In final year as mayor, Adler reviews highlights of eight years in office

The city of Austin has faced big challenges in the past eight years, weathered mighty storms – both literal and metaphorical – and continued to grow, even as some longtime residents lamented the many changes taking place across the city. As Mayor Steve Adler wraps up his final year in office, he shared some recollections with the Austin Monitor.

“This is a magical place,” Adler told a crowd at a City Hall reception honoring outgoing City Council members. It is a refrain he has offered over the years. “This is a spectacular job – to be able to help lead in local governance is unparalleled. I don’t think there is a position in government that rivals being able to be a local elected official in terms of the impact.”

Two recent actions related to development on one piece of property at 305 S. Congress, which was home to the Austin American-Statesman for many years, illustrate the power of local officials to shape the city’s future. First, there is the Planned Unit Development zoning that will make way for a massive new development, and just as important, the tax increment reinvestment zone, or TIRZ, that will help finance investments in the area.

Adler said the 2012 plan for the South Central Waterfront, including the Statesman site, would have made it more suburban than downtown. He described arguments about the future of the site as “one of the culture wars we’ve been engaged in over the last eight years.”

“But we’re going to have a Project Connect station at that location. We need people and destinations to help drive the transit,” he continued. “Most all of the money that we use to pay for pocket parks all over the city and medical clinics is from downtown property taxes,” he said, describing downtown as the “bank” that provides money for improvements throughout the city.

On another note, Adler said, “This is a Council that tried to avoid controversy. We just weren’t very good at it. Sometimes in order to protect the future magic of this place, you just have to do (the right thing) even if it’s hard and politically fraught.”

Dealing with a variety of issues, including homelessness, police funding and oversight, was difficult because of the political environment, not only in Austin but across the country. After Gov. Greg Abbott spurred state investigations into the parents of transgender children, Austin City Council did what it could do, passing a resolution declaring Austin a safe place for transgender children and their families. Adler read a proclamation declaring March 9 as Transgender Youth and Family Safety Day.

After reading the proclamation, Adler handed it to 11-year-old Kai Shappley, who was a finalist for Time magazine’s Kid of the Year and became nationally known for her activism, including her testimony before the Texas Legislature opposing legislation targeting transgender families. Later, the mayor noted, Shappley and her family packed up and announced they were leaving Texas for a safer state. He didn’t know where they eventually relocated and he didn’t ask, in case of a public information request about the question.

“There are times when this is a lonely job,” the mayor said. One of those times was when it was the mayor’s job to decide whether to cancel 2020’s South by Southwest because of the threat from the Covid-19 pandemic. Adler said his international connections with other mayors prepared him for making the decision to shut down the festival and protect the community.

“I had watched mayors all over the world … when it became apparent that thousands and thousands of people would be arriving not only from Europe and Asia but from Seattle, there was only one real choice.” Texas state officials did not like some of Austin’s decisions about closing businesses. But if the state had followed Austin’s rules for protecting the population against the virus, Adler said, 50,000 fewer Texans would have died.

He noted that the decision about SXSW was his alone because the city had to issue permits for the festival. Although the decision was politically divisive and controversial at the time, he said, other cities made the same decisions within two weeks.

The Austin Monitor reported at the time that the festival brought in an estimated $356 million the previous year and drew more than 400,000 attendees from across the globe.

Adler said he was proud that Council members never shied away from making difficult decisions, including the decision to decriminalize public camping. Less than two years later, voters reversed that decision.

After decriminalizing camping at the end of June, Council took its summer break and directed City Manager Spencer Cronk to come up with rules about where homeless people should and should not camp. But those rules were not enacted until fall.

In hindsight, Adler said he recognized that the decision was disruptive. Still, he said he was proud that Council took action rather than deferring a decision to the next Council. “The tumult is still with us, but had we not gone through that – and frankly, if we had to do it again I think we could have done it less disruptively than we did – but there was no way it was going to be anything but disruptive.”

The Austin Monitor’s work is made possible by donations from the community. Though our reporting covers donors from time to time, we are careful to keep business and editorial efforts separate while maintaining transparency. A complete list of donors is available here, and our code of ethics is explained here. This story has been changed to clarify the timeline around camping in the city.