost-effective outcome will build mutual trust, and the ability to do even more.

Community colleges are the gateway to higher learning and absolutely essential for growing a workforce that will sustain a robust future for Texas citizens. I know this because I am a product of a community college. As I have been visiting with people about my campaign, I have been sustained by the spontaneous stories that I have heard about their positive experiences with their Community College, from being the first person in their working class family to go to college, to working while going to school, to increasing their educational opportunities at any stage of their lives. For many, without the Community College option -- there would have been no college for at all!

THE BIOGRAPHY: About Tim and His Family

Melanie and I have been married since 1989. Between us we have four children, the two oldest being married. One lives in Chicago, Ill., and the other in Asheville, North Carolina. Our two youngest attend school at AISD’s LBJ High School and Ann Richard’s School for Young Women Leaders. Both my wife are the oldest children in our families: she has 3 siblings and I am the oldest of 10 children.

My father was in the U.S. Navy when I was a child, so my fantasy when I left home was to find a home town. Austin, Texas, qualified as that home town, and I have been here since 1970, with a few years off to make certain that this is where I wanted to call home.

My career has had a certain circuitous flavor to it. I graduated in 1970 from a Jesuit High School in Dallas, and in 1974 from Richland Community College in the Dallas area, after attending Tyler Jr. College for a semester while I did tree work outside Frankston, Texas. I returned to Austin in 1975, finally graduating in 1978 from the University of Texas, with a degree in Humanities, and a concentration in Journalism courses. Matter of fact, I won some national awards for economic stories (taxing and bank-holding companies) that I wrote for the Texas Observer (under then editor Jim Hightower). I also wrote articles for the Dallas Morning News and other publications, including KUT-FM’s Listen magazine.

Figuring that I needed to know more about how people thought the world worked, I attended the LBJ School of Public Affairs from 1979 to 1982, when I received my Master’s degree. My Master’s thesis was entitled "A Case Study of Decentralized Power Systems and Municipal Politics, Austin, Texas; 1979 to 1981." I guess you could say that I know something about Central Texas.

I entered the South Texas College of Law in 1989, from which I received my degree in 1991, with course work at the University of Texas School of Law. I was licensed to practice law in Texas in 1992.

For the last few years I have been working with others on trying to find ways to empower communities in our local democracy. That continuing efforst has included organizing neighborhood-based capacity-building training programs. The conference that we did in 2007 was at the Austin Community College Eastview Campus. See http://www.neighboraustin.com/.